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Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 2052, 2 December 1869, Page 2

The Volunteer review at Ballarat, on the Prince of Wales’ Birthday, was a very successful affair, although the display was not, in a military sense, a very important one, the ground being unsuited for any complicated movements. There were, including drafts from all the othsr corps in the country, pearly 2,000 troops engaged, and the spectacle was so novel"’ and attractive that the people flocked in from far and near to witness it; nor did the frequent heavy showers discourage them. Fully 18,000 persons assembled to see the Volunteers go through their movements. It was part of the arrangement that the visitors were to be entertained at the expense of the Ballarat Rangers, whose funds were supplemented for the occasion by large subscriptions, and the people of the metropolitan goldfield nobly made good their word, for their hospitality was almost sumptuous In the tables published with the reports of the mining surveyors and registrars of Victoria for the quarter ending the 30th September last, the total quantities of gold got respectively from alluviums and quartz reefs during the present year up to the date named, are as follow : From alluviums, 701,827cz 17dwt; from quartz, 448,0430z Idwt; total, 1,149,8700z ISdwt. The total quantity exported during the same peiiod according to returns furnished by the Customs Department is stated as 1,011,5560zs 16dwt of gold, the produce of this colony, being a falling off as compared with the first nine months of 1868 of 262,2040z I3dwt, a result which may be attributed principally, if not entirely, to the long drought during the first quarter of this year, and a lesser, but still in many places severely felt drought during the third quarter. Otherwise the depression experienced on some of the goldfields notably on Ballarat appears to have been fully counterbalanced by the increasing importance of some of the others. The number of miners employed on the goldfields of the colony on the 30th September was 68,684, described in the headings of the respective columns as follows .-—Alluvial Miners: Europeans, 34,996 ; Chinese, 16,307. Quart* Miners: Europeans, 17,295; Chinese, 86. Compared with the returns for the 30th June last, there is a decrease in the total number, amounting to 1,206, a decrease more apparent than real. The Cfaulois relates the following little anecdote :—A clergyman was warning a usurer against the immense interest which the latter was in the habit of demanding from his debtors. “Do you not know, unhappy one,” said the faithful pastor, “ that if you .always insist on receiving 9 per cent, interest, you will shut the door of heaven against yourself for ever?” “Oh,” replied the usurer, “ looked at from heaven the figure 9 presents the appearance of a 6, and that much percentage is quite lawful! ”