At last I was on a gold-field. What a magic spell there seemed to me in the words. All the old fallacious ideas connected with the word crowded into my mind. Runaway nuns dressed in men's clothes, princes working like labourers, and labourers living like princes--"looking for gold!" Had I not better begin at once? As I came nearer I saw what seemed to me wells on all sides and tents near the wells. Then as I looked at the ground again I became fearfully excited. Big nuggets of shining gold were lying all around on the road. Was it possible? Surely I knew gold when I saw it. I got off the horse and picked it up. Not pure gold, though. But surely half of it was gold. It glittered all over. I picked pieces up as I went along and fairly howled with joy as I filled my bags. Think of those fools coming behind with their flour-bags and of all the empty waggons I had met going down, while I was finding a fortune before I reached the diggings! At the place where I had now come, they could have loaded all the waggons quickly. I could not carry more as I went further, ruminating over the matter. Now the whole ground right and left was glittering all the way into town. I threw the stuff all away again. It could not be gold! Then, with a voice shaking between hope and fear, I asked a man who came by, what that was. He told me at once it was "rubbish." "Did you think it was gold?" asked he. "No; but I thought there might be gold in it." "Yes," said he, "so there was, but it did not pay to extract it." In this way somewhat sobered, I rode further and arrived in town, where the next day I pitched a tent I had bought somewhere handy to the other tents, put the horses in a paddock and looked about me.