The Eureka Stockade | Page 7

washing stuff, snug and wet with the sweat of my brow over the hole. Got twenty-eight pennyweights out of the load. Went back the third day, brisk and healthy, to cart down the other two loads. Washing stuff! gone: hole! gone: the gully itself! gone: the whole face of it had been clean shaved. Never mind, go ahead again. Got another claim on the surface-hill. No search for licence: thank God, had none. Nasty, sneaky, cheeky little things of flies got into my eyes: could see no more, no ways. Mud water one shilling a bucket! Got the dysentery; very bad. Thought, one night, to reef the yards and drop the anchor. Got on a better tack though. Promenaded up to the famous Bendigo. Had no particular objection to Celestials there, but had no particular taste for their tartaric water. Made up my mind to remember my days of innocence, and turned shepherd. Fine landscape this run on the Loddon: almost a match for Bella Italia, but there are too many mosquitoes. Dreamt, one day, I was drinking a tumbler of Loddon wine; and asserted that Providence was the same also in the south. It was a dream. The lands lay waste and desolate: not by nature; oh no; by hand of man. Bathing in these Loddon water-holes, superb. Tea out of this Loddon water magnificent. In spite of these horrible hot winds, this water is always fresh and delicious: how kind is Providence! One night lost the whole blessed lot of my flock. Myself, the shepherd, did not know, in the name of heavens, which way to turn. Got among the blacks, the whole Tarrang tribe in corrobory. Lord, what a rum sight for an old European traveller. Found natives very humane, though. My sheep right again, only the wild dogs had given them a good shake. Was satisfied that the Messiah the Jews are looking for will not be born in this bullock-drivers' land; any how, the angels won't announce the happy event of his birth to the shepherds. No more truck with sheep, and went to live with the blacks for a variation. Picked up, pretty soon, bits of their yabber-yabber. For a couple of years had tasted no fish; now I pounced on a couple of frogs, every couple of minutes. Thought their 'lubras' ugly enough; not so, however, the slender arms and small hands of their young girls, though the fingers be rather too long.
That will do now, in as much as the end of the story is this: That portion in my brains called "acquisitiveness" got the gold-fever again, and I started for old Ballaarat.

Chapter VI
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Sua Cuique Voluntas.
I was really delighted to see the old spot once more; Easter, 1854. I do not mean any offence to my fellow-diggers elsewhere; it struck me very forcibly, however, that our Ballaarat men look by far more decent, and our storekeepers, or grog-sellers if you like, undoubtedly more respectable.
Of a constitution not necessarily savage, I did not fail to observe that the fair ones had ventured now on a large scale to trust their virtue among us vagabonds, and on a hot-wind day, I patronized of course some refreshment room.
I met my old mate, and we determined to try the old game; but this time on the old principle of 'labor omnia vincit'--I pitched my tent right in the bush, and prophesied, that from my door I would see the golden hole in the gully below.
I spoke the truth, and such is the case this very day. Feast of the Assumption, 1855:--What sad events, however, were destined to pass exactly before the very door of my tent! Who could have told me on that Easter Sunday, that the unknown hill which I had chosen for my rest, would soon be called the Massacre Hill! That next Christmas, my mate would lie in the grave, somewhere forgotten: and I in the gaol! the rope round my neck!!
Let us keep in good spirits, good reader, we shall soon have to weep together enough.
Gravel Pits, famous for its strong muster of golden holes, and blasting shicers, was too deep for me. The old Eureka was itself again. The jewellers shops, which threatened to exhaust themselves in Canadian Gully, were again the talk of the day: and the Eureka gold dust was finer, purer, brighter, immensely darling. The unfaithful truants who had rushed to Bryant's Ranges, to knock their heads against blocks of granite, now hastened for the third time to the old spot, Ballaarat, determined to stick to it for life or death. English, German, and Scotch diggers, worked generally on the Gravel Pits, the Irish had their stronghold on the Eureka. The Americans fraternised with all the wide-awake, 'ubi caro ibi vultures.'
Here begins as a profession the precious game