The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1884-05-09
ao1D M AUSTRALIA
The 1allarat Nins-Ths xirrtbls Tale of
h Diggtngs.

Gold costs a gooddeal. So Thought
to-day When l was sinking into 9 narrow
grave, little than a yard square,
800 feet into the earth. rtheir eight
hours daily toll in this Hades each miner
obtains $1.75, a sum whose smallness
amazed me. The Ballarat Mine is
owned by company which toled for
some years without much result on
ground where the first discoveries had
found much gold few feet deep. They
sunk ashaft very far down, they battled
with food and sand six years before
they reached success-$5,O 900 per day.
Now, at the end of % years, the com
pany can count over $50, 600, 900 as its
gains. And yet the mud and Crime Of
1t, the subterranean slime and cold,
the unsunned existences passed in dig
ging down there, combined into a SYM
Dol OF the quantity Of dirt, darkness,
drudgery and unhapiness, through
which, in America as we'll as Ballarat,
many must pass before gold can be
piled up! That serpent on the English
sovereign must eat dust all its days.
So far as / can learn comparatively
few of the great fortunes Of Australia
lave been built up on gold mines. As
we drove through Ballarat many houses
were pointed out far sunken in tho
earth by reason of the excavations be-
meath them, and the wealth excavated
appears to have largely rested on q
similarly insecure foundation. In old
German folklore it is said that they
who would dig successfully for hid trea-
sure must work in silence and fulfil Ger
tam formulas demanded by fatal guar
dams of snch things-a single word, a
neglected form, being enough to bring
not only failure but danger. The real
conditions of wealth are not less stern
than the legendary. They are not to
be met by riding horses shod with gold
though that made one Cameron famous
in 1856. Few of the diggers could have
fulfilled all the dread conditions of OBJ
tanning riches, failure in the least Of
which may turn fine ores to devils dust
or to chains more CALLING than iron.
There are true legends haunting these
Australian goldfields which sometimes
sound as If invented by some sage to
teach the vanity of mere luck. A poor
wretch finds n thousand pound nugget
and sleeps no more.
There is Victoria a town of ruined
houses--Matlock. Its life began in
1864 with q rush of diggers. The last
inhabitant left in 1879. In that Is years
Matlock had found a fortune and seen it
turn to dross. The diggers lost their
wits, as at Ballarat, lit their pipes with
bank notes and played at skittles with
bottles of wine. "Ono ne occasion, " says
Mr.. Switzerland, "two lucky miners
laid a wager about which of them should
shoutreat the assembly with the largest
shout The first one ordered several
dozens of the most expensive wines, far
pooted TO a.iIh ultir inc utmost dill
gepce. But tbs other eclippsed this eff
i '1rf ~ Ordering the landlords whole
stock of champagne, amounting to about
200 bottles. It was brought and dis.
posed of in every absurd way that reck-
less ingenuity could invent. This sort
of conduct ruined many of the diggers."
Deeson, the poor man who went out
one day with his children's cries for
bread ringing in his ears and returned
with the nugget t"Welcome Strangely
that sold for $50, 900, was a maj ofgood
personal habits, but Don fell into pow
erty. He did not know he had enough.
He invested his fortune in machinery
and lost all. He toiled on through life
in poverty n hundred yards from the
spot where a single stroke Of his pick
turned up a fortune.