when our hands are occupied in
carrying buckets of gold-dust, or what, alas! ought to be gold-dust,
but isn't! On such occasions we shake our heads, wink our eyes, and
snort and blow at them, but all to no purpose--there they stick and
creep, till we get our hands free to attack them.

"A change must be coming over the weather soon, for while I write, the
wind is blowing like a gale out of a hot oven, and is shaking the
tent, so that I fear it will come down about my ears. It is a curious
fact that these hot winds always blow from the north, which inclines
me to think there must be large sandy deserts in the interior of this
vast continent. We don't feel the heat through the day, except when
we are at the windlass drawing up the pipeclay, or while washing our
`stuff,' for we are generally below ground `driving.' But, although
not so hot as above, it is desperately warm there too, and the air is
bad.

"Our drives are two and a half feet high by about two feet broad at
the floor, from which they widen a little towards the top. As I am
six feet three in my stockings, and Harry is six feet one, besides
being, both of us, broader across the shoulders than most men, you may
fancy that we get into all sorts of shapes while working. All the
`stuff' that we drive out we throw away, except about six inches on
the top where the gold lies, so that the quantity of mullock, as we
call it, or useless material hoisted out is very great. There are
immense heaps of it lying at the mouth of our hole. If we chose to
liken ourselves to gigantic moles, we have reason to be proud of our
mole-hills! All this `stuff' has to be got along the drives, some of
which are twenty-five feet in length. One of us stands at the top,
and hoists the stuff up the shaft in buckets. The other sits and
fills them at the bottom.

"This week we have taken out three cart-loads of washing stuff, which
we fear will produce very little gold. Of course it is quite dark in
the drives, so we use composition candles. Harry drives in one
direction, I in another, and we hammer away from morning till night.
The air is often bad, but not explosive. When the candles burn low
and go out, it is time for us to go out too and get fresh air, for it
makes us blow terribly, and gives us sore eyes. Three-fourths of the
people here are suffering from sore eyes; the disease is worse this
season