COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 



1365 



parties were abroad exploring every district which held out the promise; of proving auri- 

 ferous ; and, by the end of the year, the gold-fields of dunes, Buninyong, Mount 

 Alexander, Ballarat and Sandhurst or Bcndigo, as it was then called were bring 

 explored with such extraordinary success, that half a million's worth of gold was procured 

 by shallow sinking with exceedingly primitive implements. The yield in 1852 was of tin- 

 value of .10,953,936, and in 1856 it reached its maximum in Victoria, for it exceeded 

 three million ounces, and represented a value of twelve million sterling. At that time, 

 the population of the colony was less than a quarter of a million, but immigrants 

 poured in at the rate of ninety thousand per annum ; the bulk of them in the prime 

 of life and full of energy, and the area of gold-mining operations became greatly 

 enlarged in consequence. Improved methods of extracting the precious metal, both from 



THE GOLD-DIGGINGS AT OI'IIIK, 1851. 



quartz-reefs and from the beds of ancient rivers, were had recourse to ; capital and 

 machinery were brought into requisition, and yet notwithstanding it was ascertained that 

 the auriferous area of the: ' colony was equal to twenty thousand square miles the yield 

 of gold steadily declined. 



It seemed as if, by some mysterious instinct or influence, the earliest diggers were 

 directed to the richest deposits. Not only so, but all the large masses, or nuggets, as 

 they came to be called, were unearthed while the industry was yet young, and they 

 ranged in value from ,4,000 up to ,10,000. In New South Wales the discoveries of 

 large nuggets were less numerous, and there is no record of more than two having 

 been found exceeding in weight one thousand ounces each. One of these was picked 

 up by a native boy as it was lying amongst a heap of quartz on the surface of the 

 ground at Meroo Creek, on the River Turon, in the year 1851. It had been broken in 

 three pieces by a blow from a pick, and weighed 1,272 ounces; so that its value was 

 not less than ,5,000. The other, which was found at Burranclong, near Orange, contained 



