A conservative estimate of the value of the gold has placed it at seven hundred millions of pounds.
Such a discovery produced the inevitable effect.

A great number of adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very much the reverse.

There were circumstances, however, which kept away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly opened goldfield.

It was not a class of mining which encouraged the individual adventurer.

There were none of those nuggets which gleamed through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or recompensed the forty-niners in California for all their travels and their toils.