his eye and manner, which had a curious effect. The hunt for gold is, after all, a sort of gambling with nature, and though the ways and details of the stakes are different, yet the same influences affect, in varying ratio and degree, the professed gamester at Homburg or Baden and the Australian digger. A blind subserviency to simple chance has a deteriorating influence on ordinary labour, and by its disloyalty to the laws of nature, which are of that code under which men are truly taught to look for their daily bread, leave room for vices to grow, and weaknesses to harden into vices. It is often seen that men whose intellects are acute, and whose reason is strong in other atmospheres, will bow round the gaming-table with childish obedience to some vague theory of chance which they could not find a reason to approve. All the circumstances are different with the Australian digger, but his nature is the same, and in degree is affected by the same cause. His purpose becomes so absorbing that other things are forgotten. In every other sphere labour is accepted as a task, and yielded as a price to be paid, and rest from it is sought by men—by some whenever it may be taken on the other side of the line of duty, by others from idleness. The digger for gold finds such feelings absorbed in his pursuit. He has a diseased craving for the work. Different natures are of course bent differently by the same strong influence, but all are bent. In some the strain wreaks ample ruin, and vice and crime grow rankly; but in others, though the influence is felt, the roots are not displaced. It was, therefore, curious, but not strange, that when Philip spoke with all his earnestness his three companions gradually listened to his speculations almost as though he wore an oracle, and that, had they confessed truly to themselves, they did so because of an indefinable and simple belief in his lucky star! James and William Burlow were men of long experience in the colony, and had been at the diggings from the first discovery; Gordon had almost an equal experience of gold-finding, if not of colonial life; but Philip had been with them barely for two months.
Philip's enthusiasm certainly for the time had a strong effect upon them all, and they began to discuss his views in the most sanguine manner. They wore all seated just inside their tent when they commenced the division of the gold; but when they proceeded to talk over their prospects and proposals, William Burlow carefully drew together the canvas flaps which worn used to close the entrance to the tent, and then they spoke in an eager undertone. The gist of Philip's speculations was this. It was evident that the gold was formed somewhere else than in the alluvial deposits from which they now worked it. It was, therefore, washed down by streams from its original site, or had in former times been so washed down, and thus was always found either in the beds of rivers, or in the valleys made by streams now dried up. The form in which they found it, whether in dust, grains, scales, or nuggets, was always water-worn, and such as to show that it had been carried by the currrent, and acted upon by the friction. Purely natural agencies, of which water-action was one, at work through long series of generations, had without doubt dissolved the rock in which the gold was born, but had no action on the metal, and the particles of gold were carried forward amid the débris of the rock, and finally mingled with it when it became a deposit of clay in the bed of the river—which might be running now, or which might have ceased to run, leaving a valley, or gully, such as those from which they were now accustomed to work it by washing. Now gold is at least seven times heavier than any rock, and not being subject to decay by water, or time, or ordinary natural agencies, the portions released, however minute, must be of much greater weight than the particles of disintegrated rock which formed the clay. It was on this very principle that they now washed the clay in their cradles. It was fair enough and natural to suppose that a violent current would have amply sufficient strength to hurry even considerable portions down, and there might be, or have been, agencies with which we are not acquainted which would transport large isolated pieces. But, he argued, it was equally fair to suppose that those larger nuggets or masses which had been set free by the disintegration of the rocks in which they were born, and which had not been carried away by some exceptional agency, had settled down by natural laws, either on their original site, or been removed perhaps by the first violence of the torrent which broke up their rocky covering, not far from it. The larger the pieces the shorter the distance they could have been removed by such natural forces, unless exceptionally. Where should they seek—how could they find such sites?
The companions drew closer together, and there was a momentary silence; but the gold-fever was intensely plain in a burning red spot on each cheek, and in the fiery earnestness in every eye. Men are dangerous when crossed at times like these. Then there followed a rapid and desultory conversation, full of sanguine speculations. James Burlow drew apart, sat a little back in the tent, and became silent. He was making a great struggle,