But as yet, perhaps, there has been no important manifestations of pockets, with their glittering contents. Several dips of the rocky base gave you hopes of leading on to fortune, but the fossicking knife cleared out the pipe clay, and harshly scraped against the slate in vain. On repeated occasions some purple sandy veins with bright red spots in the pipe clay, like syrens of old, induce you to follow them in their course, promising all the while a rich feast at the end of the journey. Most trustfully you suffer yourself to be led along, until all at once your conductor gives you the slip, and leaves you staring at a wilderness of dirty white pipe clay. Half tempted to despair, you languidly turn to another place and carelessly plunge in the knife. _There_ is a subterranean beauty, a perfect nymph of the hidden world, softly reclining, though not upon a violet bank. You hasten to obtain the lovely stranger, and to reveal those long neglected charms to the wondering gaze of devout admirers. Suspecting the fact of other fair creatures being similarly confined in these enchanted regions, you rush forward to the rescue with all the ardour of a knight of chivalry. With the sword of sharpness you penetrate long passages of gloom, until at length you reach a dark chamber. An entrance is forced, the light pours in, and a sight presents itself, which well nigh upsets your reason. Talk of the secret chamber, where suspended ranged the sweet wives of hideous Blue Beard! Tell of the dungeon of darkness, round whose damp walls were chained ten of the fairest dames of Christendom, mates of war-like knights, whom the giant thief of old had caged! These were nothing to the view that now unfolds itself. There are not ten, but tens of tens of the dear creatures most adored by men, and for whose release from the degradation and pangs of imprisonment down below, such zealous and such benevolent exertions are being made in the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales. May those worthy and disinterested labors be crowned with abundant success! Lord Rosse may say what he pleases about the intense gratification which he experienced, when he first resolved the filmy nebulæ of Orion into the galaxy of sparkling orbs, but I mean to declare that that is perfect moonshine to the delight of the gold seeker, when he first drops upon a good pocket of nuggets.