When the wet season sets in, the holes are often filled up and rendered useless, if not, the walls become insecure, and serious accidents have occurred in consequence. Surface washing then becomes the rage. The country is explored and hills are tried. Where favourable the surface is skimmed over, carted to the water, and washed. Though not so rich as that from holes, the stuff is got at less labour, and the water is nearer at hand. The holes at Bendigo are the shallowest, and those of Ballarat the deepest; many of the former are under six feet, and the latter, more than thirty feet. In California to save time in prospecting, a number will form a miners’ club, pay down a certain sum each, select two or three good men and true, and send them prospecting, while the others remain at steady work. Quartz crushing is not likely to pay here like in some places, as Brazil, where labor is cheap. The size of the claim differs from that in California, where no regular system is adopted, but where it is determined by the miners, at the several localities. Here one man is allowed eight feet long by eight broad, though no party, however many in number, can have a portion larger than sixteen feet long and the same in breadth. The care of animals at the mines is no small difficulty and trial. Food in the dry season is confined to oats and bran for the horses, and these at such prices as to make the weekly cost of a horse from £3 to £5. Some men close their work early, and take the beasts perhaps four or five miles to some scanty pasture, and stopping there in their 'possum rug for the night, bring them in the next morning. There is the great nuisance of animals straying, and the loss of time to parties looking for them. Not a few of the better kind find their way to sales in Melbourne, for the profit of those who have had the _trouble_ of bringing them all the way down from some run near the diggings. It is a mistake to imagine that none but diggers do well at the mines. Without regarding the gold buyers, and storekeepers, who do _sometimes_ realize a few hundreds per cent per annum, the blacksmiths manage to hammer a good many ounces out of the diggers. One told me that he gave his men 25s a day and their board and lodging, and that he would willingly give 50s. a hundred feet of sawn stuff, and pay cartage himself. Excellent wages are made by others at hut building. Several trades could there be conducted most profitably; such as shoemaking, harness making, &c. Of course medical men collect a little of the gold dust. Of all employments, that of carter in the dry season appears to me the least enviable, walking continually beside their bullocks or horses in one cloud of dust, and tormented by myriads of flies.