Nevertheless, Mr. Trenchard, a Melbourne solicitor, projected "The
Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway," an enterprise
which, after some months' flutter of chequered life, expired for want of
support from the over-busy colonists, who had other far more immediately
pressing needs and chances for their money.
The "gold escort" had been established by this time, with an armed
guard, which at times included "native police," a force which had been
the best, if not the only, success as yet in our "civilizing" efforts
with the aborigines. The art of digging had greatly advanced since my
Ballarat visit. At Bendigo I inspected the "White Hills," where there
was already regular shaft-sinking to depths approaching 100 feet. The
White Hills were so-called from a large ejection, piled up in white
mounds of a light-coloured thick bed of the auriferous drifts, in which
unprecedented quantities of gold had been found. Descending one of the
shafts, I was shown the chief source of this gold, namely, a thin seam
of small quartz grit, hardly two inches in thickness, and of the white
quartz hue, excepting the lowest half inch, which was browned with iron.
This lowest half inch had almost all the gold, and the very lowest part
of it, where the iron-brown darkened almost to black, was literally
crowded with gold particles.
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