The mineral wealth of Queensland is surprising. Its gold-fields are of vast extent, and as yet hardly touched. There are innumerable copper lodes; stream and lode tin are being successfully worked; silver ores abound, and are being mined now; iron has been found in great quantities; extensive coal-fields exist, and are being worked in the vicinity of Brisbane and Maryborough; lead, nickel, cobalt, and bismuth ores have been found. The gold prospectors found their way to Queensland soon after the great alluvial fields of the south began to show signs of exhaustion, but for many years they found little to reward their efforts. There was, however, a prevailing idea among regular gold-miners--who, very soon after the first discoveries, began to form a distinct class in the population--that rich finds would be made in the northern colony. This belief led to the Canoona 'rush' in 1858, probably the most remarkable wild-goose chase in which the excitable Australian miners ever engaged. There was a report that gold had been found near the shores of Keppel Bay, then occupied only by a few cattle stations, and at once all the miners of Australia became excited. Steamers and sailing vessels, filled with eager men, discharged their living freights on the desolate shore, and in an incredibly short space of time many thousands of miners, scantily provided with the necessaries of life, had ascertained that the rush was a 'duffer'--that there was no gold--and were spreading over the face of the country, prospecting it in all directions. They found no gold, and were reduced to such straits that the Government of New South Wales, which then included Queensland, was compelled to charter craft to carry them away. But if they found no gold, they discovered and made known the value of the country, and laid the foundation of what is now the thriving town of Rockhampton. Gold was found in sufficient quantities to repay mining at Peak Downs, about two hundred miles inland from Rockhampton, where, it may be mentioned, the proprietors discovered a wonderfully rich lode of copper ore that was afterwards mined and produced many thousand tons of metal.