e hatchet, and a boomerang.

"This Cl'ck, as he was called, was employed as a shepherd by Dr. Kerr,
a large sheep-owner in New South Wales. Cl'ck was a fairly intelligent
fellow and had learned to talk a few words of English. He knew gold
when he saw it. Just at the time I'm speaking of, the whole world was
excited over gold, for it was just after the discovery of gold in
California in 1848 and the great gold rush of '49."

"My father was one of the 'forty-niners,'" put in Jim, eagerly.

"So you're of the real Argonaut breed, then!" exclaimed Owens, but he
did not push the enquiry, preferring to allow Jim to tell his story in
his own way and in his own time. In order, however, to keep the
subject of gold present in Jim's mind, he continued:

"For some time there had been vague hints that there might be gold in
Australia, but, before the time of the 'forty-niners' no attention had
been paid to it.

"For example! Once, in 1834, a ticket-of-leave man (convict out on
parole), working in New South Wales, found a small nugget of pure gold
in the earth and brought it to the nearest town to sell. Being a
convict, he was at once arrested for having possession of the gold,
and not being able to explain how he had got it. His story that he had
found it in the earth was laughed at, for never--so far as the
Australians knew, then--had gold been found in nuggets. As it
happened, a white settler had lost a gold watch a little time before.
The weight of the nugget was just about that of the weight of the case
of a gold watch. The ticket-of-leave man was accused of having stolen
the watch, thrown away the works and melted down the case. He was
found guilty and punished with a hundred and thirty lashes."

"Whew, that was pilin' it on heavy!" commented Jim.

"They had to be severe in those days," Owens explained. "Botany Bay
and Port Jackson were penal stations. In those days there were about
fifty thousand white folks in New South Wales and three-quarters of
them were convicts. That meant ruling with an iron hand, if mutiny was
to be prevented.

"Twice, after that, white settlers found signs of gold, but in such
small quantities that the deposits were not worth working by the
primitive means employed at that time. In 1841, signs of gold were
found not far from Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, but the
Governor personally asked the finder to keep the matter a secret for
there were 45,000 convicts in the colony by that time,