“Unlucky! and we have not been eight months at it.”
“But one party near us cleared four thousand pounds at a haul; one thousand pounds apiece—ah!”
“And hundreds have only just been able to keep themselves. Come, you must not grumble, we are high above the average.”
George persisted.
“The reason we don't get on is we try for nothing better than dust. You know what you told me, that the gold was never created in dust, but in masses, like all metals; the dust is only a trifle that has been washed off the bulk. Then you said we ought to track the gold-dust coarser and coarser till we traced the metal to its home in the great rocks.”
“Ay! ay! I believe I used to talk so; but I am wiser now. Look here, George, no doubt the gold was all in block when the world started, but how many million years ago was that? This is my notion, George; at the beginning of the world the gold was all solid, at the end it is all to be dust; now which are we nearer, the end or the beginning?”
“Not knowing, can't say, Tom.”
“Then I can, for his reverence told me. We are fifty times nearer the end than the beginning, follows there is fifty times as much gold-dust in nature as solid gold.”
“What a head you ha' got, Tom! but I can't take it up so. Seems to me this dust is like the grain that is shed from a ripe crop before it comes to the sickle. Now if we could trace—”
“How can you trace syrup to the lump when the lump is all turned to syrup?”