Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/187

 The glowing reports concerning the richness of the Steiglitz diggings is fully corroborated by the last returns, and our visit to them. They are situated about twenty-five miles from Geelong; the country around, though well wooded, is very fertile, and forest glades alternate with rich open plains for nearly the whole distance. Seven miles from Meredith, near the station of Lallal, you arrive at the Eclipse Inn, one of the prettiest places in Victoria of the kind, with its pretty verandah embowered in jasmine and woodbine. After leaving here, you come to the forest country, and two or three miles further on, in a deep gulley, the diggings commence.



Although some alluvial workings were commenced last season, the population, now numbering upwards of a thousand, are employed in mining quartz, of which there are four reefs. All the claims that have