VICTORIA. 59 



civic affairs are admirably regulated, whose citizens are busy, hospitable, and 

 prosperous.' There is no mistake about the character of the town. Miles 

 and miles of country before you enter it have been excavated and up- 

 turned by the alluvial digger. And there are few more desolate sights to 

 be met with than a worked-out and deserted diggings, for often Nature 

 refuses to lend her assistance, and does not hide the violated tract with 

 trees or verdure. Ugly gravel heaps, staring mounds of 'pipe-clay,' deposits 

 of sludge, a surface filled with holes, broken windlasses, the wrecks of 

 whims, all combine to make a hideous picture as they stand revealed in 

 the pitiless sunshine. Alluvial digging of the shallow type is a curse to 

 the unhappy country operated upon. But alluvial mining has long had its 

 little day, and ceased to be in and about Sandhurst, and the town lives now 

 by deep quartz mining. You come upon the ' poppet-heads ' and the 

 batteries everywhere, even in the beautiful reserve which is the centre of 

 the city. Sandhurst contains 30,000 inhabitants, 8,000 of whom are miners, 

 while the value of the mining machinery and plant is three-quarters of a 

 million sterling. 



Old Bendigo had busy scenes, but never did it witness such excitement 

 as when a share mania broke out in 1871. Then it was that the richness 

 of the so-called ' saddle reefs ' was demonstrated. The old-established 

 companies were paying well, and the Extended Hustlers exhibited one cake 

 of 2,564 ozs. as the result of a crushing of 260 tons. This was just the 

 spark wanted to set the market aflame. From being unduly neglected, 

 Sandhurst was unduly exalted ; new companies were projected in every 

 direction where a line of reefs could be imagined ; existing ' claims ' were 

 subdivided, and in a few months ,£500,000 was invested in Sandhurst mines. 

 Of course there was a reaction ; but though the speculators lost money to 

 sharpers, there really were auriferous reefs in Sandhurst to be honestly 

 worked, and no town seems more likely to hold its own in Victoria than 

 the great quartz city. Foundries and potteries are springing up in its midst, 

 or rather have sprung up ; vineyards and orchards are found to be successes 

 in its neighbourhood, and the visitor is grateful for the tree planting in the 

 broad streets, appreciates the water supply, is duly dazed if he enters a 

 battery chamber, and is delighted when 1,500 feet below the surface he is 

 allowed to break off some fragment of glittering quartz. 



Ballarat lies 100 miles to the north-east of Melbourne, or at least it is 

 that distance by rail, via Geelong, but a direct line will soon reduce it to a 

 distance of seventy miles. An upland plateau, with a fringe of hills all 

 around, some of these now denuded of their timber, and glittering white, 

 cold, and bare in the sun, the earth pitted with holes and gullies, scarified 

 as if by some gigantic rooster, ' mullock '-heaps, 'poppet-heads,' and engine- 

 stacks everywhere. This is one's first impression of Ballarat. Gold-fields 

 are very much like each other all over the world. ' Substitute pines for 



