Gum-diggers must be equipped as lightly as possible. It is commonly said that a blanket, a spade, a gum-spear, a knife, a hatchet, a billy, a pipe, some provisions and tobacco, together with the clothes he stands in, constitute all that a gum-digger needs in the way of outfit. He really cannot afford to possess much more, for he must hump all his belongings on his own back, over mountain and dale, forest and morass. This is one reason why small parties associate together, besides for company. They can then manage to carry a better sufficiency of things with them from camp to camp. Where proximity to a settlement, a road, or a river permits of it, it is possible for gum-diggers to make their camps pretty comfortable. Often it is not necessary to move camp for months at a time, when the surrounding field is pretty rich in gum-holes. But they are not a provident class, seldom caring for anything beyond the present moment. The occupation is simplicity itself. Once the prospecting has been accomplished and the district determined on, the party move to it as best they can. Nearly always there is a long tramp through the wilds, with the necessaries on back and shoulders. Then a camp is formed in some favourable spot near a stream; a rude hut is constructed of such material as is at hand; and a store of firewood is cut. For work, each man straggles about all day by himself, with his spear and spade and sack. He tries every likely looking place with the spear, which is simply an iron rod, sharp at one end, and with a wooden handle at the other. When the end of the spear touches buried gum, there is a peculiar clip or "feel," which the digger knows. Then he digs out the gum, fills his sack, and carries it to camp, continuing to work the same spot as long as it yields anything, when he goes on to look for another. In the evenings he scrapes and cleans the day's take with his knife. Sometimes a digger will not get a shilling's worth of gum in a whole week's work; sometimes he will find five or six pounds' worth in an hour. Generally speaking, and taking one week with another, he may earn £2 to £4 a week. When enough has been collected and scraped it is carried down to the nearest bush-store or settlement, where it is at once sold. Provisions are bought, and the surplus may be banked, though, in nine cases out of ten, it goes in a "lush up." Some gum-diggers save till they can get down to Auckland, and then they have a high old time of it as long as the money lasts. It will be seen how this kind of life appeals to the ne'er-do-well. Luck and chance are elements in it; and it is a free, roving, devil-may-care existence. Hence it is that scapegraces take to it so kindly, and prefer its risks and manifest hardships to the steady work of farm-labourers or bushmen.