He was then engaged in manufacturing specimens.
There was already a change in the forest surrounding the lonely camp.
The willows had been hewn down, great firs lay in swaths, with some of their mighty branches burnt, and a track of ruin stretched back from Saunders' tent to the side of the range.

The Grenfell Consolidated Mine, three separate claims, occupied what was supposed to be the richest of the land.

It was certainly the most accessible portion, for payable milling ore was already being extracted from an open cut.

It was not the fault of Saunders that the Consolidated did not occupy the whole of it, but the law allows each free miner only so many feet of frontage, and the Gold Commissioner had shown himself proof against the surveyor's reasoning that, as Grenfell had found the mine, a fourth location should be recorded in the name of his executors.

A dead man, as the Commissioner pointed out, could not record a mineral claim.
The men from the settlement had, however, promptly staked off every remaining rod of ground along the lead, and, though the spot was remote from anywhere, another band was busily engaged in an attempt to trace it back across the dried-up lake.