this greatest of antipodean "rushes" for their most striking and perhaps for their final manifestation, scattered themselves to the four quarters of the earth. They may be found at Klondyke, in New Guinea, in Siam, in China, or in South Africa; but they have left the Western Australian goldfields, as yet only half exploited; and without them new discoveries will be made but slowly. They have left behind them, however, a large population of wages-men and others on the fields, who are steadily developing the mines for the European capitalist. Coolgardie, which is situated about 240 miles east of Perth, has had to give place to Kalgoorlie, its neighbour 25 miles to the east again, as a gold producer and the principal centre of the goldfields. The fame of the large telluride lodes of the Boulder group has spread to London and Paris, and the immigration of thousands of new citizens (chiefly from the sister colonies) to the goldfields has been followed by the investment of millions of European capital in the purchase of mining shares.
I do not propose to write a history of gold mining in Western Australia, but will in preference devote some attention to the results up to the present. There can be no doubt that many of the mines which were floated as companies were utterly worthless. This always happens in Australian mining, and is in some measure due to the fact that all mining is of necessity an uncertain and peculiar business. A scientific prospector, with all the learning of the geological schools at his finger ends, may err widely, whilst an ignoramus blunders on to a rich lead or a highly payable reef. No man can see beyond the end of his nose. "Where it is, there it is," runs a Cornish mining proverb. Position, too, is often worth gambling upon, though it is as often misleading. Whenever a really good mine is found, there are sure to be scores of
