LETTER FROM MOUNT BROWNE.

Kumara Times, Issue 1596, 8 November 1881, Page 2

LETTER FROM MOUNT BROWNE.

The following letter from Mr T. P> Costello, addressed to a friend in Kutnara, has been kindly handed to us for publication. It may serve as a caution to those who are ever and anon in> pressed with the idea that distance lends enchantment to the view. It is dated Granite Hush, Mount Browne Goldfield, September 25, 1881 : Dear friend —I told you I would not write until 1 got to some place where I was likely to remain some time. Well, I think I've got to that place now ; 'for to go back to the road we came is just about as bad as remaining here. I cannot see anything but starvation sticking out in either case; that is, if we dout have rain here soon. It" we had a fall of rain a man might make a few pounds, as there is a good bit of ground here, would pay a little if there was water on the ground. It will not pay for carting, as it costs ten shillings for the smallest load to take it to the water, which is live miles away. There has not been any rain here for the last five months, and I am told they are sometimes three years without rain in this part of the country. However, I ara here now and I will have to make the best of it. I had just speut my last sixpence for a bucket of water yesterday, when Duucuu Martin, the baker, came and told me that he had two of three days' work for me to put a fly over his bakery, so that will keep me ail>at for Hiiother week or two. When I left ihe West Coast, I thought I could not get to a worse place; but I believe I have got out of the frying-pan into the lire, in every sense of the word, for" 1 could make tucker there without being roasted or my eyes being eaten out with flies ; but it looks as though I was not going to do it here, for I have been prospecting the last fortnight without getting a prospect that .would pay anything. It takes a man here longer to try a prospect than it does to sink a shaft, which runs from two to six feet deep. After getting the bottom you scrape it up, put it on the top to dry, then you take a dish aud you go through the process of dry blowing, that is, you take the stuff up in your hands aud let it trickle though the fingers back into the dish so as the wind (if there is any) will blow the fine light stuff away, like wiunowiug corn ; when you get it reduced to a small quantity you blow the remaiuder out of the dish with your breath—-a veryslow and unpleasant way of looking for gold. There are a good number of men here who do nothing else but dry blow the surface from one week's end to the other, and some of them are making wages but anything that would pay five; or six pennyweights a week was taken up long before I reached here; and nothing new has opened up siuce I arrived, so it is not a very bright loot out a-head, as there is not the slightest chance of getting anything else to do here. The township consists of one hotel, three stores, two blacksmiths, two bakers, and eight or nine shanties, and a billiard-table, which is idle half the time ; in fact, there is no money spending in the town at all. There is a man who has got a piano in one of the shanties and it is only kept going on Saturday nights. There is Con. Boyal playing the flute in the hotel bar, with another man who plays the fiddle. They draw a crowd to the door \ but that is about all. I had uo idea of coming here when I landed in Melbourne, but the papers gave such good accounts of it that we altered our minds, and, iustead of going to Temora we started for here. When I say we, I mean Magee, Dick Long, John Evans, and myself. We parted with Long, who served us a "dirty trick, at Wilcannia 220 miles from here. This place is about 750 miles inland. From Melbourne we come 201 miles by rail to Denilqnin ; from there to Hay by coach is 80 miles, and we walked 480 miles, from Hay to here, aud a very dreary walk we found it—noth'ng but plain after plain, without a tree, river, or lake, or anything to break the monotony, only a wild turkev or a

snake now and'then. Speaking of suakes, I must tell you I bad one for a bed-fellow one evening on the road. The night we slept at Hay, we were shown some very hard beds, so we asked if they had no better beds than them. We were told they had better beds, but they were eighteen-penny heds, so on the road when we could get a few leaves or tussocks of grass to sleep on, wo used to say we had an eigbteenponny bed ; and when we had nothing but the hard ground, we used to call that a shilling bed. Well, after being a week on the road we camped early among some scrub, pulled a lot of leaves and laid down a fine bed so in the evening we laid down on the top of the blankets in the tent. I said we have a two-shilling bed to-night boys ! "We did not sleep in it though. After a time I felt something moving under my back, but took no notice, thinking it was a twig under the blankets. Presently I sat up and looked behind, and there was a whip snake about four feet long coiled up on the top of the blankets right under the small of my hack I didn't stop long; the snake made for one end of the tent; I made for the other. As I was going I called out " Snake !" Dick was dozing off to sleep, but he woke up just in time to see the tail of it go by Ms nose ; he did not stop long after me. Anyhow we pulled bed and killed the snake. But he spoiled our two-shilling bed for the rest of the journey, which took us four weeks altogether. Magee aud Evans started on the road back two days ago. They sold a gun for £l, and thai is all they had to start with. I had four shillings, but I preferred to remain here. But I will write again shortly.