ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. cS ee 
abundance. While, therefore, geologists in Europe were guessing, 
he, having actually found the precious metal, was Heaning its 
occurrence far and near on the ground.” 
In the foregoing outline I have not introduced what seems to 
have been absolutely the first mention of native gold in this 
country. In the Surveyor-General’s Office there is preserved a 
field book belonging to Mr. Assistant-Surveyor James M‘Brian, 
in which the following entry occurs, referring to a spot on the 
Fish River, about midway between O’Connell Plains and Diamond 
Swamp, and under date February 15th, 1823 :—‘ At this place I 
found numerous particles of gold in the sand in the hills con- 
venient to the river.” I attach no importance whatever to this 
entry ; for in the first place it does not seem that specimens were 
exhibited to any one or the discovery made public in any way ; 
and secondly, yellow scales of mica and particles of golden- 
coloured pyrites have frequently been mistaken for gold, and we 
do not know that Mr. M‘Brian was competent to distinguish 
them. The particles being described as “in the sand in the hills,” 
makes it not improbable that they were simply mica. 
Gold-digging as a colonial industry had its beginning on 12th 
February, 1851, when the first cradle-washing was obtained by 
Mr. Hargraves on Lewis Ponds Creek. It cannot be said that 
Mr. Hargraves first discovered gold in the Colony, but he was the 
first to show the simple means of extracting it from drift deposits. 
The train had previously been laid by Mr. Clarke, and now the 
match was put to it by Mr. Hargraves, and with magical rapidity 
the gold-digging frenzy, as it may be called, overspread the whole 
country. Mr. C. Blakefield, writing from Sofala to the Rev. W. B. 
Clarke, under date 11th September, 1852, says :—‘‘ About nine 
years ago I gave you a piece of gold in quartz found at Mitchell’s 
Creek, and brought down by M‘Gregor, the shepherd, when you in- 
__ formed me that nearly the whole of the rivers on this side of the 
__ Dividing Range were highly auriferous. At the time, I asked you 
why you did not make the fact known to the public; when your 
reply was that vou were afraid that it would tend to the utter 
