terms the bustle and activity going on in this rising city, and declared that any man who could lift a hammer was welcome to a pound sterling a day! Of course I did not look for any work, so I did not care. There was also a great deal of sickness, especially dysentery, and the doctors required cash down before they would even look at any one. If one took a stroll up among the tents, it was a common, indeed an inevitable, sight to see men lying helpless, writhing with pain on the ground, some of them bellowing out for pity or mercy. Very little pity or help, as a rule, did they get. Men would pass such a poor object with the greatest apathy, or at most go up to him and give good advice, such as that he ought to be ashamed of lying there and ought to try and crawl into the tent again! Such was life in Cooktown during the first "rush" there to any Queensland gold-fields. I had not at that time got much money. If my second horse had lived, I should have been, as I thought, all right; but as horses worth six or seven pounds could not be bought under thirty or forty pounds, I could not buy another to replace the one I had lost, and had therefore to be content with one. So one day I loaded up my horse with rations and went on the road. As I was going to the Palmer, where money was of no value whatever, and as everything depended on my being able to carry a sufficiency of provisions, I had bought the best of everything regardless of cost. I had cocoa, extract of beef to make soup of, preserved meat and such like in large quantity. Then I had tea, sugar, and one hundred and fifty pounds of flour. My wardrobe, on the other hand, was not extensive. It consisted of one shirt, over and above that I wore. Fifty pounds of my flour with the tent, half a blanket, billy-can, pint pot, knife, gun, &c., I carried on my own back; the remainder, including spade and basin, I strapped on the back of the horse. I had then only a few shillings left of all my money when I started, but going through the town on my road out the burden on my back began already to feel heavy. I therefore thought it wise to carry no unnecessary loads, and seeing some fellows standing in the street who looked as if they needed some refreshment, I called them together and had a big "shout" in a public-house as far as the money would go. That relieved my mind and my pocket!