Chap, xi.] GOLD MINES. 225 



My next excursion was to Sandhurst, a rapidly grown mining 

 town, which has arisen since 1851 at the site of the most paying 

 Victorian diggings. The railway for a long distance, as it nears 

 Sandhurst, passes through the midst of various sites of old 

 diggings. The surface of the ground on each side of the line 

 for miles at a stretch has been turned over, scooped out and 

 heaped up, and presents the appearance of an endless succession 

 of deserted gravel pits. Here and there a few solitary diggers, 

 mostly Chinamen, were rewashing the dirt, but nearly all was 

 waste and bare. The vast extent of the fields, and amount of 

 work done, astonished me. 



Sandhurst, or Bendigo, is al arge town with a newly-run-up 

 appearance, built amongst the openings of the shafts of the 

 numerous mines. The surface gold was long ago worked out, 

 and the rich quartz reefs below are now being mined by 

 means of shafts and drives. A new shaft was being sunk 

 in the very centre of the town, in front of the principal 

 banks and the verandah-covered pavements, which were 

 crowded with share-brokers, doing business in the open 

 streets. The great winding wheel and its supports looked 

 out of place in the middle of the principal square and public 

 garden of the city. 



I went down two of the mines, and saw specks of gold in 

 the richest quartz reef. Some of the very richest quartz, how- 

 ever, hardly shows the gold to the eye, for the metal lies hid 

 in black dirty-looking streaks in the white rock, and is only 

 brought to light after the process of crushing and amalgama- 

 tion. I saw also the crushing establishments, where the din 

 of the heavy iron stampers falling with a crash upon the quartz 

 was absolutely deafening. Although the men employed in 

 feeding the stampers are from habit able to converse, not- 

 withstanding the noise, I could not hear in the least when my 

 companion shouted into my very ear. I saw the pasty amalgam 

 and the gold fresh from the retort, known as "cake," and 

 finally I handled heavy masses of melted cake fused into solid 

 ingots worth many thousand pounds. The mining people were 

 most hospitable. 



My last excursion was up the valley of the Yarra, to the 

 beginning of the " ranges," the Australian word for mountains, 

 at a place called Healesville. I went with one of the assistants 

 of Baron Von Miiller, the celebrated botanist, who kindly 

 offered me his assistant as a guide. My object was to see 

 some of the enormous Eucalyptus trees which grow in the 

 "ranges," and which, as discovered by Baron von Miiller, 

 are the highest trees in the world, exceeding in height the 

 Sequoia gigantea of California. One of these trees, measured 



i5 



