Our young friends thought they would like to see something of the gold mines of Victoria, and asked Dr. Whitney about them. He readily assented, and the trip to Ballarat was speedily arranged, and also one to Sandhurst, which is the present name of Bendigo of gold-mining days. Ballarat was the most important place of the two, and its placer mines gave a greater yield of gold than did those of Bendigo. At both places the placer mines were exhausted long ago, but gold is still taken from the rocks and reefs which underlie the whole region.
The mining establishments of Ballarat are outside of the city itself, and when the visitors reached the place and rode through the town they could hardly believe they were in a gold-mining region. The streets are wide, and most of them well shaded with trees, while some of them are so broad that they deserve the name of avenues rather than that of streets. There are substantial public buildings and a goodly number of churches, a botanical garden, and all the other features of a quiet and well-established city, and it was quite difficult for them to believe that they were in a place whose chief industry was the extraction of gold from the ground. All the lawless features of the Ballarat of gold-rush days had disappeared, and the town was as peaceful as any one could wish to find it.
Our friends brought a letter of introduction to a gentleman of Ballarat, who kindly consented to show them about the place and answer any questions that they wished to ask.
Harry's first question was, whether the first discoveries of gold in Australia were made at Ballarat or elsewhere.
"It is very difficult to say exactly," the gentleman answered, "where the first discoveries were made, but certainly they were not made at this spot. According to history and tradition, gold was discovered in the mountains behind Sydney about the year 1814, but the news of the finding of the precious metal was kept a secret by the government. At intervals of a few years from that time small deposits of gold were found at various places in New South Wales and Victoria, but these were also kept a secret, the individuals who found the deposits being in one way or another under the control of the government.