where their families are resident, or settlers on farms in which all their property is invested. These persons distributed over the face of the country, of course find it more profitable and convenient to devote their spare time to working at diggings in the vicinity of their dwellings, and consequently are ever on the search for gold near home. There is hardly a shepherd's hut in the interior, where there is the slightest probability that the precious metal may be found, which does not boast of a cradle and other mining implements, devoted to use whenever opportunity offers.
The first locality which claims attention is Ophir, the parent diggings of the colony. Ophir may be regarded as belonging to what may be termed the Canobolas gold-field. This mountain, which is nearly a mile in height above the level of the sea, and is composed chiefly of trap rock, is the centre whence a considerable number of streams, including the Summerhill Creek, take their rise, and flowing through a country composed chiefly of schists and quartzites, are more or less auriferous. Gold has been found throughout the length of the Summerhill Creek, from its source at the Canobolas to its junction with the Macquarie, but most abundantly at Ophir, and Frederick's Valley, where the Wentworth diggings are situated. The gold is chiefly of a nuggetty description, and has been found in lumps of three or four pounds in weight. At the Wentworth diggings, very fine gold has been obtained in considerable quantities. The country about Ophir is very broken and rugged, and the deposit of gold lies, for the most part, in the bed of the creek, as the banks are too steep to allow of extensive dry or bank diggings. Towards the Macquarie the banks of the creek become still more rocky and abrupt, and there is not much likelihood of any extensive deposit of gold having been formed. The bed of the creek at Ophir has never been sufficiently dry to allow of its being profitably worked since the first rains after the opening up of the diggings on Fitzroy Bar. The population has never been very great since that period, and at present does not number over two or three hundred. The earnings at these diggings average from 10s. to 60s. per diem, and in a few cases much more. There are many parties at work in the vicinity of the Canobolas, and on creeks flowing from it. At the Tea Tree Creek and Brown's Creek, profitable diggings have been opened, and the earnings are from 10s. to 20s. a day, but the number of persons engaged at these places is not large. The whole of the region surrounding this mountain, which is situated some forty or fifty miles to the westward of Bathurst, may be regarded as a gold-field comparatively unexplored, which when the return wave of population and enterprise shall have set in to the gold-fields of this colony, will occupy no insignificant position.
The Turon still claims the first position among the gold-fields of the colony in point of richness and extent. Sofala, the township which has been formed at the richest locality on the Turon, is distant about twenty-five miles north from Bathurst. Fifteen miles above Sofala remunerative diggings were opened at what is called the Gulf, and thence to the junction of the river with the Macquarie, a distance of nearly forty miles, digging operations having been carried on with more or less success. The geological formation of the country is of schist, intersected by quartz veins of various thickness, but there are many other rocks present at different portions of the river. The mountains are lofty, but with rounded summits and gently sloping bases, and the river flows for the greater part through a narrow valley between the ranges. The banks and slopes on the river side are seldom abrupt, and dry diggings consequently abound. The gold procured on the
