At this sight, without uttering a single
word, we both—obeying a common
impulse—ran onward to resolve our hopes
and fears. Before us lay a broad and silent
river, whose currentlesa surface plainly
revealed the depth of its waters. Doubtless
this was the Loddon, but to cross it
seemed impossible. Anxiously we sought a
fording place, but found none. Provided
with long sticks, we entered at various parts,
cautiously feeling our way onward; but
everywhere a deeper channel intervened,
through which the flood impetuously rushed,
whilst the height and uncertain nature of the
opposite banks forbade any attempt to leap
across. In this emergency we agreed to
separate, each taking a different course. If
either found a practicable ford, he was to
hail the other.

I had chosen the upward course of the
river, and before I had proceeded far, I
discovered a tree lying athwart the stream.
Summoning the shepherd, we cautiously
crawled along the trunk, but conceive our
disappointment when we found that it did
not reach the opposite bank by several feet!
The distance was not so great, but that we
might have leaped it, had we been able to
obtain firm footing, and a clear space; but
branches too feeble to support our weight
projected between, whilst beneath us the stream
—chafed and fretted by this obstacle to its
free progress—ran with a force sufficient to
sweep us away, bodily, if by any mischance we
failed to reach the shore. I resolved, however,
to venture, and carefully raising my body to its
full length, paused an instant to steady
myself, on the extreme end of a broken limb,
and sprang forward. As I did so, the heel of
my boot struck against a projecting twig,
and I was violently precipitated against the
bank. In my fall I instantly clutched the
soil, and to this I now clung with a deathlike
grip, seeking, meanwhile, to raise myself
from my perilous position. To my horror, I
felt the earth giving way with my weight;
already the river seemed to claim me as its
sure prey, and I gave myself up for lost.
Suddenly a strong arm grasped the collar of
my coat, and in a moment I was safe on the
turf by the side of the shepherd who, more
fortunate or more expert than myself, had
landed fairly on the bank.

But now another difficulty beset me. Either
in my fall, or when endeavouring to scramble
up the bank, I had injured my ancle, and I
suffered acute anguish as I limped along.
The pain, at length became insupportable.
I was unable to move another step;
so, borrowing the shepherd's blankets, I bade
him go on, and endeavour to obtain assistance.

"No, no," he replied, to my expostulations,
"have the blankets and welcome. Many's
the night I've slept without any; and I can
do so again, specially when it's for a cove in
trouble."

Let me observe, in passing, that no
disrespect was intended to be conveyed by this
word, "cove," which, in Australia bush-
phraseology, is commonly used as an
equivalent for "master."

Finding it vain to argue the point with my
pertinacious companion, I gave it up, and rolling
myself in the blankets—for in spite of the
heat of the day the night was not over warm
—I lighted my pipe, buckled my belt yet
tighter, and reconciled myself to my not very
agreeable position.

Just then, the bark of a dog was borne
faintly on the breeze, to our delighted ears:

"Hush!—hark! Yes, it is a dog, sure
enough. Now we are all right. Coo-ee!"

All was silent for a moment, and then
—"Coo-ee!"—we were answered.

And now Blueshirt set off by himself.
For some time I could hear his calls, and
those of his invisible respondent. Then they
ceased altogether, and I judged that he had
arrived at some friendly hut. It proved to
be no hut, but a head-station, the very
Kororook that I was in search of.

Six years ago, the solitude of those wild
regions in which I had all day wandered, was
disturbed by hosts of men, armed, not with
sword and musket, but with pick and shovel.
What sought they there? Gold! Yellow,
glittering gold! The wilderness teemed
with gold. They found it on the surface of
the hills, and beneath the accumulated soil of
the valleys. They dived into the bowels of
the mountains, and it was there. They
shattered the snow-white rocks that capped the
ranges, and it was there. Everywhere they
wrested from the bosom of mother earth her
glittering treasures. Gold, for which the
avaricious toil and the brave shed their
lifeblood; Gold, the idol of the poor and the
encumbrance of the wealthy; Gold, the root
of evil and the source of unnumbered blessings;
was to be had for the mere picking up.

I visited the Victorian gold-fields in eighteen
hundred and fifty-three, and identified
the scene of my wanderings. I ascended the
hill, whence we had descried the lofty peaks
of Tarrengower and Alexander; but the
white rocks were no more; the hammer of
the quartz-miner had shivered them to
atoms, and many thousands of pounds worth
of Gold had been extracted from their snowy
breasts.

A TRAIN OF ACCIDENTS.

THE most interesting day's travel I ever
spent in my life was one that I passed upon
the Great Western Railway last Christmas,
on my way from Exeter to London. It was
too cold for anybody to travel in the deal
boxes who could, by any means, afford to
pay for superior accommodation; and I made
up my mind at once not to take my wife to the
play at that festive season, but purchased a
first-class ticket for myself instead. Somebody
must suffer in these cases, and it has