Accordingly, about three o’clock, behold the whole party, including the two young ladies and Mr. Neuchamp, mounted and cantering along the extremely well-marked road which led to the mining township of Turonia. The young ladies rode with grace and spirit upon well-groomed, well-bred horses, drawing forth many encomiums from the horse-loving and gallant Colonel, who said that their steeds would fetch a thousand rupees in Calcutta, and the young ladies receive half a dozen proposals of marriage the very first day they appeared on the Maidan. The young ladies, in return, declared that there was only one man in the district to be compared to their uncle; and as he sat with easy military seat upon a strikingly handsome thoroughbred bay, with a star, the whole affair, from the well-brushed hat to lower spur-leather, ‘exquisite as a piece of lace,’ he justified their appreciation. As they neared the widely-extended collection of huts, shafts, heaps of mullock, and imposing structures of weatherboard and iron, thronged with a stalwart army, ten thousand strong, of bronzed and bearded gold-miners, they were joined by a semi-military-looking personage, dressed in uniform not all devoid of gold lace, and followed by a highly efficient-looking, well-mounted trooper. ‘Ha! Stanley,’ said Mr. Branksome, ‘well met; how do you do? This is my friend, Mr. Frank Stanley, the Commissioner of the goldfield. Allow me to introduce you to him. Are your subjects peaceable enough to venture among; and how does the escort get on?’ ‘I will answer for my diggers,’ said Mr. Stanley, bowing to the young ladies, ‘being the most genuinely polite people in the world, especially to ladies; and the escort was a little over ten thousand ounces last week.’ ‘You don’t say so?’ said Mr. Branksome; ‘three thousand ounces more than last week. Why, how much do you intend to get at by the end of the year?’ ‘Several, rich leads have been discovered lately,’ said the Commissioner, with a slight air of importance. ‘If they find a deeper deposit below the basalt, as many of the experienced miners think likely, we shall eclipse California.’ ‘How very interesting,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, much excited by proximity to a novel and recent development of colonial industry; ‘I suppose you find great difficulty in managing such an immense and disorderly concourse.’ ‘If they were disorderly we simply could not manage them,’ said the representative of the Queen’s Government. ‘We have about an average of one constable to a thousand men. Moral force, applied with discretion and firmness, suffices for all purposes of rule and coercion. Besides, the miners, as a rule, are well-educated men, and such populations are always manageable.’ ‘Why so?’ inquired Ernest. ‘I should have thought that they were easily led away by designing persons.’