He therefore took temporary leave of his very kind friends at the Hall, reserving to himself the right of occasional visits until he should depart, with his newly-acquired herd, for the ‘waste lands of the Crown,’ where the Great River flowed on, as in the long lonely æons of the past, through the vast plains and pine-bordered sandhills of Rainbar. Once domiciled in Turonia, Mr. Neuchamp found its society more various and entertaining than in any locality other than the metropolis which he had visited since his arrival in Australia. It was the flush and prosperous stage of a great alluvial goldfield. All things wore the golden tint, all bore the image and superscription of the modern Cæsar and Imperator. Wonderfully unreal, and smacking of ‘the golden prime of the good Haroun Alraschid,’ was the careless magnificence with which large sums of money were acquired, spent, lost, and regained. Ernest visited the various banks, and saw bags and drawers in which the precious metal lay heaped in all forms, from the dull red heavy dust to the lump, ingots, and precious fragments, in which a thousand pounds’ worth was lifted in the hand with as much ease as a paperweight. He saw the bronzed, stalwart miners handing insignificant-looking bags across the cedar counters, and crushing handfuls of ten-pound notes into their pockets as a schoolboy receives change for a shilling spent in marbles. He retired to rest about midnight, and on awaking at dawn heard the ceaseless click of the billiard balls in the adjacent saloon, apparently fated to go on until the day again merged into midnight. He found the _table d’hôte_ every day filled, not to say crowded, by well-dressed people whose occupation he could at first merely guess at, but whom he found to be in nearly every case connected with the great industry―as officials, mine-owners, brokers, speculators, professional men, and others unspecified, with perhaps a rare tourist, lured hither by astounding rumours, or a feeling of justifiable curiosity, to behold the unbounded treasures of mother earth, so long and jealously guarded. There was a never-failing store of amusement and occupation spread out before the calibre of Mr. Neuchamp, and so absorbed did he grow daily in the ever-widening field of observation that he felt almost regretful to find the time at his disposal rapidly diminishing.