s into roast
beef and plum-pudding. Excellent food as dried fruit is, yet it is apt
to become monotonous when it must do duty for breakfast, dinner, and tea!
Such was our scanty fare; nevertheless we managed to keen up the
appearance of being quite festive and happy.

Having spread the table--that is, swept the floor clear of ants and other
homely insects--and laid out the feast, I rose to my knees and proposed
the health of my old friend and comrade Mr. Davies, wished him the
compliments of the season, and expressed a hope that we should never spend
a worse Christmas. The toast was received with cheers and honoured in weak
tea, brewed from the re-dried leaves of our last night's meal. He suitably
replied, and cordially endorsed my last sentiment. After duly honouring
the toasts of "The Ladies," "Absent Friends," and others befitting the
occasion, we fell to on the frugal feast.

For the benefit of thrifty housewives, as well as those whom poverty has
stricken, I respectfully recommend the following recipe. For dried apples:
Take a handful, chew slightly, swallow, fill up with warm water and wait.
Before long a feeling both grateful and comforting, as having dined not
wisely but too heavily, will steal over you. Repeat the dose for luncheon
and tea.

One or two other men were camped near us, and I have no doubt would have
willingly added to our slender store had they known to what short commons
we were reduced. Our discomforts were soon over, however, for Lord Douglas
hearing that I was in a starving condition, hastened from the "Cross," not
heeding the terrible accounts of the track, bringing with him a supply of
the staple food of the country, "Tinned Dog"--as canned provisions are
designated.

Wandering on from our little rock of refuge, we landed at the Twenty-five
Mile, where lately a rich reef had been found. We pegged out a claim on
which we worked, camped under the shade of a "Kurrajong" tree, close above
a large granite rock on which we depended for our water; and here we spent
several months busy on our reef, during which time Lord Douglas went home
to England, with financial schemes in his head, leaving Mr. Davies and
myself to hold the property and work as well as we could manage and I
fancy that for a couple of amateurs we did a considerable amount of
development.

Here we lived almost alone, with the exception of another small party
working the adjoining mine, occasionally visited by a prospector with