standing knee-deep in the stream, the operator added a little water, and caused the contents of the bowl to take a circular motion, somewhat as the modern digger does with his tin dish, with this difference, that his ancient prototype allowed the water and lighter particles to escape over the rim as he swirled the stuff round and round. I presume, in finishing the operation, he collected the golden grains by gently lapping the water over the reduced material, much as we do now.

I have already spoken of the mode in which auriferous lode-stuff was treated in early times—i.e., by grinding between stones. This is also practised in Africa to-day, and we have seen that the Koreans, with Mongolian acuteness, have gone a step farther, and pulverise the quartz by rocking one stone on another. In South America the arrastra is still used, which is simply the application of horse or mule power to the stone-grinding process, with use of mercury.

The principal sources of the gold supply of the modern world have been, first, South America, Transylvania in Europe, Siberia in Asia, California in North America, and Australia. Africa has always produced gold from time immemorial.

The later development in the Johannesburg district, Transvaal, which has absorbed so many millions of English capital, is now, after much difficulty and disappointment—thanks to British pluck and skill—producing splendidly. The yield for 1898 was 4,295,609, and for 1903 2,859,477 ounces—a yield never before equalled by lode-mining from one field.

In the year 1847 gold was discovered in California, at Sutor’s sawmill, Sacramento Valley, where, on the water being cut off, yellow specks and small nuggets were found in the tail race. The enormous “rush” which followed is a matter of history and the subject of many romances, though the truth has, in this instance, been stranger than fiction.

The yield of the precious metal in California since that date up to 1888 amounts to £256,000,000.

Following close on the American discovery came that of Australia, the credit of which has usually been accorded to Hargraves, a returned Californian digger, who washed out payable gold at Lewis Ponds Creek, near Bathurst, in 1851. But there is now no reason to doubt that gold had previously been discovered in several parts of that great island continent. It may be news to many that the first gold mine worked in Australia was opened about twelve miles from Adelaide city, S.A., in the year 1848. This mine was called the Victoria; several of the Company’s scrip are preserved in the Public Library; but some two years previous to this a man named Edward Proven had found gold in the same neighbourhood.

Most Governments nowadays encourage in every possible way the discovery of gold-fields, and rewards ranging from hundreds to thousands of pounds are given to successful prospectors of new auriferous districts. The reward the New South Wales authorities meted out to a wretched convict, who early in this century had dared to find gold, was a hundred lashes vigorously laid on to his already excoriated back. The man then very naturally admitted that the alleged discovery was a fraud, and that the nugget produced was a melted down brass candlestick. One might have imagined that even in those unenlightened days it would not have been difficult to find a scientist sufficiently well informed to put a little nitric acid on the supposed nugget, and so determine whether it was the genuine article, without skinning a live man first to ascertain. My belief is that the unfortunate fellow really found gold, but, as Mr. Deas Thompson, the then Colonial Secretary, afterwards told Hargraves in discouraging his reported discovery, “You must remember that as soon as Australia becomes known as a gold-producing country it is utterly spoiled as a receptacle for convicts.”

This, then, was the secret of the unwillingness of the authorities to encourage the search for gold, and it is after all due to the fact that the search was ultimately successful beyond all precedent, that Australia has been for so many years relieved of the curse of convictism, and has ceased once and for all to be a depôt for the scoundrelism of Britain—“Hurrah for the bright red gold!”

From the year 1851 to 1897 the value of the gold raised in the Australasian colonies realised the enormous amount of nearly £550,000,000. One cannot help wondering where it all goes.

Mulhall gives the existing money of the world at 2437 million pounds, of which 846 millions are paper, 801 millions silver, and 790 millions gold. From 1830 to 1880 the world consumed by melting down plate, &c., 4230 tons of silver more than it mined. From 1800 to 1870 the value of gold was about 15½ times that of silver. From 1870 to 1880 it was 16·7 times the value of silver and now exceeds it over twenty times. In 1700 the world had 301 million pounds of money, and in 1860, 1180 million pounds sterling. In 1894 the current gold was worth about £800,000,000.

The gold first worked for in Australia, as in other places, was of course alluvial, by which is usually understood loose gold in nuggets, specks, and dust, lying in drifts which were once the beds of long extinct streams and rivers, or possibly the moraines of glaciers, as in New Zealand.

Further on the differences will be mentioned between “alluvial” and “reef” or lode gold, for that there is a difference in origin in many occurrences, is, I think, provable. I hold, and hold strongly, that true alluvial gold is not always derived from the disintegration of lodes or reefs. For instance, the “Welcome Nugget” certainly never came from a reef. No such mass of gold, or anything approaching it, has ever yet been taken from a quartz matrix. It was found at Bakery Hill, Ballarat, in 1858, weight 2195 ozs., and sold for £10,500. This was above its actual value.

The “Welcome Stranger,” a still larger mass of gold, was found amongst the roots of a tree at Dunolly, Victoria, in 1869, by two starved out “fossickers” named Deeson and Oates. The weight of this, the largest authenticated nugget ever found, was 2268½ ozs., and it was sold for £10,000, but it was rendered useless as a specimen by the finders, who spent a night burning it to remove the adhering quartz.

But the ordinary digger neither hopes nor expects to unearth such treasures as these. He is content to gather together by means of puddling machine, cradle, long tom, or even puddling tub and tin dish, the scales, specks, dust, and occasional small nuggets ordinarily met with in alluvial “washes.”

Having sunk to the “wash,” or “drift,” the digger, by means of one or more of the appliances mentioned above, proceeds to separate the gold from the clay and gravel in which it is found. Of course in large alluvial claims, where capital is employed, such appliances are superseded by steam puddlers, buddles, and other machinery, and sometimes mercury is used to amalgamate the gold when very fine. Hydraulicing is the cheapest form of alluvial mining, but can only be profitably carried out where extensive drifts, which can be worked as quarry faces, and unlimited water exist in the same neighbourhood. When such conditions obtain a few grains of gold to the yard or ton will pay handsomely.

Fig. 2. Lode Formation in Slate and Sandstone.

Lode, or reef mining, is a more expensive and complicated process, requiring much skill and capital. First, let me explain what a lode really is. The American term is “ledge,” and it is not