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O n e day in March, 1847, a shepherd entered the shop of M r . Forrester, a jeweller, in Collins Street, and exhibited some metal which he desired to have tested. It was a sample as big as an average apple, and the shepherd thought it was copper. H e said he had found it amongst the roots of a tree blown down by the wind at a place some sixty miles from Melbourne, where there was plenty more of it; but the precise whereabouts he declined to disclose. Forrester applied some tests, when the specimen proved to be a veritable golden apple, inasmuch as it contained sixty-five per cent, of pure gold. Forrester became its possessor, and the shepherd left, promising to soon return with a larger quantity, but for some never-discoverable reason did not keep his word. There happened to be in Melbourne at the time a well-known Captain Clinch, master of the "Flying Fish," a popular craft which traded between Melbourne and Hobart T o w n , with w h o m Forrester was on terms of intimacy, and he presented Clinch with a slice of the "golden apple," but to newspapers only did he appear to have imparted any intelligence of his transaction with the shepherd. U p o n Clinch returning to Hobart T o w n , he was more open-minded than the Melbourne jeweller, for he communicated the facts as I have detailed them to the Hobart Town Courier, and it was the receipt of that journal of the 19th May, 1847, which informed the Melbourne newspapers that gold was indigenous to Port Phillip, but the whole thing was treated as a hoax. N o further gold intelligence turned up for more than a year, when in July, 1848, another shepherd put in an appearance with a paper of what he declared to be gold dust, gathered as he protested under a tree only a few miles out of town, but the locality he would not name. O n examination the sample did contain a small proportion of gold. About the same time a shepherd boy called at the shop of Mr. Robe, a jeweller in Collins Street, and displayed some gold, which he alleged had been found by him at the Pyrenees, but it was a very poor specimen. In the course of this same year a shepherd employed on the Station of Dr. William Barker, at Mount Alexander, found in a gully some particles of what was most probably gold, though they were thought to be iron or copper. H e kept them for some days, when a m a n named Fryer (after w h o m the well known Fryer's Creek was subsequently named) in the course of a land-hunting excursion dropped into the finder's hut, and was shown the discovery. H e so joked the m a n about his supposed treasure that the shepherd rushed out in a rage, and flung his specimens away. In January, 1849, the startling intelligence of the golden wonders of California created an intense sensation in Melbourne, and there was a partial exodus to the El Dorado. Ships were laid on at once for San Francisco, industrious and well-to-do artizans broke up their homes, scattered their household goods, and hied away over the seas—many of them like people w h o m a k e a hasty marriage, repenting in leisure the speed with which they jumped from certainty to uncertainty, and in some cases something m u c h worse. T h e Melbourne journals remonstrated vainly against such imprudent expeditions, and one of them thus grandiloquently wound up a long and laboured stay-at-home exhortation :— " T h e golden fleece of our pastures, waving fields of golden grain, and the golden oil obtainable from our seas, are the true gold for us, bringing happiness and content to the producers ; while an interminable thirst for the precious metal, which can only be assuaged by the sacrifices of all pastoral and agricultural pursuits, must render the people wretched and debased, and the country a desert." It was during the same month of January that another shepherd boy, named T h o m a s Chapman, made his appearance at the shop of Mr. Charles Brentani, another Collins Street jeweller, and showed some samples of a metal, picked up by him in his wanderings through a ravine in the ranges of the Pyrenees, where he was employed shepherding. O n examination it occurred to Brentani that the metal was gold; but as two heads were better than one he consulted with a M r . Duchene, an assayist, and after due testing the specimens were pronounced to be unmistakably gold of the best quality. O n a further consideration it was resolved that Duchene and the lad should return to the Pyrenees, when the latter was to point out where he had found the metal. H e was to be liberally rewarded; Duchene and Brentani were then to take further steps to work the wealth believed to AAA 2