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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 291, 9 December 1867, Page 2

Respecting the Queensland goldfields the Australasian says that at length we have something official about the new goldfield on the Mary-river, known as Gympie-creek. Mr Davidson, the Queensland gold commissioner, who is understood to be no mean adept in geology, informs us that the country being worked consists of a low greenstone ridge, the surface of which is strewn with loose stones, and the top covered with quartz, pebbles, and boulders, containing particles of gold. The ridge is intersected with a number of small, shallow, rocky water-channels, and it is in these small channels that the bulk of the gold has been obtained hitherto, the miners having confined their operations simply to ' gully-raking,' by which is understood laying bare the bed-rock, picking out the coarser pieces of gold found in the debris occupying the crevices, and stacking the debris and surface-earth on one side for puddling and cradling as soon as a sufficiency of water can be obtained for the purpose. From one of these small water-channels, during the preceding week, three men have obtained 180oz. of coarse gold, including a nngget of 4lbs. A little rain had fallen, enabling the miners to wash some of their stacked-up stuff, and the yield was in some cases as high as 6oz. to the load. Of course, as on all goldfields, there are many unlucky ones who get nothing. The Queensland papers have as a rule shown extreme caution in praising up their new gold-field, having no doubt a very vivid remembrance of Canoona and other later failures in permanency of yield.

The Rev. Henry Beecher, in a serial which he is writing in the New York Ledger, discusses, through a negro character of the story, the probabilities of horses going to heaven. Hiram points out that white and red and black and grey horses are spoken of in the Revelations, that death rides on a pale horse, probably a cream color, and that in the 9th chapter mention is made of an army of 200,000 horsemen. 'Now,' asks Hiram, 'where could they get so many horses in heaven, if none of them that die off here go there? It is my opinion that a good horse is a darned sight likelier to go to heaven than a bad man.'

Why ought a dull man not to object to being horsewhipped?— Because it would make him smart.

'It is a curious fact,' says some entomologists, ' that it is only the female mosquito that torments us.' A bachelor says it is not at all curious.

Who is the first convert to Ritualism mentioned in the Bible? — Eve; for first she was Eve-angelical and then she took to Vestments.

A patient is in a bad way when his disease is acute and his doctor isn't.