V. In the event of death or disablement occurring to any of the party,
his share of the stock and profits is to be immediately handed over to
his friends.
On this paction being signed, the party set forth, provided with
L.100 worth of goods, a cart and a team of horses, and reached
Paramatta, a distance of eighteen miles, the first night, although
they were obliged to send back one of the horses, which had proved to
be useless. Here Mr Rutter slept in a bed for the last time during
four months; and the next day, having purchased another horse, and
sold some of their goods to lighten the wagon, they set forth again
towards evening. The road was nothing more than a dray-track, to which
the horses were unequal; and after proceeding a few miles, they were
detained at the village of Prospect for a week, till one of the
partners had returned to Sydney, and brought back a pair of
bush-horses and a new cart. As they proceeded the next day, they found
the track over which they travelled become more and more populous;
till, on crossing the Macquarrie, they encamped in the midst of
thirteen teams of cattle and their thirteen companies, all bound upon
the same errand as themselves.
On the 12th of June, in the dusk of the evening, they reached the
summit of a hill overlooking their destination. The Summerhill Creek
lay before them, with the camp-fires of fifty or sixty huts; and as
they descended into the midst, the inhabitants of this village of the
desert were returning from work with laughter and rude merriment.
After pitching their camp, and taking some refreshment, they proceeded
anxiously to inquire the news; and that night they turned in with no
very bright anticipations, after learning that the creek was high and
goods low, the weather alternating between rain and frost, the mines
overcrowded, and superfluous hands deserting them fast. They struggled
for awhile against these evil auguries; they even contrived, with
great labour, to pick up an ounce or two of gold; but at length,
losing heart, the party broke up on the 23d, and all went home but our
adventurer.
His geological and mechanical knowledge enabled him to obtain a
partnership with another band of gold-hunters then at work; and after
spending some days in _prospecting_ on account of the new concern, he
found 'a chink he liked the look of,' which appeared to have been
partially worked. Licences were accordingly taken out, the
commissioner being on the spot, and forty-five feet of frontage to the
creek were marked off. As soon as the river became a little lower,
they began in earnest to dig a race for turning the course of the
water. Their pump was made and fixed ready to drain; a dam was
emptied; six ounces of gold were obtained as an earnest of what they
might expect; and then it began to rain, and the creek to roar, and
the whole of their machinery was swept away.
Here was a new mishap: but these things will happen in the diggings;
and so our adventurers, agreeing to pay the commissioner a monthly
licence for their ground, intending to return in the dry weather to
work it, removed bag and baggage to another part of the river. Here
they dug away, but it appears with no tempting success; and they took
care to return to the commissioner in time, as they thought, to
implement their monthly bargain. On tendering the money for their
licence, however, they discovered that they were just half an hour too
late, and that the functionary had disposed of their forty-five feet
to another bidder. What to do now? They fell in with a man, an old
friend of Mr Rutter, just setting off on a journey of sixty-two miles
to the north, where he told them a piece of gold had been found
weighing 106 lbs. This invaluable man they instantly took into
partnership, and purchasing fresh horses, they struck their camp, and
followed their new companion across the country, in search of a place
called the Devil's Hole, near the World's End. It is no wonder they
lost their way. As there was no such thing as a road, they were
obliged to transport their goods on the horses' backs; and the
interesting nature of their journey may be guessed at from the fact,
that they had to cross a creek with steep banks sixteen times in the
course of five miles.
They at length reached the Louisa Diggings, near those quartz-ridges
where, in fact, a 106 lb. lump of gold had been found. They encamped
in the dark; and getting up betimes the next morning, looked eagerly
out on this land of promise. It was a dull, dreary morning, and a
heavy continuous rain plashed upon the earth. About 200 persons were
taking the air in this watery atmosphere, their dress and movements
corresponding well with the aspect of the hour. Some were covered with
an old sack, some with a blanket, some with a dripping cloak, but all
glided slowly about in the rain, with a stick in their hands, and
their eyes fixed upon the ground. These phantoms were gold-hunters;
and the silent company was immediately joined by our adventurers, who
glided and poked like the rest. The ground was new, and during two
days gold was obtained in this way, from a particle the size of a
pin's head to a lump of nearly an ounce. When the surface was
exhausted, digging commenced; but the soil was too tough for the
common cradle, and although rich in gold, it would not repay the
trouble of washing. Upon this, the company broke up, each pursuing his
own way; and our adventurer and another agreed to go down the country
together to Maitland, prospecting on the way.
The place where the large mass of gold was found is an intersection
between two quartz-ridges, rising from a high table-land in the midst
of a congeries of mountains, offshoots from the range that extends
from Wilson's Point, on the south, to Cape York, on the north. The
clay soil covers many acres below and around the ridges, and wherever
it was prospected by our adventurer, gold was found. On the 12th of
September, he reached Maitland; and here he found a letter awaiting
him, which determined him to choose a new hunting-ground. Some years
before, it seems, a man he knew, who was at that time a shepherd in
the Wellington District, while crossing the country on his master's
business, lost his way in the gullies, and did not find it again for
two days. While sitting down, in his dilemma, on a quartz-rock, he
observed something glittering beside him, and breaking off with his
tomahawk a piece of the stone, he carried it home with him as a
curiosity. At home it lay for years, till the reported discoveries of
gold induced him to offer it for sale to a goldsmith in Sydney. The
result was, that he connected himself with a party of adventurers, and
they all set forth for the place where he had rested among the
gullies. His companions proved treacherous; and when they had come
sufficiently near to be able, as they thought, to find the spot
without his assistance, they turned him adrift. They sought the golden
rock for three days--but in vain; and he went back to Sydney, to
invite Mr Rutter to accompany him. Here ends our narrative for the
present; and a most instructive one it is. The search for gold, our
informant tells us plainly, is a mere lottery, its results depending
almost wholly upon chance. Plenty as the metal is, it frequently costs
twenty shillings the sovereign's worth; and, in short, we are at that
point of transition when the mania is dying away, and the science has
not begun. When capital and skill are brought to bear upon the process
of mining in Australia, it will become a regular, though by no means a
miraculously profitable business; and even at present, steady
labouring-men may spread themselves over thousands of miles of the
auriferous creeks, if they will be satisfied with a profit of seven or
eight shillings a day.
According to his experience, the place to look for gold is in the
neighbourhood of distinct traces of volcanic action, or in small
streams coming direct from hills of volcanic formation, or rivers fed
by these streams. An abundance of quartz (commonly called spar) is
universally reckoned an indication of the presence of gold; and if
trap-rock is found cropping up amid this quartz, and perforated with
streaks of it, so much the better. Sometimes the solid quartz itself
is pounded, and gold extracted by the aid of quicksilver. When the
gold is found in rivers, or on their banks, prediction is vain:
nothing will do but the actual trial by the wash-pan. But where there
is a bar or sand-bank, the richest deposit will always be on the side
of the bank presented to the descending stream. The metal in such
digging is almost invariably found in small spangles, that appear to
have been granular particles crushed or rolled flat by some enormous
pressure. In California, these spangles were the beginning of the
gold-finding. When the streams and their banks were well searched, the
crowds of adventurers tried, in desperation, what they could do by
digging deep holes in the plains; and there the metal was found in
such different forms as to indicate quite a different process of
deposition. Some of these holes were productive--although it was
severe labour to dig fifteen or eighteen feet through a hard soil
merely as an experiment; and in the course of time the plains were
covered with tents. The influx of adventurers continued; and the old
diggers, dissatisfied with gains that seemed to the new prodigious,
retired further and further back, and began to grope in the terraces
on the sides of volcanic hills, and among the detritus of extinct
craters. Here the harvest was rich, and as the crowning effort of the
gold-passion, unassisted by machinery, they actually in some cases cut
away the sides of the hills! 'My own impression is,' concludes our
informant on this subject, 'that, both in California and Australia,
the chances of individual enterprise, and even of small companies, are
decreasing rapidly; but that when the mines so wrought have ceased to
pay, capital and machinery, directed by science, will receive
profitable employment for ages to come.'
The wash-pan we have mentioned may be of tin, if not required to be
used with quicksilver, otherwise of copper or wood; but of whatever
material made, it should be some 15 inches in diameter at the top, 10
or 11 at the bottom, and 5, or 5-1/2 inches deep. The manner of using
this is learned only by practice and observation, and consists in a
peculiar motion, by which the heavier substances sink to the bottom
and remain there, while the soluble and lighter parts are washed out.
The principal use of the wash-pan is in rewashing the partially washed
'stuff' taken from the rocker, and in prospecting to ascertain by
trial the value of a new place.
This rocker, or cradle, may be made of half-inch softwood, and
consists of a trough 10 inches deep, 18 inches broad, and 4 feet long,
closed at the broad end, and open at the other; with a transverse bar
at the upper part, two feet from the broad end, to receive the tray.
This machine is placed on rockers, like a cradle, and deposited so
near the water that, when at work, the man who rocks with his left
hand may be able to reach the water with a small tin baler, provided
with a wooden handle two feet long. A bucketful of the earth to be
washed is thrown into the tray, and the person who is to rock the
cradle taking a balerful of water, throws it uniformly on the mass in
the tray, and keeps rocking and washing till the gold becomes obvious.
These are the simpler implements of gold-hunting; and provided with
them, the little company of adventurers pitch their tent and continue
to dig, till they come to earth they think will pay for washing. The
next morning, they get up perhaps at daylight, for the sake of the
coolness of the hour, and pass through the sieve ten or fifteen
buckets before breakfast. After breakfast, all hands resume work till
about twelve o'clock, when they dine, then rest through the heat of
the day till three o'clock, and go on again till dark. They usually
divide the work as follows: one in the hole digs, fills the bucket
with earth, and, if necessary, bales the water out of the hole;
another takes the bucket and empties it into the tray of the machine;
while a third rocks, supplies the machine with water, and empties the
tray of the large stones. This, it will be seen, is no child's play:
your gold-hunter is no idle wanderer, but a hard-working man,
subjected to a thousand discomforts unknown in civilised life.
The quicksilver cradle is a more complicated and expensive machine,
requiring six men instead of three to work it. It is understood,
however, to save at least 20 per cent. of the metal, and indeed to be
indispensable in some places in California, where the gold is in too
fine particles to be detected by the common rocker. Quicksilver has so
strong an affinity for gold, that the minutest particle of the latter
having once touched, it is deprived of the possibility of escape; and
when the process of washing has been completely gone through, the
whole mass of gold particles will be found bound together by the
quicksilver into a compact lump, in size and shape often resembling an
egg. The gold is thus obtained in the form of an amalgam; but the
quicksilver is easily evaporated, if its loss be of no consequence, or
separated without loss by a more scientific process.
We have more than once used the word _prospecting_, which, we believe,
is peculiar to this kind of mining. The deposits of gold are so
capricious, that the adventurers, in order to lose as little time as
possible in removing from place to place, detach one of their number
on the hunt for a mine--and this is called prospecting. He sets out
with a few provisions, a rifle, a pick and shovel, at all events, with
a pan and large knife; and on reaching some hopeful-looking locality,
he makes experiments on the soil by washing. The considerations that
determine his calling the company to the spot are of course influenced
by the circumstance of their having a common or a quicksilver cradle.
He calculates the average value of the gold he finds in several
panfuls of the soil at different depths; and he takes into account the
distance it has to be carried for washing, the means of transit there
exist, and how far off is the nearest store. The prospector,
therefore, is a very important member of the concern, and in many
cases the success of the adventure depends upon his experience and
sagacity.