the land of the cedar and vine ; Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,
and the difficulties that they have to contend with, the red tapeism, and the procrastinations and delays of office serve but to enhance their yearnings for an ideal paradise. It is quite true that the regulations now in force would enable a Liberal Ministry to throw any quantity of land in any district into the market at £1 per acre; but their doing so would disoblige many friends and supporters, reduce the value of landed estates and pre-emptive rights, destroy all prospect of a stalwart tenantry, and cause their battle-cry on the hustings to fall tame and dull upon the public ear. Luckless public! you remind me of the ass cheated into dragging his load by a bundle of greens tied to a pole, fixed at the end of a shaft: press forward as he may, he never can reach it. Moreover, it is necessary to check the exodus of tenantry, and keep up rents on the Hawkesbury and the Hunter, by enhancing the value of land upon the Clarence. There are many other cogent reasons why we should persist in using the New Land Bill as a bunch of greens, and why we should continue to ignore all that is liberal in our present regulations and Orders in Council, wisely designed to act as a safeguard against the dispersion of the population, through a boundless wilderness, but also capable of being applied as an instrument for the oppression of one class and the aggrandisement of another ; you may pare your corns with a razor, or divide a bar of iron with an axe, but neither of these instruments were intended for such a purpose. The old road crossing the Richmond range and passing over alternate sandstone ridges, rich undulating black soil flats, and sand barrens, and presenting many situations on the route favourable far agricultural occupation, after intersecting four conterminous cattle runs, at a distance of seventy miles from Tabulam reaches the elbow, and twenty miles further you arrive at Grafton; until very recently there was but one hut on the line, although it has been opened and constantly traversed for a quarter of a century. At present there is in addition to the hut but one small public-house. This deficiency of accommodation is a source of much hardship and suffering to the mining population in their frequent journies to and fro, by this route. A very trifling outlay at the Six Mile Swamp, the crossing of Myrtle Creek, Trip's Downfall, near Busby's Flat, and the descent of Cunabobbilla, would make this road above the average of bush roads, and passable at all seasons. The new road, in a more direct line from Grafton, crossing a gap in the coal ridge, avoids the long steep ascent of the Richmond range, fords the Clarence once, and crossing the mouth of the Timbarra, reaches the vicinity of Tabulam in about seventy miles, passing in its route through four extensive cattle runs. This road is said, in addition to passing through a more level country, to be well grassed, and to effect a saving of about twenty-five miles between the head of navigation and New England. The want of accommodation, however, presses with equal severity upon travellers by this route, as upon the old line. An accommodation-house has been recently opened near the crossing of the Clarence; but for a distance of sixty miles there is not a single hut. Many parties are desirous of opening houses along the roadside, but the lessees of the respective runs are reported to be opposed to establishments that would eventually attract a population to the district. This highway is unquestionably a great boon to the inhabitants of New England and the mining population on the Timbarra, and does credit to the projectors; why it was not opened in the first instance is an enigma, as the post track has been by the same route for many years. The escort from the table land at the head of M'Leod's Creek take the new line, and are necessitated to camp out in the bush one night both up and down with the treasure under their charge, in all weathers, minus both cloaks and blankets, as their horses are now so much exhausted by overwork and irregular feeding that they are unable to carry these necessaries. The men and horses detailed for this service perform a journey of over a hundred miles per week throughout the year, and one grass fed horse to each man is insufficient for the work, independent of the unnecessary exposure to which the men are subjected without common necessaries; the bivouac is attended with some risk, as half the party go in search of the horses each morning; all this might be obviated by the formation of a small encampment placed in charge of one man. There are tents enough rotting in the ordnance stores -- a small enclosure for the horses would also make the establishment more complete; 2000 ounces of gold is a dangerous responsibility for four men, stretched round a fire in the bush, in a dark night; it is, moreover a subject of common conversation in the district that the escort since last June have only received two months' pay, and not one farthing of the extra three shillings per diem to which they are entitled while on the route. If the storekeepers and publicans had not with great liberality, taken their circumstances into consideration, and given them an extended credit, they would have had no other alternative but either to resign or starve. This state of things is highly dis- creditable to the public service, and it is evident that there is a screw loose somewhere. The detachment is badly horsed, badly paid, and subjected to unnecessary risk and hardship. From Tabulam a track to the northward conducts you through several minor diggings to the main camp on to the Touloome Creek, distant about forty miles, on the west bank of the Clarence, on a tributary of Emu Creek, near the termination of the Girard Range, is a small diggings recently opened, known as the New Rush, where there are several miners making from one to three ounces per day to the hand, many more making moderate wages. A large number shepherding their claims in anticipation of a supply of water, and not a few doing nothing. Gold can be obtained every where in the locality, both on the ridges and in the flats, but from the present scarcity of water very few can work to advantage. Some of the claims have been more productive on the second working than the first, and although the gold is widely diffused, the payable ground is said to be limited in extent. From the New Rush to Touloome, parties are to be found scattered over the ranges on both sides of the river, and numerous small creeks and ravines have been discovered that would prove payable after a few days rain, but that are not at present workable. The first place that new arrivals make for is the New Rush, and many of them, finding the best ground pre- occupied, pack up their swags and return whence they came, with all convenient speed. I met many such parties on the road, and their accounts were tall of the most gloomy character. These men, after a long and toilsome journey, have abandoned a gold-field so extensive that it would occupy a horseman a month in riding over it; at the first disappointment, experienced in a petty gully, where the only cause that they had of dissatisfaction was that they had arrived too late. Fording the Clarence at Tabulam, a road from the west bank conducts you for a mile and a-half over a rich alluvial plain, formed by the junction of the two rivers. Here, on a grassy slope, you pass the wreck of what was once a beautiful little head-station; this station has been absorbed by its larger neighbour, and the buildings dismantled and suffered to fall into decay; the gardens are still beautiful in their ruins, and the fig, the peach, the quince, and the orange mingle with the wildlings of the forest. It is a remarkable fact that a few years ago no part of New South Wales could boast of more beautiful homesteads than the country between the Richmond and the Clarence stretching from the steeps of the table land to the ocean, but they have been all first salivaed over, and then swallowed by the larger runs. The homesteads have been obliterated, the skeleton of the family residence condemned for firewood, the gardens and teem- ing orchards are a wilderness, and the only evident of their former existence may be traced in a few sheds and out-offices, now the habitation of the solitary stockman. Desolation has swept over the scene of former joys and industry. Passing the desolated station, an approaching change in the formation becomes perceptible, and the hills and ridges are covered with the debris of a quartz conglomerate mingled with fragments of a transmuted sandstone. Four miles from Tabulam brings you to the crossing-place of the Plumbago formerly known as Back Creek. This stream rising in the Gerard Range, pursues a wandering course for eighteen miles, when it empties into the Timbarra, near its junction with the Clarence. Two years since it was roughly prospected and galena, plumbago, and gold procured at several places. In its course it passes through a variety of both igneous and transmuted formations and receives many tributaries which drain the extensive basin, between the Gerard Range and the granitic steeps that form the north wall of the chasm through which the Timbarra finds its way to a wider channel in the carboniferous formations. Gold has been procured at the head of all these tributaries, but they have not been worked, and their value remains to be tested. On crossing the Plumbago you commence a gradual ascent; here granite and trapean rocks crop out on the summits of the higher ranges, and metamorphosed schists, that have suffered but little disturbance are exhibited in the channels of the creeks. On the left hand towering granitic cliffs and steep broken ranges mark the course of the Timbarra river, and on the right the spurs and irregular descents from the auriferous Gerard limit the prospect. Here the tea- tree, gorgeous with its white mantle of vernal blossoms, crowds into the marshy hollows, and the gigantic grass-tree, with its unsightly stem and its ragged fronds, climbs the granite ridges, proclaiming by its presence the arid sterility of the soil, and over all a dense forest of lofty timber rolls interspersed with patches of strange mountain scrub. Now sinking to the sombre shadow of the glens and gorges, and then climbing to the tops of the highest hills, where their varying hues are illumined by the last rays of the sun setting behind the long line of crests on the verge of the table land; but in all this vast expanse the grasses and vegetation are coarse. Halting between the soft verdure of the south and the vigorous exuberance of the tropics, no flowers are to be seen. Flora has not strayed so far north from the banks of the Lachlan and the Murrumbidgee. As we proceed, the road winds over a succession of ascents and descents, and the country assumes a general aspect of rugged wilderness. Mineral indications are frequent, and the evidences of a gold-bearing district increase as you near the granites of the plateau. Fifteen miles from Tabulam you arrive at the site of the old Clarence Inn -- but how changed; two years ago sundry sheets of bark, some yards of calico, and a few slabs sufficed for the construction of the humble shed that sheltered an occasional traveller who adventured to or from the coast by this route, and happy was he to procure even this rude accommodation after his experience of the hospitality to be met with along the wild and dreary dray track from Grafton, itself then struggling for existence against an hundred adverse interests. An extensive building now rises on the crest of a metaliferous hill, on which the carpenter has exhausted all his cunning, and here the hostess, who has worn both the willow and the orange blossom since I last saw her, dispenses her far-famed hospitality to crowds of anxious men, who may be found at all hours on their passage to and from the gold- fields, on either side distant from twelve to forty miles. Here, the unlucky and disheartened repack their swag, and with a sign commence the weary journey to the coast; and here, also, those to whom fortune has been propitious, take their last farewell of the district. At this inn I saw two men who had obtained about twenty-five pounds weight of gold in three weeks, and was informed of claims which had yielded to the value of between £7000 and £8000, and which are not yet exhausted. Upon enquiring for several whom I had known upon the creek I learned that a few still remained, but that the majority had left the colony, carrying a competence with them; one, an American, was then on his way to the head of navigation with something like £1000 in his belt. The instances of success were more numerous than I anticipated, but, notwithstanding all this, crowds of unfortunates are to be met with in every direction. I have just learned that the escort have made their last trip to Grafton. They are now on their route to Armidale; the exposure and risk to which they were subjected on the new line has done its work. From this point I will proceed to M'Leod's Creek, where the first payable gold was obtained, and which, with the table land at its source, has proved to be one of the richest alluvial gold-fields, for its extent, in New South Wales.