He at once informed the camp officials that the officer was now in possession of the gold-mine. Shortly afterwards he sneaked away from the camp to a place of concealment. Meanwhile the party in the scrub waited some time for their guide, and then spent hours in holloing and in beating the bush for him. At length the officer decided to return, and as the wily convict had persuaded him to send back the boat, the party were obliged to march on foot round to the camp, where they arrived at dusk, and learned with chagrin of the trick played upon them. In a few days starvation brought the convict from his lair. He was promptly punished for his deceit, although he still asserted the truth of his story. An officer was again sent with him to find the mine, and this time the convict was so frightened at the officer's threat to shoot him if he attempted to practice another dodge, that he acknowledged he knew of no mine at all. On being questioned about the ore produced, the convict confessed he had filed down part of a yellow metal buckle, mixed with it some gold filed off a guinea, blended both with some earth, and made the conglomeration hard as rock. Colonel Munday relates that in 1823 a convict (one of an ironed gang working on the roads near Bathurst) was flogged for having in his possession a lump of rough gold, which the officer in charge imagined must have been the product of watches or trinkets stolen and melted down. Indeed, the toiling prisoners of the early days often picked up bits of gold, but as they could never find any other than the first small specimens, their claims for reward were disregarded and their alleged discoveries disbelieved. Long before the actual working of the gold-fields scientific adventurers had predicted the existence of gold formations in the mountain ranges explored by them, and geologists who had never visited Australia had expressed their conviction that the Australian Cordillera must be auriferous because of the remarkable similarity of their characteristics and those of other well-known gold-bearing regions. EARLY DISCOVERIES IN NEW SOUTH WALES. The honour of making the first report that was published lies with Count Strzelecki, for in 1839 he mentioned in the report of his exploration of New South Wales, under the heading "Gold," of "an auriferous sulphuret of iron, partly decomposed, yielding a very small quantity or proportion of gold, sufficient to attest its presence, insufficient to repay its extraction." At the request of the Governor, who was afraid of the consequences of awakening the attention of the colonists and the thousands of convicts to the presence of the alluring metal, the Count did not at the time make public his discovery and belief.