in the far north, had its rush in 1896; but fever and the difficulties of transport crushed its prosperity, though mining is still carried on there by a few persistent adventurers who live on, as is usual with such haunters of derelict goldfields, in the hope of good times to come. It was not till July, 1892, that Bayley and Ford, two prospectors whose headquarters were at Southern Cross, a struggling camp then on the remotest fringe of civilisation, pushed out along Hunt's old track to Coolgardie, and discovered a very rich reef, which was afterwards known as Bayley's Reward Claim. In one year half a ton of gold was obtained from this mine by the most primitive processes. The fame of the yields spread, and then one of the greatest "rushes" ever known in Australia occurred.
The whole mining, or migratory and prospecting population of Australasia set out in hot haste for the fields, and was followed by all the wastrels and failures who had been left "on their uppers" by the bursting of the Melbourne land-boom. The tract which ran eastward through the primeval bush was a curious sight in those days. Heavy waggons, laden with flour, chaff, and whisky, lumbered axle-deep through the mud, drawn each by its team of a dozen great horses in single file—for 1893 was a wet season—and each accompanied by its string of "swampers" who paid perhaps almost their last 30s. for the privilege of walking alongside for ten days and having their swags of a hundredweight carried on the top of the load. Big Broken Hill men, and ruined speculators from all the colonies, went up with their own buggies or teams; alluvial men walked up with little more than their water-bags; "Kimberley wheel-barrows," or one-wheeled cart nondescripts drawn by a human team, were a fashionable, if not a very efficient, means of transport; and one man, a German,
