But they were all alike in having enormous advertisement-boards, some high, some broad, some sloping, on which were declared the merits of the tradesmen who administered within to the wants of mining humanity.

And they had generally assumed most singular names for themselves: 'The Old Stick-in-the-Mud Soft Goods Store,' 'The Polyeuka Stout Depot,' 'Number Nine Flour Mills,' and so on,--all of which were very unintelligible to our friends till they learned that these were the names belonging to certain gold-mining claims which had been opened in the neighbourhood of Nobble.

The street itself was almost more perilous to vehicles than the slush of the forest-tracks, so deep were the holes and so uncertain the surface.

When Caldigate informed the driver that they wanted to be taken as far as Henniker's hotel, the man said that he had given up going so far as that for the last two months, the journey being too perilous.

So they shouldered their portmanteaus and struggled forth down the street.