face of the walls at a dizzy height above the stream; with bare gaunt pinnacles piercing the mists in all directions.
The township was founded during the first gold rush to the district, twenty-six years ago. The rude masonry walls of the old houses are much more antique-looking than one commonly sees in any colonial town.
All this region round about is auriferous. The shaly, slaty, crumbling mass, of which the hills and strata are composed, is seamed and permeated everywhere throughout its bulk by thin veins of quartz, and most of these are gold-bearing. In all the flats, and in the beds and on the sides of all the rivers and creeks, surface digging and sluicing has been more or less profitably followed; and at one time there was an immense mining population in these lake districts. Now, however, "Ichabod" might almost be written over the map.
At Macetown there are some rich reefs now being worked, and Macetown is even more inaccessible than Arrowtown. The teams that go to Macetown must surely possess some of the attributes of the goat or house-fly, for the road is perhaps one of the most audacious in the colonies. It literally sticks to the face of the cliffs in some parts.
Rain! rain. How it patters. Mud! mud. How it splashes. The horses, poor things, look veritable hypochrondriacs, and both driver and passengers look blue as the surroundings.
