r to keep the various sections of the mine sufficiently
dry for working. Armed with candles, we descended two hundred feet by
the "lift" to the first level, or drift, forming a passage just high
enough and wide enough for a man to swing a pick in, but as wet as a
river, one being often over shoes in water and mud. From the far end of
this passage we got now and then a breath of fresh air, which seemed to
come down a ventilating shaft. A few dismal-looking laborers were seen
chipping off the rock amid the misty shadows caused by the fitful light.
What a place to work in day after day,--and all for gold,
"saint-seducing gold"! After a short exploration on this level, we
descended still another two hundred feet, penetrating a second drift
almost identical with the first in size and general character. Here some
Chinamen were engaged with picks, drills, and shovels,--dark, mysterious
figures, who seemed to glare at us from out the uncertain rays of light
as though they were brooding over some fancied wrong, for which they
would gladly avenge themselves then and there. The quartz rock which
they break away from the walls of the drift is all the time being
hoisted to the surface of the mine to be crushed and passed through
various processes to extract the precious metal. The next gallery was
still two hundred feet lower down the shaft,--that is, six hundred feet
from the surface. Here, after passing through the same experiences as
above, we mildly but firmly declined to go any farther into the bowels
of the earth simply for the sake of saying that we had done so, since
there was really nothing to be seen essentially different from what had
already been examined. It was no slight relief to get once more to the
surface, and to see the light of day. On looking about us and
reflecting on the network of galleries we had threaded far below this
upper earth, there was seen a quarter of a mile away, on the other side
of the lagoon, the ventilating shaft which gave air to the mine.

The name of another successful mine in this immediate vicinity is the
Florence Nightingale mine, very similar to the Tasmanian, and therefore
requiring no description. The gold-workings are mostly of the quartz,
though there are some paying alluvial diggings along the banks of
running streams, where it would seem as though some Midas had bathed,
and filled the sand with scales of gold,--places the sight of which at
once recalled that far-away river Pactolus