“Oh, don’t you jump to conclusions yet, Mr. Angland,” observes Williams, whose lengthy experience amongst those most disappointing affairs, goldmines, has left him incapable of putting any faith in one till he has fully examined it. “Many a man’s burnt his fingers with the idea that because stone resembles the Mount it’s auriferous. It don’t follow in the least.”
It is late when the men reach camp, but, tired as he is, Claude spends the greater part of the night in making assays of the specimens of stone brought back from the mount; and so interested are Williams and Billy in the experiments that they sit round the blazing logs with him, keeping up a running fire of mining anecdotes, and lending him a hand, when he requires it, at pounding pieces of stone to powder in a big iron mortar with a heavy pestle, called technically a “dolly.”
Having Angland’s diary before us as we write, we perhaps cannot do better than copy an extract therefrom which was, apparently, written on the next evening to that on which our friends discovered the now famous “Golden Cliffs”:—
“Weather: fine, clear, hot.
“Barometer: 29·250, 29·350.
“Thermometer: 72, 84, 91.
“Minimum last night: 52.
“Spent day prospecting ‘Golden Cliffs.’ There is no doubt but that, like Mount Morgan, the formation there is the result of a vast thermal spring, and what I took to be a hollow in the cliffs is the half of the old basin, the other half having fallen into the valley. My rough assays made last night of the best specimen of stone, gave a result of about fifteen ounces to the ton.
“By grinding the stone very fine under water, in an agate mortar I have fortunately brought with me, I can obtain more than half the gold in the stone, as shown by assay. Neither W. or B. can obtain a colour by means of the ordinary panning process. Williams says this is what he expected, but he is one of those worldly-wise people who seldom venture an opinion till they are certain to be right.
“Our Myalls say the name of the Mountain is Pillythilcha Doolkooro, which seems to mean, according to Billy, the Valley of Glowing Charcoal. There appears to be a belief amongst the blacks that the place is the abode of Kootchie, or devils; also that all men are unlucky who go near the hill, and those who venture into its secret valleys will surely die. Billy and Williams both agree, for a wonder, that there is a strong probability of this being the Sacred Hill, that, according to them, is believed in by the natives throughout Australia as the place from which Moora-moora, the native Supreme Being, will some day arise to protect them from the cruelties of the white settlers.