Flat.

Chapter VI.

THE DIGGINGS

Of the history of the discovery of gold in Australia I believe few are
ignorant; it is therefore necessary that my recapitulation of it should
be as brief as possible. The first supposed discovery took place some
sixty years ago, at Port Jackson. A convict made known to Governor
Phillip the existence of an auriferous region near Sydney, and on the
locality being examined, particles of real gold-dust were found. Every
one was astonished, and several other spots were tried without success.
Suspicion was now excited, and the affair underwent a thorough
examination, which elicited the following facts. The convict, in
the hope of obtaining his pardon as a reward, had filed a guinea and
some brass buttons, which, judiciously mixed, made a tolerable pile of
gold-dust, and this he carefully distributed over a small tract of
sandy land. In lieu of the expected freedom, his ingenuity was rewarded
with close confinement and other punishments. Thus ended the first idea
of a gold-field in those colonies.

In 1841 the Rev. W. B. Clarke expressed his belief in the existence of
gold in the valley of the Macquarie, and this opinion was greatly
confirmed by the observations of European geologists on the Uralian
Mountains. In 1849 an indisputable testimony was added to these
opinions by a Mr. Smith, who was then engaged in some iron works, near
Berrima, and who brought a splendid specimen of gold in quartz to the
Colonial Secretary. Sir C. A. Fitzroy evinced little sympathy with the
discovery, and in a despatch to Lord Grey upon the subject, expressed
his opinion that "any investigation that the Government might institute
with the view of ascertaining whether gold did in reality exist to any
extent or value in that part of the colony where it was supposed
from its geological formation that metal would be found, would only
tend to agitate the public mind, &c."

Suddenly, in 1851, at the time that the approaching opening of the
Crystal Palace was the principal subject of attention in England, the
colonies of Australia were in a state of far greater excitement, as the
news spread like wild-fire, far and wide, that gold was really there.
To Edward Hammond Hargreaves be given the honour of this discovery.
This gentleman was an old Australian settler, just returned from a trip
to California, where he had been struck by the similarity of the
geological formation of the mountain ranges in his adopt