the Government domain.[23] For weeks the negotiations remained in an anxious suspense, in consequence of the original projector of the undertaking, an adventurous Yankee, named Ledger, who had purchased the animals in the interior of Peru, and after four years of unwearied assiduity had accompanied his charge hither, standing out for a large sum by way of reward. Long after we had left Sydney we learned that the 280 llamas were sold to a company of sheep-breeders at £25 a head, or for £7000 sterling the entire herd, the value of an animal in Peru being two or three dollars. The yield of the various gold-fields[24] in the west, north, and south of the colony, though nothing like so great as in the neighbouring colony of Victoria, yet contributes in no inconsiderable degree to the annual revenue of the state, and maintains a considerable commerce with other countries. According to official reports, the amount of gold taken out since its first discovery in March, 1851, to the end of July, 1860, was 2,587,549 oz., worth about £9,600,000. Besides this, however, a considerable quantity of money was brought to the coast by private conveyance, where it was smelted down, since the entire yield of New South Wales in nine years was £12,696,231, besides £3,096,231 in the State Treasury and Mint, according to official returns. The rumour that gold was to be found in Australia was first set on foot by the Rev. H. F. Clarke, a Protestant missionary and well-known geologist, who so far back as 1841 found gold in the hills W. of Vale of Clyde, and had even then proved to several influential personages by unmistakeable evidence the existence of gold-quartz, with the remark that in Australia, especially the province of Victoria, all scientific indications were in favour of there being a great amount of gold. But the learned country parson found at that time little attention or interest, as well in consequence of its then being still a penal colony, as of the ignorance at that period universally prevalent as to the value of such indications.