"Our fortune lies upon this jump."
--Antony and Cleopatra.
The following year, about the same pleasant spring season, I made out a
second goldfields visit, in company with my late friend, Mr. W.M. Bell,
senior partner of the early firm of Bells and Buchanan. This time I went
further inland, and in the more northerly direction of Mount Alexander
and Bendigo, as considerable regions around were then loosely called,
and which are now represented respectively by the large municipalities
of Castlemaine and Sandhurst. Vast changes had taken place in the colony
since my Ballarat visit. There had been, in the first place, arrivals in
multitudes, first from the surrounding colonies, and then from Home,
and, in a lesser influx, from the Cape, America, and parts of Europe.
The tide of such threatening dimensions from China was later on. The
roads, such as they were, were crowded with passengers; and with
traffic, chiefly in flour, to the starving diggers, the carriage of
which to Bendigo ran up to 100 pounds a ton. Indeed, such was the cost
of carriage that some of us estimated that a single year's total would
equal the cost of making a railway. Of course the railway, draining the
labour market, could only itself have been at proportionate cost.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trenchard, a Melbourne solicitor, projected "The
Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway," an enterprise
which, after some months' flutter of chequered life, expired for want of
support from the over-busy colonists, who had other far more immediately
pressing needs and chances for their money.
The "gold escort" had been established by this time, with an armed
guard, which at times included "native police," a force which had been
the best, if not the only, success as yet in our "civilizing" efforts
with the aborigines. The art of digging had greatly advanced since my
Ballarat visit. At Bendigo I inspected the "White Hills," where there
was already regular shaft-sinking to depths approaching 100 feet. The
White Hills were so-called from a large ejection, piled up in white
mounds of a light-coloured thick bed of the auriferous drifts, in which
unprecedented quantities of gold had been found. Descending one of the
shafts, I was shown the chief source of this gold, namely, a thin seam
of small quartz grit, hardly two inches in thickness, and of the white
quartz hue, excepting the lowest half inch, which was browned with iron.
This lowest half inch had almost all the gold, and the very lowest part
of it, where the iron-brown darkened almost to black, was literally
crowded with gold particles. The diggers now always looked for the most
gold where the quartz drift showed most of iron browning. Mr. Selwyn had
not yet explained to us our Australian gold features and those gold
"constants" of Murchison, which had to sustain so severe a shaking in
Australia. I scraped out gold grains with my nails, and a good many with
a knife within a minute. When I told the claim owners, that here was
unlimited gold, and asked what they intended to do with it all, they
pointed to the superincumbent mass of white stuff, which was either
absolutely sterile, or, what was practically the same, had insufficient
gold to pay even a run through the wash when ejected. The case seemed
not unlike that of the thin seams of flint nodules (say nuggets) which
characterize the thick chalk strata of South England, within which most
or all the silicious matter of the entire bed has been somehow brought
together. I understood that this remarkable gold seam gave out not long
after, and that, thereupon, the marvellous yield of Bendigo was
seriously diminished.
As we approached this already great and busy goldfield, when the hum of
its business life was just breaking upon our ears, but without any other
disturbing intrusion to interfere with the universally indigenous scene,
a large kangaroo--the "old man," or largest species--started up amongst
the gum-tree underwood a little ahead of us, and bounded away in
magnificent style. But a day or two afterwards, as we were leaving
Bendigo, another feature of the colony, not indigenous and by no means
so pleasant was brought up to our minds to their considerable discomfort
for the moment. We were just clear of goldfields sounds and company, and
involved in the utter solitude of the primeval bush, when we espied a
party approaching us on the road. They numbered five, all on horseback.
Somehow, the circumstances considered, we had all, independently,
concluded that there was no small chance of their being bushrangers; for
already the towns and goldfields--the latter, of course, mostly--swarmed
with these unmitigated ruffians, arrived chiefly from Tasmania. We
discussed the chances--three, four, possibly even five to one in our
favour--and considered what we should do in case even five to one failed
us in the lot. What we COULD do was the practical question. We had also,
I think, five of a party, and Bell was a huge, strong fellow, able for a
couple of ordinary mortals; but what availed all that against
desperadoes each doubly armed with revolver and rifle. We calmed
ourselves as best we could as we mutually approached; our salute was
cordially returned, and then we found that we owed an ample apology for
having for once so grievously mistaken honest men.
Another goldfields feature was of the most pleasing and inspiring
character. In no goldfield we had then visited did we ever meet with so
much as one drunken person. With most laudable prescience, our
authorities had prohibited the ingress of and the dealing in any
intoxicating drink on all proclaimed goldfields. The good order in
consequence was quite marvellous, and we seemed as if in some earthly
paradise, where mankind had, as with one consent, dropped the worst of
human vices and passions. But this was only so far as drink and
drunkenness were concerned; for rude circumstances made rude men, to say
no more of the pervading convict element. Nor were the goldfields free
from "sly grog selling," as it is called. Still, the difficulties put in
the way kept them thus sober. Of course, outside the goldfields' limits
there was drunken riot enough, intensified, no doubt, by the enforced
sobriety within. Troops of diggers, or their employees, with their
pockets full of gold, would start for town, or for the nearest "public,"
there to run up a score till the whole "pile" had vanished. We were told
of one country hotel called "The Porcupine," whose keeper was making
40,000 pounds a year of net profit. These riotous crowds, at each
public-house, indulged in such shocking excesses of language and conduct
as to make mere drunkenness the very innocence of the case. But withal I
confess to a greatly disappointed feeling when, having left the colony
on a Home visit early in 1853, and returned late in 1854, I found that
the influence of the great "spirit interest" had succeeded in removing
all restriction from the goldfields. By this time, however, the police
and other authority were better organized, so that there was a very
considerable mitigation of bad effects.