ed on that same evening.

After passing through one of the most beautiful of the Lindis gorges we
found ourselves at the entrance of a wide tract of open and undulating
country, almost bare of anything beyond short yellow grass, encompassed
on all sides by hills which stretched away westward to the snow-crowned
mountains. The extent of the open was from one to two miles square, and
through its centre--or nearly so--the Lindis flowed in a rocky bed.
Along the river and far up the downs on either side were sprinkled
hundreds of little tents with their hundreds of fires and rising eddies
of smoke. The banks of the river were crowded with men at work, some in
the water, some out, others pitching tents or tending horses, some
constructing rough furniture, cradles and long Toms for washing gold,
hundreds of horses tethered among the tents or upon the open, and above
all the suppressed hum of a busy multitude.

On all new gold diggings it was usual to establish a self-constituted
form of government among the diggers themselves, which in the absence of
any regular police force or law of the land was responsible for the
protection and good conduct of the entire community. Some capable man
was elected as president and chief, before whom all cases of
misdemeanour were heard, and whose decisions and powers to inflict
punishment were final. Under such rule, crude as it was, the utmost good
conduct usually prevailed, and any glaring instances of robbery or crime
were not only rare, but severely dealt with.

To this man we reported our arrival, and a camping ground was pointed
out to us. It was too late to do anything towards preparing a permanent
camp that night, but at daybreak the following morning we were hard at
work, and by evening had made ourselves a comfortable hut.

We marked out a rectangle of 12 ft. by 10 ft., the size of our largest
tent, around which we raised a sod wall two feet high, which we
plastered inside with mud. Over the walls we rigged up our tent,
securing it by stays and poles set in triangles at each extremity. At
one end we built a capacious fireplace and chimney eight feet wide,
leaving two feet for a doorway. The chimney was built of green sods,
also plastered within, and our door was a piece of old sacking weighted
and let fall over the opening. Around the hut we cut a good drain to
convey away rain water. At the upper end of the hut we raised a rough
framework of green timber cut from the neighbourin