“Noise, too, was a prominent feature of ‘Ballarat by night.’ From dusk till eleven P. M., there was a continuous discharge of fire-arms; for almost every one brought some kind of weapon with him to the diggings. Then there was a band which discoursed by no means eloquent music: nine-tenths of the score being monopolized by the drum. In the pauses of this—which occurred, I suppose, whenever the indefatigable drummer had made his arms ache—we would hear rising from some of the tents music of a more pleasing character. The party next ours sang hymns very correctly in four parts; and from another tent the ‘Last Rose of Summer’ sometimes issued, played very pathetically on the flageolet. “Sunday was always well observed at the diggings, so far as absence from work was concerned: and there was Service held twice a day by different ministers. Altogether, though there were occasional fights—particularly on Sundays—there was much less disorder than one would have expected, where a large body of such men were gathered together. While we stayed, there happened only one murder and two or three robberies. You must not take the quantity of gold we got as any criterion of the amount found by other parties. Numbers made fortunes in a few weeks. One party that I knew obtained thirty pounds weight—troy—in seven weeks; and a youth of seventeen, who came out with me in the ‘Anna Maria,’ received five hundred pounds as his share of six weeks’ work. These are but ordinary cases. The greatest quantity known to have been taken out in one day, was sixty-three pounds weight, nearly three thousand pounds worth. “On Wednesday, November fifth, we packed up, left Ballarat, and set off for Mount Alexander, where we arrived on the Saturday following. The Diggings there are not confined to one spot, but extend for twelve miles up a valley. The gold is found mostly among the surface soil; some I have even seen lying among the grass. We tried first at a place where there was only one party at work; and the trial proving satisfactory, we stayed there three weeks, and obtained thirty-six ounces of gold. For a few days we did nothing; and then we went over to some other Diggings about five miles off. Here we went “prospecting” for ourselves, and the first day found out a spot from which we took thirty-five ounces in one week—the last of our stay; eighteen ounces we found in a single day. “We then started off, back to Geelong; for I was anxious to be back for the harvest. We reached home on Saturday, December twentieth.” Writing on the twenty-eighth of December, our informant adds:—