it is not impossible that the very town may have to be pulled down and rebuilt in following out the richest veins of gold. The neighbourhood has been described by a French traveller as "a labyrinth of works, a chaos of infernal excavations; while here and there in the bewildering throng gigantic funnels vomit out smoke in convulsive gasps, bells ring, creaking iron wheels are set in motion, immense pumps discharge the muddy water—a human ant-hill is in motion. This is Ballarat. The search after gold has given this valley the appearance of an infernal region. I know no place more calculated to impress the imagination of any one who has not yet pictured to himself what men will venture in this feverish task. of searching for gold in the bowels of the earth." The harvest that has been gathered in by the disfigurement of the valley and the adjacent hills is estimated at £160,000,000 sterling.

It was on June 10th, 1851, that the first particle of gold was discovered in the bed of a tributary of the Loddon; at Mount Alexander it was found on July 20th, and at Ballarat on September 8th. In one month 20,000 persons, and in a year 105,000, flocked breathlessly along the road to this spot. An immense camp sprang up-the parent of the present handsome city, whose suburbs, however, still consist of scattered tents, where the latest arrivals bivouac.

A volume might be filled with anecdotes of remarkable "finds" in the Victorian goldfields. In midsummer, 1869, two poor men were at work in a gully, when, on digging round the roots of a tree, the pick of one of them came upon something very hard. The man exclaimed he wished it had been a nugget, even if it had broken his pick. It proved to be a nugget, and one destined to be famous, for it was the "Welcome Stranger," referred to in our notice of the Melbourne Museum. A waggoner was one day driving his team along the road, when his wheel, in turning up the soil, suddenly exposed to view a considerable lump of shining matter. The waggoner stooped to pick it up, and by so doing became the owner of a nugget which proved to be worth £1,600.

In the early days of sluicing, a Scotsman was working an extensive claim and employing a number of men under him. His last shilling was spent before any gold was found. He told his men he had no more funds, and could go on no longer. They had a great respect for him, and subscribed among themselves enough to carry on the works for a few weeks. Gold was soon afterwards found in abundance. The Scot retired with £40,000, and made over the mine, while still in full yield, to the men who had so generously helped him.

On one occasion two men who had just arrived from England sat down to rest on the outskirts of a spot to which there had been a recent rush. It was a broiling hot day, and they were glad, after their toilsome walk up the country, to rest in the shade of an old gum-tree. As they sat, one of them, rubbing up the earth with the heel of his boot, disclosed to view something hard and yellow-looking. Pulling it from the ground, they found it was a huge cake of veritable gold. Without having had to use pick or spade, they had realised a fortune, and, speedily turning their backs on the diggings, they took the first ship home.

The search for gold at the present time displays three different modes of working—viz., the working of the veins of quartz, the working of the alluvial loam, and the working of the surface soil. The quartz-mining is particularly exemplified at Black Hill, which has huge slices cut from its sides, and is traversed by galleries, and in some places has huge apertures showing the daylight right through it. Here men are constantly engaged by a company in

Ballarat.]

GOLD-MINING.

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working and blasting the veins of auriferous quartz. This quartz is brought out to a large wooden shed, where sixty immense crushers, each weighing a ton, crush it into sand. The sand is mixed with water, forming a thin mud, from which, by mechanical arrangements and the presentation of sheets of mercury on an inclined plane, the gold is retained and all other impurities allowed to escape. On the amalgam of gold and mercury being heated in crucibles, the mercury evaporates and pure gold is left at the bottom of the pans. Gold to the value of nearly a million sterling has been taken from Black Hill. The different companies engaged in quartz-mining near Ballarat employ about 4,000 men.

About the same number of persons are employed in the alluvial mines. These are mostly situate in the sandy ground south of Ballarat. Shafts are sunk, and the graveldrawn up from the veins, which are considered to be the beds of extinct rivers-is carefully washed, and the nuggets and gold-dust separated.

But besides the operations of the great companies, the search for gold is still carried on by an immense number of independent diggers, who search for themselves in unexplored valleys, or glean from the detritus of neglected mines. These still "rock the cradle," as in the earliest days, washing the grains of gold from other substances by careful handiwork. From ten to sixteen shillings a day is thus realised, and nuggets worth from £2 to £4 are often found, even in ground that has been turned over and sifted and washed by former searchers. The poorer Chinese have even found it worth their while to scrape up and wash the sand on the roads, but have had to be restrained by penalties from doing so.

The really profitable working of the gold-fields is now in the hands of the great companies, who take the land from the Government on long leases. Originally each miner had, for a licence of thirty shillings a month, eight feet square of ground to dig in; he can now have a plot for five shillings a year. The mounted police had great trouble at one time in obliging miners to show their licences, and keep to their eight-feet plots. There is a Court of Mines in each district, whose judges are named by Government, and for cases of appeal there is a Mining Board of ten members, elected by all the miners who are on the register.

Ballarat drew upon itself considerable notice in connection with the stand made by the miners against what they considered the arbitrary and unjust tax at first imposed on them. The mining population rose in arms against the authorities, the result being that a conflict took place in which many lives were lost and much property was destroyed. At the junction of Eureka and Stawell Streets in Ballarat East, the miners constructed what was termed the Eureka Stockade, and here the principal collision between the troops and the miners took place. The stockade was carried by storr by the military on Sunday, December 3rd, 1854. Some thirty or forty of the miners were killed, and a large number wounded. Several of the soldiers were wounded, and a captain and three privates killed. The site of the stockade is about to be enclosed for the erection of a suitable monument. The "rebel flag," the Southern Cross, was captured by a soldier of the 40th Regiment, and is likely to be placed in the Melbourne Museum. There are two monuments in the cemetery, near each other-one to the memory of the officers and soldiers, and one to the memory of the miners, who fell at the stockade.

There is only one other town in Victoria with a population of over 10,000, namely,

Sandhurst, formerly known as Bendigo. It is situated on the Bendigo Creek, 100 miles N.N.W. of Melbourne, and connected by railway with that city. It stands nearly 800 feet above the sea-level, amongst ranges of low, wooded hills. Between these hills and the town the country presents a rough, desolate appearance, similar to the neighbourhood of Ballarat, and from amongst the mounds and chasms and heaps of débris rise numerous tall chimneys. Sandhurst is, in fact, the head-quarters of a rich gold-producing region, consisting principally of quartz ranges, to all intents and purposes inexhaustible in their treasures, and consequently bidding fair to be a source of revenue for long years to come. The listrict first became populated in the year 1851, in consequence of the discovery of rien alluvial deposits of gold. More recently, commercial enterprise has developed in the working of the quartz-reefs by deep-sinking, and, in consequence, Sandhurst has grown and flourished exceedingly. The town contains 100 miles of streets, and has a population of 25,755. It is a very smart, compact town, with well-formed streets, wellbuilt churches, hospitals, banks, hotels, gaols, and other public buildings, neat red-brick dwelling-houses, and trim gardens. The principal street is a pleasant promenade, bearing the name of Pall Mall. On one side is a line of handsome and imposing shops, filled with their tempting stores, useful or ornamental; and a convenient verandah shelters you from either rain or noonday sun, as you gaze at the varied display. On the opposite side of the street is Rosalind Park, a pleasant garden with trees, and with lawns of green lucerne as a substitute for grass. There are two other recreation reserves in Sandhurstthe Camp Reserve and the Botanical Gardens. The latter are laid out in beautiful style, choice and rare shrubs have been planted in abundance, and there is a good collection of foreign birds and animals. The great source of wealth in Sandhurst is, of course, the gold-mining, but numerous other important industries are also carried on. There are several extensive breweries, some large iron foundries, and various establishments for coach-building, pottery, stone-cutting, tanning, brick and tile making, &c. Vines have also been grown in the neighbourhood, and some of the wines produced at Axe Creek have attracted attention in European markets.

Mining operations in the district of Sandhurst give employment to 5,560 miners, of whom 780 are Chinese. The value of the machinery employed is nearly half a million. The field at present worked covers 144 square miles of country, and contains 775 distinct quartz-reefs. In the half-year ending June, 1879, the Sandhurst mines produced 79,040 ounces of gold.

There are several other thriving townships in the colony of Victoria, but none of them of sufficient population to take rank with those which we have described. The wonderful growth and development of those important towns, within the memory of so many still living, must strike us with astonishment. It is another convincing proof of what Anglo-Saxon energy can achieve in far-off lands. In that Austral clime, another England is rising into being, perhaps to play as important a part in the southern hemisphere as the mother country has in the northern. Not by any means as idle boasters, but as resolute and earnest toilers, have our southern cousins inscribed the words "Advance, Australia!" on their national escutcheon; and the record of the past, brief as has been its duration, gives ample promise of a glorious fulfilment of the prophetic words.

PARIS.

Origin of Paris-Roman Paris-Subsequent History-The Palaces: Louvre-Tuileries-Luxembourg-Palais Royalde l'Elysée-de Justice du Corps Législatif-Hôtel de Ville-Bourse, and other Public Buildings - MarketsFortifications-The Churches of Paris and their Stories-Promenades, Parks, and Gardens-The BoulevardsStreet Life of Paris-The Cemeteries-The Environs-Versailles-St. Cloud.

A GENDARME.

P

ARIS, the gayest capital of modern civilisation-the goal of pleasureseeking pilgrims from every quarter of the globe-the city that, according to Victor Hugo, combines in itself Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem-the apotheosis at once of beauty, strength, and truththe city which in its most prosaic aspect commands respect as including within the circuit of its far-stretching enceinte a population of nearly 2,000,000-Paris, like most other cities of historic fame, has gradually risen from an insignificant beginning to its present height of power and glory. Across the broad hill-encircled basin, upon which the modern city stands, flows the river Seine, hemmed in on either bank by five miles of quays between Auteuil and Bercy, spanned by five-and-twenty bridges, and passing on its way palaces, churches, and edifices linked with innumerable historic and legendary associations. The river in its course encircles two small islands, and on the larger of these, the Ile de la Cité, the nucleus was formed of that grand aggregate which after nearly twenty centuries of growth and development is now known to all the world as Paris.