Prospectors were gradually “poking out,” gold being found in all directions in greater or less degree; but it was not until June, 1893, that any find was made of more than passing interest.  Curiously, this great goldfield of Hannan’s (now called Kalgoorlie) was found by the veriest chance.  Patrick Hannan, like many others, had joined in a wild-goose chase to locate a supposed rush at Mount Yule—­a mountain the height and importance of which may be judged from the fact that no one was able to find it!  On going out one morning to hunt up his horses, he chanced on a nugget of gold.  In the course of five years this little nugget has transformed the silent bush into a populous town of 2,000 inhabitants, with its churches, clubs, hotels, and streets of offices and shops, surrounded by rich mines, and reminded of the cause of its existence by the ceaseless crashing of mills and stamps, grinding out gold at the rate of nearly 80,000 oz. per mouth.

Arriving one Sunday morning from our camp at the “Twenty-five,” I was astonished to find Coolgardie almost deserted, not even the usual “Sunday School” going on.  Now I am sorry to disappoint my readers who are not conversant with miners’ slang, but they must not picture rows of good little children sitting in the shade of the gum-trees, to whom some kind-hearted digger is expounding the Scriptures.  No indeed!  The miners’ school is neither more nor less than a largely attended game of pitch-and-toss, at which sometimes hundreds of pounds in gold or notes change hands.  I remember one old man who had only one shilling between him and the grave, so he told me.  He could not decide whether to invest his last coin in a gallon of water or in the “heading-school.”  He chose the latter and lost . . . subsequently I saw him lying peacefully drunk under a tree!  I doubt if his intention had been suicide, but had it been he could hardly have chosen a more deadly weapon than the whiskey of those days.

The “rush to Hannan’s” had depopulated Coolgardie and the next day saw Davies and myself amongst an eager train of travellers bound for the new site of fortune.  “Little Carnegie” was harnessed to a small cart, which carried our provisions and tools.  The commissariat department was easily attended to, as nothing was obtainable but biscuits and tinned soup.  It was now mid-winter, and nights were often bitterly cold.  Without tent or fly, and with hardly a blanket between us, we used to lie shivering at night.

A slight rain had fallen, insufficient to leave much water about, and yet enough to so moisten the soil as to make dry-blowing impossible in the ordinary way.  Fires had to be built and kept going all night, piled up on heaps of alluvial soil dug out during the day.  In the morning these heaps would be dry enough to treat, and ashes and earth were dry-blown together—­the pleasures of the ordinary process being intensified by the addition of clouds of ashes.

A strange appearance these fires had, dotted through the brush, lighting up now a tent, now a water-cart, now a camp of fortunate ones lying cosily under their canvas roof, now a set of poor devils with hardly a rag to their backs.  Oh glorious uncertainty of mining!  One of these very poor devils that I have in my mind has now a considerable fortune, with rooms in a fashionable quarter of London, and in frock-coat and tall hat “swells” it with the best!