BY N. BARTLEY, ESQ. 117 
Surveyor-General in Sydney, asking him if he knew that there was 
a river up North named the Fitzroy, as wide and deep as the 
Thames, where wool was produced, and which had neither a 
wharf nor a township. In reply, a surveyor was promised to be 
sent up to lay out a township below “the rocks.” ‘The panic in 
Brisbane in August, 1858, amongst the holders of Brisbane corner 
lots, during the Canoona fever, may be imagined when I state 
that a full town allotment, corner of Edward and Mary streets, 
sold for 4300, and the vendor was only too glad to ‘pull that 
out of the fire,” as he thought. However, Canoona died away, 
Mount Morgan and the Crocodile as yet ‘‘ were not.” 
The Dee River and Westwood were credited with copper merits 
only. Gold slept, pretty well, till 1862, about which period Peak 
Downs, Gayndah, and the Star River were heard of. The 
Gayndah people made an effort and offered £2,000 reward to 
anyone who would find a payable goldfield whose trade would 
pass their door, and the ubiquitous digger took advantage of every 
shower of rain with his tin dish ; and it soon became known that 
in the country that stretched eastward trom Eidsvold and Rawbelle 
to Reid’s Creek and Mount Perry, alluvial gold existed and could 
be got out in wet weather. But nothing worthy of note occurred 
till, in October, 1867, Gympie, with its wondrous yield of 350 lb. 
of gold from 7 cwt. of stone, startled Queensland into a knowledge 
of the fact that reef and not alluvial gold was her strong point in 
~that metal. And then the grand mineral district that extends 
from Glenbar and Merodian on the north, eastward to Glastonbury 
and Gympie, and through Kilkivan and the Black Snake southerly 
to the head springs of the Brisbane River, began to show forth its 
powers in gold, cinnabar, and copper production. Similar develop- 
ment took place up North, where the lamented Richard Daintree, 
a geologist and explorer, who carried the camera and lens ona 
pack-horse wherever he went, brought under notice the golden 
capabilities of the Cape, Gilbert, and other districts, and gave us 
those undying realistic pictures of old Queensland life in the 
bush, and still older eruptions of subterranean forces, that keep 
his memory green amongst us. Ravenswood and the Cloncurry 
in 1870, Charters ‘Towers in 1872, now became known and 
famous, and the latter soon passed the more ‘ patchy” Gympie in 
the race for auriferous honours. 
The ante-Californian prophecies of Sir Roderick Murchison, 
and especially the later inductions of the Rev. W. B. Clarke, 
found ample fulfilment in North Queensland as well as further 
