The scenery in the bush is very striking.
The immense gum, stringy-bark, and other trees,
of which I do not know the names, are very
beautiful with their drooping leaves; but a
strange effect is produced by the number of
fallen and half-burnt, trees, that lie about in
all directions. The bush is on fire in a great
many places around us. In the daytime we
see the smoke, and at night, from fire to fire, it
reaches from the north-west round to the east,
and from that to the south. The glare in the
sky over the fires is a beautiful sight after sunset.

Every one here is praying for rain; none has
fallen for months, and without water the diggers
cannot wash their dirt, while upon the gold in the
dirt the welfare of the place, and every one in it,
in a great measure depends. I have been hard
at work all day and earned about five shillings.
Yesterday I did not earn so much, and
tomorrow I may earn much more; so, as I am of
a philosophical turn of mind, I come home to
my tent and sing "toora loora."

There are many men on these diggings who
came to them at the first rush, and have worked
hard ever since, sinking shafts from a hundred
and fifty to two hundred and fifty feet in depth,
slabbing them close all the way down, or running
the risk of being smashed in them (as several
have been), and after all have not earned a
six-pence yet.

We always work alternate shifts when sinking,
so many hours on and so many off, day and
night. Very pleasant it is, on a cold night, to
be woke up, and have to jump into the loop of
a rope and be lowered a hundred or two hundred
feet underground, alighting, perhaps, in muddy
water, knee deep, where one must pick, bale, or
fix slab, for six or eight hours.

When a man has to desert a claim as utterly
unproductive, after seven or eight months of
such work, and has to shoulder his blankets
without a penny in his pocket, he wants a little
of Mark Tapley in him to prevent his getting
down-hearted.

The diggings are in a dull state, and must
continue so until the weather changes, for which
reason, hearing of a job, I went into Beechworth
yesterday to apply for a billet as colporteur
to the Beechworth Branch Bible Association.
I went before a committee, who told me
to come again, but as I was not so extensively
got up as the nine other applicants, who were
clean shaved and black coated, I do not expect
to get the four pounds a week and ten per cent
on all receipts.

I think that doctors and lawyers do, or can,
make more money here than any other profession,
but the doctors are almost without exception
drunkards. A young man in either profession
would be sure to get on at the diggings if
steady. Brewers appear to be doing well here,
and will do better when more beer is drunk
instead of abominable brandy.

The publicans drive a fine trade. Most of
the public-houses have large dancing-rooms, the
entrance to which is free, but through the bar!
There you may see a score or two of men and
three or four girls jumping about to the music
of a fiddle and two or three other instruments.
It is laughable to see a couple of rough diggers
hugging one another as they spin round the
room, or perhaps some dapper little fellow, a
store-man, or barber, or something of the sort,
with his arm round the waist of a big-bearded
chap in a red flannel shirt, an old wide-awake,
or cabbage-tree hat, and moleskin trousers
fastened with a belt, and all of a bright buff colour,
caused by his underground occupation, whirling
round with the greatest satisfaction and gravity
possible. It is the same every day, except that
there is no dancing on Sundays, and the tunes
are different. I suppose the landlord finds that
people can drink to sacred music, though they
do not dance to it.

I believe there is a cricket club in Beechworth,
but they are sleepy people here about
anything of that sort, and like drinking grog
better than playing cricket. Working men may
do well here. For carpenters and bricklayers
there is always plenty of employment at good
wages, and there are many other ways of making
money if a man is steady and can turn his hand
to anything that offers; such as splitting rails,
posts, or shingles; stripping sheets of bark for
roofs, floors, and sides of houses; carrying
water-races across creeks, &c. Many have
made a good deal by catching fish and shooting
wild-fowl on the Murray and bringing them to
the diggings for sale. It would do your heart
good to see some of the codfish caught in the
Murray, weighing fifty or sixty pounds each.
It sells here for from eighteen-pence to half-a-
crown a pound.

I do not consider money of much use to a man
here, unless he has colonial experience, or is in
some settled business from the first, otherwise
he is almost sure to lose it. By getting both
together, one may be made to help the other.

I have left the diggings, for a while at least,
and am now following an entirely different kind
of life. I am with a government surveyor,
laying out a township, &c., a few miles above
Wagunyah. We work eight hours a day, running
lines of road through the bush, marking off town
and country allotments, and surveying rivers,
lagoons, and flats.

Many of the diggings in Victoria are at this
time in a bad state, for the greater proportion
of emigrants that are flooding into Melbourne,
being unable, or unwilling, to find regular
employment, start for the already over-crowded
diggings, get down-hearted from what they see
and hear there, run through what money they
have, and at last try to get work at any
wages, or set about digging with only their luck
to trust to. Old diggers, having experience to
back their luck, generally do better. At the
present time, the amount of gold found, does
not nearly keep proportion to the number of
those finding it.

Mr. Sumwun, the " boss," is five inches taller
than /am, being six feet seven and a half inches