The routine of toil is not a monotonous one. The engagements are various, and constant excitement attends them. Occasionally a rush gives animation to a gully. The seizure of a grog-tent, a squabble about claims, the horn of the news-vendor, a visit from the commissioner, give a diversion to the scene. License time gives good opportunity for talk. Instead of the thirty shillings for the monthly license, a man may pay half-an-ounce of gold. Usually the first ten days of the month are days of grace; after that, enquiries may be expected as to the possession of the document. Though the risk is not great, few are without their licenses. The five pounds penalty is often not so bad as the loss of time. A policeman one day demanded a sight of his license from a digger at Friar’s Creek. The man civilly said it was in his waistcoat down the hole, and that he would go and fetch it directly. He departed, and forgot to return. The hole was visited, but the bird had flown. As it happened, there was much tunnelling in that part, and the man had quietly passed along the subterranean passages, and raised his head from another and distant cell. Now, as to success at the diggings;—although cases, plentiful as blackberries, occur in which parties have been two or three months up and more, without doing anything beyond paying expenses, yet I am not expected to talk of these. We all want to hear of the fortunate, and make no enquiry about unlucky diggers. It is, however, a fact that many who have dug nineteen holes in vain, have dropped upon the gold in the twentieth. A party that I knew were five weeks wholly without success; in three weeks after they got £900. Four men were weeks without luck, when they fell in with 75lbs weight. Another was four months and in debt, when a bright day came suddenly in the shape of a £500 share. There were two parties, friends of equal strength, working in the same place for three mouths; the one did not pay expenses, the other walked off with 98lbs weight. At the foot of a tree three fellows took out £1800 worth; they went down to Melbourne, and stopped till they had knocked it all down. I knew a man at Bendigo who washed out 9lbs of gold from a nosebag of stuff. At Ballarat two tubs yielded 24lbs. The surfacing at Golden Gully, Friar’s Creek, was so immensely rich, that to talk of sums would appear speaking fables. Holes have been bought for an ounce of gold which have realized many pounds weight. A friend of mine met a man whom he knew, walking in rags and dirt behind a dusty dray to town, and yet carrying £1500 worth of gold. In Peg Leg gully 50 and even 80lbs have been taken from holes three or four feet deep. Several companies of sailors have been remarkable fortunate, and so have those of our sober and worthy German fellow-colonists. A hole at Forest Creek produced 60lbs in one day, and 40lbs more the day after. The Burra miners are no luckier than digging tailors. From one of our golden