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A US TRA LA SI A //, /. US TRA 77f A 



California with that of those districts of New South Wales with which he was most familiar, 

 and he resolved to return thither and prospect for gold. This he did, and in a remote 

 valley, fifteen miles from a human habitation, on the I2th of February, 1851, he and a 

 guide, who accompanied him to the spot, began to dig in a bank of red earth and clay, and 

 to wash out the soil which he suspected was auriferous. His instincts did not deceive him. 

 Gold was found in four of the five panfuls which were operated upon. He prosecuted his 

 researches over a great extent of country, and almost every-where with gratifying results, 

 and more especially so in the vicinity of the River Turon. But when he returned to 



Sydney, with several ounces of 

 gold in liis possession, his state- 

 ments were received with incre- 

 dulity. Nor was it until the 

 Government Geologist had satis- 

 fied himself by personal obser- 

 vation, in the valley of the Mac- 

 quarie, of the auriferous character 

 of the country, that the reality 

 of the benefaction Mr. Margraves 

 had' conferred upon the colony 

 began to be recognized.- The 

 sum of ,15,000, two-thirds of 

 which were voted by the Legisla- 

 ture of New South Wales, one- 

 sixth by that of Victoria, and the 

 rest contributed by private 

 donors, was not, however, an 

 excessive remuneration for the 

 pioneer of an industry which, 

 since the first discovery of gold 

 in Australia up to the year 1890, has yielded from the mines of the Continent, with 

 those of New Zealand, 82,444,002 ounces of the precious metal, estimated at a value of 

 ^329, 776,008 of which the colony of Victoria alone has produced nearly seven-tenths. 



Simultaneously with these incidents in the life of Edward Hargraves, there were 

 occurring others, offering a remarkable analogy to them, in that of a mail-coach driver 

 named James Esmond, living at Buninyong, in what was then the province of Port Phillip, 

 and is now the colony of Victoria. He, too, had taken the gold-fever, and had emigrated 

 to California ; he, too, had been unsuccessful there ; he, too, had been struck by the points 

 of resemblance which presented themselves between the geological structure of the mountain 

 ranges in California and Australia; and he, too, returned to the latter. Landing in Sydney, 

 he heard of the gold discoveries on the other side of the Blue Mountains, and, on 

 getting back to Buninyong, Esmond prevailed upon an acquaintance, named Pugh, to 

 accompany him on a prospecting excursion. On the ist of July, 1851, they were fortu- 

 nate enough to discover the precious metal, both in quartz and in alluvial ground, on 

 the banks of the Deep Creek, a tributary of the Loddon. Within a week, prospecting 





EDWARD HAMMOND HARGRAVES. 

 Thf Discoverer of Gold in Australia. 



