perhaps, in speaking to a nigger--ever assumed a tone of insolent
superiority to any other man; if he did so, it was at the risk of
sudden death; even a hired man was habitually treated with civility.
The titles of colonel, judge, major, captain, and squire were in
constant use both in public and private; there was plenty of humorous
"chaff," but not insult. Colonels, judges, majors, captains, and
squires were civil, both to each other and to the rest of the
citizens. Robinson, in speaking to his fellow countryman, forgot for
a moment that he was not in dear old England, where he could settle a
little difference with his fists. But little Wilkins did not forget,
and he was not the kind of man to be pounded with impunity. He had in
his pocket a hunting knife, with which he could kill a hog--or a
man. When Robinson called him a skunk he felt in his pocket for the
knife, and put his thumb on the spring at the back of the buckhorn
handle, playing with it gently. It was not a British Brummagem
article, made for the foreign or colonial market, but a genuine
weapon that could be relied on at a pinch.
"Oh, I dare say you were a great man at home, weren't you?" he said.
"A lord maybe, or a landlord. But we don't have sich great men here,
and I am as good a man as you any day, skunk though I be."
Robinson had just thrown another shovelful of charcoal into the
furnace under his boiler, and he held up his shovel as if ready to
strike Williams, but it was never known whether he really intended to
strike or not.
The three other men standing near were quite amused with the dispute
of the two Englishmen, and were smiling pleasantly at their
foolishness. But little Wilkins did not smile, nor did he wait for
the shovel to come down on his head; he darted under it with his open
knife in the same manner as the Roman soldier went underneath the
dense spears of the Pyrrhic phalanx, and set to work. Robinson tried
to parry the blows with the handle of the shovel, but he made only a
poor fight; the knife was driven to the hilt into his body seven
times, then he threw down his shovel, and tried to save himself
behind the boiler, but it was too late; the dispute about England and
the States was settled.
Wilkins took his team home, then returned to Joliet and gave himself
into the custody of the squire, Hoosier Smith. At the inquest he was
committed to take his trial for murder, and did not get bail. His
wife left the farm, and with her two little boys lived in an old log
hut near the gaol. She brought with her two cows, which Wilkins
milked each morning as soon as Silas let him out of prison. I could
see him every day from the window of my room, and I often passed by
the hut when he was doing chores, chopping wood, or fetching water,
but I never spoke to him. He did not look happy or sociable, and I
could not think of anything pleasant to say by way of making his
acquaintance. After much observation and thought I came to the
conclusion that Sheriff Cunningham wanted his prisoner to go away; he
would not like to hang the man; the citizens would not take Wilkins
off his hands; if two fools chose to get up a little difficulty and
one was killed, it was their own look-out; and anyway they were only
foreigners. The fact was Wilkins was waiting for someone to purchase
his farm.
The court-house for Will County was within view of the gaol, at the
other side of the street, and one day I went over to look at it. The
judge was hearing a civil case, and I sat down to listen to the
proceedings. A learned counsel was addressing the jury. He talked
at great length in a nasal tone, slowly and deliberately; he had one
foot on a form, one hand in a pocket of his pants, and the other hand
rested gracefully on a volume of the statutes of the State of
Illinois. He had much to say about various horses running on the
prairie, and particularly about one animal which he called the
"Skemelhorne horse." I tried to follow his argument, but the
"Skemelhorne horse" was so mixed up with the other horses that I
could not spot him.
Semicircular seats of unpainted pine for the accommodation of the
public rose tier above tier, but most of them were empty. There were
present several gentlemen of the legal profession, but they kept
silence, and never interrupted the counsel's address. Nor did the
judge utter a word; he sat at his desk sideways, with his boots
resting on a chair. He wore neither wig nor gown, and had not even
put on his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. Neither had the lawyers.
If there was a court crier or constable present he was indistinguishable
from the rest of the audience.
Near the judge's desk there was a bucket of water and three tumblers
on a small table. It was a hot day. The counsel paused in his
speech, went to the table, and took a drink; a juryman left the box
and drank. The judge also came down from his seat, dipped a tumbler
in the bucket and quenched his thirst; one spectator after another
went to the bucket. There was equality and fraternity in the court
of law; the speech about the Skemelhorne horse went on with the
utmost gravity and decorum, until the nasal drawl of the learned
counsel put me to sleep.
On awakening, I went into another hall, in which dealings in real
estate were registered. Shelves fixed against the walls held huge
volumes lettered on the back. One of these volumes was on a table in
the centre of the hall, and in it the registrar was copying a deed.
Before him lay a pile of deeds with a lead weight on the top. A
farmer came in with a paper, on which the registrar endorsed a number
and placed at the bottom of the pile. There was no parchment used;
each document was a half-sheet foolscap size, party printed and
partly written. Another farmer came in, took up the pile and
examined the numbers to see how soon his deed was likely to be
copied, and if it was in its proper place according to the number
endorsed. The registrar was not fenced off from the public by a wide
counter; he was the servant of the citizens, and had to satisfy those
who paid him for his labours. His pay was a fixed number of cents
per folio, not dollars, nor pounds.
When I went back to gaol I found it deserted. Wilkins had sold his
farm and disappeared. His wife remained in the hut. Sheriff
Cunningham was still away among the Bluenoses, and Silas was 'functus
officio', having accomplished a general gaol delivery. He did not
pine away on account of the loss of his prisoners, nor grow any
thinner--that was impossible. I remained four days longer,
expecting something would happen; but nothing did happen, then I left
the gaol.
I wrote out two notices informing the public that I was willing to
sell my real estate; one of these I pasted up at the Post Office, the
other on the bridge over the Aux Plaines River. Next day a German
from Chicago agreed to pay the price asked, and we called on Colonel
Smith, the Squire. The Colonel filled in a brief form of transfer,
witnessed the payment of the money--which was in twenty-dollar gold
pieces, and he charged one dollar as his fee. The German would have
to pay about 35 cents for its registration. If the deed was lost or
stolen, he would insert in a local journal a notice of his intention
to apply for a copy, which would make the original of as little value
to anybody as a Provincial and Suburban bank note.
In Illinois, transfers of land were registered in each county town.
To buy or sell a farm was as easy as horse-stealing, and safer.
Usually, no legal help was necessary for either transaction.
By this time California had a rival; gold had been found in
Australia. I was fond of gold; I jingled the twenty dollar gold
pieces in my pocket, and resolved to look for more at the
fountainhead, by way of my native land. A railway from Chicago had
just reached Joliet, and had been opened three days before. It was
an invitation to start, and I accepted it.
Nobody ever loved his native land better than I do when I am away
from it. I can call to mind its innumerable beauties, and in fancy
saunter once more through the summer woods, among the bracken, the
bluebells, and the foxglove. I can wander by the banks of the Brock,
where the sullen trout hide in the clear depths of the pools. I can
walk along the path--the path to Paradise--still lined with the
blue-eyed speedwell and red campion; I know where the copse is
carpeted with the bluebell and ragged robin, where grow the alders,
and the hazels rich with brown nuts, the beeches and the oaks; where
the flower of the yellow broom blazes like gold in the noontide sun;
where the stockdove coos overhead in the ivy; where the kingfisher
darts past like a shaft of sapphire, and the water ouzel flies up
stream; where the pheasant glides out from his home in the wood to
feed on the headland of the wheat field; where the partridge broods
in the dust with her young; where the green lane is bordered by the
guelder-rose or wayfaring tree, the raspberry, strawberry, and
cherry, the wild garlic of starlike flowers, the woodruff, fragrant
as new-mown hay; the yellow pimpernel on the hedge side. I see in
the fields and meadows the bird's foot trefoil, the oxeye daisy, the
lady smocks, sweet hemlock, butterbur, the stitchwort, and the
orchis, the "long purpled" of Shakespeare. By the margin of the pond
the yellow iris hangs out its golden banners over which the dragon
fly skims. The hedgerows are gay with the full-blown dog-roses, the
bells of the bilberries droop down along the wood-side, and the
red-hipped bumble bees hum over them. Out of the woodland and up
Snaperake Lane I rise to the moorland, and then the sea coast comes
in sight, and the longing to know what lies beyond it.
I have been twice to see what lies beyond it, and when I return once
more my own land does not know me. There is another sea coast in
sight now, and when I sail away from it I hope to land on some one of
the Isles of the Blest.
I called on my oldest living love; she looked, I thought, even
younger than when we last parted. She was sitting before the fire
alone, pale and calm, but she gave me no greeting; she had forgotten
me. I took a chair, sat down beside her, and waited. A strange lass
with a fair face and strong bare arms came in and stared at me
steadily for a minute or two, but went away without saying a word. I
looked around the old house room that I knew so well, with its floor
of flags from Buckley Delph, scoured white with sandstone. There
stood, large and solid, the mealark of black oak, with the date,
1644, carved just below the heavy lid, more than 200 years old, and
as sound as ever. The sloping mirror over the chest of drawers was
still supported by the four seasons, one at each corner. Above it
was Queen Caroline, with the crown on her head, and the sceptre in
her hand, seated in a magnificent Roman chariot, drawn by the lion
and the unicorn. That team had tortured my young soul for years. I
could never understand why that savage lion had not long ago devoured
both the Queen and the unicorn.
My old love was looking at me, and at last she put one hand on my
knee, and said:
"It's George."
"Yes," I said, "it's George."
She gazed a while into the fire and said:
"Alice is dead."
"Yes, Alice is dead."
"And Jenny is dead."
"Yes, and Jenny. They are at the bottom of the sea."
In that way she counted a long list of the dead, which she closed
by saying:
"They are all gone but Joe."
She had been a widow more than twenty-five years. She was a young
woman, tall and strong, before Bonaparte, Wellington, the United
States, or Australia, had ever been heard of in Lancashire, and from
the top of a stile she had counted every windmill and chimney in
Preston before it was covered with the black pall of smoke from the
cotton-mills.
AMONG THE DIGGERS IN 1853.
I.
I lost a summer in 1853, and had two winters instead, one in England,
the other in Australia.
It was cold in the month of May as we neared Bendigo. We were a
mixed party of English, Irish, and Scotch, twelve in number, and
accompanied by three horse-teams, carrying tubs, tents, and
provisions. We also had plenty of arms wherewith to fight the
bush-rangers, but I did not carry any myself; I left the fighting
department to my mate, Philip, and to the others who were fond of
war. Philip was by nature and training as gentle and amiable as a
lamb, but he was a Young Irelander, and therefore a fighter on
principle. O'Connell had tried moral suasion on the English
Government long enough, and to no purpose, so Philip and his fiery
young friends were prepared to have recourse to arms. The arms he
was now carrying consisted of a gleaming bowie knife, and two pistols
stuck in his belt. The pistols were good ones; Philip had tried them
on a friend in the Phoenix Park the morning after a ball at the
Rotunda, and had pinked his man--shot him in the arm. It is
needless to say that there was a young lady in the case; I don't know
what became of her, but during the rest of her life she could boast
of having been the fair demoiselle on whose account the very last
duel was fought in Ireland. Then the age of chivalry went out. The
bowie knife was the British article bought in Liverpool. It would
neither kill a man nor cut a beef-steak, as was proved by experience.
We met parties of men from Bendigo--unlucky diggers, who offered to
sell their thirty-shilling licenses. By this time my cash was low;
my twenty-dollar gold pieces were all consumed. While voyaging to
the new Ophir, where gold was growing underfoot, I could not see any
sound sense in being niggardly. But when I saw a regular stream of
disappointed men with empty pockets offering their monthly licenses
for five shillings each within sight of the goldfield, I had
misgivings, and I bought a license that had three weeks to run from
William Matthews. Ten other men bought licenses, but William
Patterson, a canny Scotchman, said he would chance it.
It was about midday when we halted near Bendigo Creek, opposite a
refreshment tent. Standing in front of it was a man who had passed
us on the road, and lit his pipe at our fire. When he stooped to
pick up a firestick I saw the barrel of a revolver under his coat.
He was accompanied by a lady on horseback, wearing a black riding
habit. Our teamsters called him Captain Sullivan. He was even then
a man well known to the convicts and the police, and was supposed to
be doing a thriving business as keeper of a sly grog shop, but in
course of time it was discovered that his main source of profit was
murder and robbery. He was afterwards known as "The New Zealand
Murderer," who turned Queen's evidence, sent his mates to the
gallows, but himself died unhanged.
While we stood in the track, gazing hopelessly over the endless heaps
of clay and gravel covering the flat, a little man came up and spoke
to Philip, in whom he recognised a fellow countryman. He said:
"You want a place to camp on, don't you?"
"Yes," replied Philip, "we have only just come up from Melbourne."
"Well, come along with me," said the stranger.
He was a civil fellow, and said his name was Jack Moore. We went
with him in the direction of the first White Hill, but before
reaching it we turned to the left up a low bluff, and halted in a
gully where many men were at work puddling clay in tubs.
After we had put up our tent, Philip went down the gully to study the
art of gold digging. He watched the men at work; some were digging
holes, some were dissolving clay in tubs of water by stirring it
rapidly with spades, and a few were stooping at the edge of
water-holes, washing off the sand mixed with the gold in milk pans.
Philip tried to enter into conversation with the diggers. He stopped
near one man, and said:
"Good day, mate. How are you getting along?"
The man gazed at him steadily, and replied "Go you to hell," so
Philip moved on. The next man he addressed sent him in the same
direction, adding a few blessings; the third man was panning off, and
there was a little gold visible in his pan. He was gray, grim, and
hairy. Philip said:
"Not very lucky to-day, mate?"
The hairy man stood up, straightened his back, and looked at Philip
from head to foot.
"Lucky be blowed. I wish I'd never seen this blasted place. Here
have I been sinking holes and puddling for five months, and hav'n't
made enough to pay my tucker and the Government license, thirty bob a
month. I am a mason, and I threw up twenty-eight bob a day to come
to this miserable hole. Wherever you come from, young man, I advise
you to go back there again. There's twenty thousand men on Bendigo,
and I don't believe nineteen thousand of 'em are earning their grub."
"I can't well go back fifteen thousand miles, even if I had money to
take me back," answered Philip.
"Well, you might walk as far as Melbourne," said the hairy man, "and
then you could get fourteen bob a day as a hodman; or you might take
a job at stone breaking; the Government are giving 7s. 6d. a yard for
road metal. Ain't you got any trade to work at?"
"No, I never learned a trade, I am only a gentleman." He felt mean
enough to cry.
"Well, that's bad. If you are a scholar, you might keep school, but
I don't believe there's half-a-dozen kids on the diggin's. They'd be
of no mortal use except to tumble down shafts. Fact is, if you are
really hard up, you can be a peeler. Up at the camp they'll take on
any useless loafer wot's able to carry a carbine, and they'll give
you tucker, and you can keep your shirt clean. But, mind, if you do
join the Joeys, I hope you'll be shot. I'd shoot the hull blessed
lot of 'em if I had my way. They are nothin' but a pack of robbers."
The hairy man knew something of current history and statistics, but
he had not a pleasant way of imparting his knowledge.
Picaninny Gully ended in a flat, thinly timbered, where there were
only a few diggers. Turning to the left, Philip found two men near a
waterhole hard at work puddling. When he bade them good-day, they
did not swear at him, which was some comfort. They were brothers,
and were willing to talk, but they did not stop work for a minute.
They had a large pile of dirt, and were making hay while the sun
shone--that is, washing their dirt as fast as they could while the
water lasted. During the preceding summer they had carted their
wash-dirt from the gully until rain came and filled the waterhole.
They said they had not found any rich ground, but they could now make
at least a pound a day each by constant work. Philip thought they
were making more, as they seemed inclined to sing small; in those
days to brag of your good luck might be the death of you.
While Philip was away interviewing the diggers, Jack showed me where
he had worked his first claim, and had made 400 pounds in a few days.
"You might mark off a claim here and try it," he said. "I think I
took out the best gold, but there may be a little left still
hereabout." I pegged off two claims, one for Philip, and one for
myself, and stuck a pick in the centre of each. Then we sat down on
a log. Six men came up the gully carrying their swags, one of them
was unusually tall. Jack said: "Do you see that big fellow there?
His name is McKean. He comes from my part of Ireland. He is a
lawyer; the last time I saw him he was in a court defending a
prisoner, and now the whole six feet seven of him is nothing but a
dirty digger."
"What made you leave Ireland, Jack?" I asked.
"I left it, I guess, same as you did, because I couldn't live in it.
My father was a fisherman, and he was drowned. Mother was left with
eight children, and we were as poor as church mice. I was the
oldest, so I went to Belfast and got a billet on board ship as cabin
boy. I made three voyages from Liverpool to America, and was boxed
about pretty badly, but I learned to handle the ropes. My last port
there was Boston, and I ran away and lived with a Yankee farmer named
Small. He was a nigger driver, he was, working the soul out of him
early and late. He had a boat, and I used to take farm produce in it
across the bay to Boston, where the old man's eldest son kept a
boarding-house. There was a daughter at home, a regular high-flier.
She used to talk to me as if I was a nigger. One day when we were
having dinner, she was asking me questions about Ireland, and about
my mother, sisters, and brothers. Then I got mad, thinking how poor
they were, and I could not help them. 'Miss Small,' I said, 'my
mother is forty years old, and she has eight children, and she looks
younger than you do, and has not lost a tooth.'
"Miss Small, although quite young, was nearly toothless, so she was
mad enough to kill me; but her brother Jonathan was at table, and he
took my part, saying, 'Sarves you right, Sue;' why can't you leave
Jack alone?'
"But Sue made things most unpleasant, and I told Jonathan I couldn't
stay on the farm, and would rather go to sea again. Jonathan said
he, too, was tired of farming, and he would go with me. He could
manage a boat across Boston Harbour, but he had never been to sea.
Next time there was farm stuff to go to Boston he went with me; we
left the boat with his brother, and shipped in a whaler bound for the
South Seas. I used to show him how to handle the ropes, to knot and
splice, and he soon became a pretty good hand, though he was not
smart aloft when reefing. His name was Small, but he was not a small
man; he was six feet two, and the strongest man on board, and he
didn't allow any man to thrash me, because I was little. After
eighteen months' whaling he persuaded me to run away from the ship at
Hobarton; he said he was tired of the greasy old tub; so one night we
bundled up our swags, dropped into a boat, and took the road to
Launceston, where we expected to find a vessel going to Melbourne.
When we were half-way across the island, we called just before
sundown at a farmhouse to see if we could get something to eat, and
lodging for the night. We found two women cooking supper in the
kitchen, and Jonathan said to the younger one, 'Is the old man at
home?' She replied quite pertly:
"'Captain Massey is at home, if that's what you mean by 'old man.'
"'Well, my dear,' said Jonathan, 'will you just tell him that we are
two seamen on our way to Launceston, and we'd like to have a word
with him.'
"'I am not your dear,' she replied, tossing her head, and went out.
After a while she returned, and said: 'Captain Massey wanted to
speak to the little man first.' That was me.
"I went into the house, and was shown into the parlour, where the
captain was standing behind a table. There was a gun close to his
hand in a corner, two horse pistols on a shelf, and a sword hanging
over them. He said: 'Who are you, where from, and whither bound?'
to which I replied:
"'My name is John Moore; me and my mate have left our ship, a whaler,
at Hobarton, and we are bound for Launceston.'
"'Oh, you are a runaway foremast hand are you? Then you know
something about work on board ship.' He then put questions to me
about the work of a seaman, making sail, and reefing, about masts,
yards, and rigging, and finished by telling me to box a compass. I
passed my examination pretty well, and he told me to send in the
other fellow. He put Jonathan through his sea-catechism in the same
way, and then said we could have supper and a shake-down for the
night.
"After supper the young lady sat near the kitchen fire sewing, and
Jonathan took a chair near her and began a conversation. He said:
"I must beg pardon for having ventured to address you as 'my dear,'
on so short an acquaintance, but I hope you will forgive my boldness.
Fact is, I felt quite attached to you at first sight.' And so on.
If there was one thing that Jonathan could do better than another it
was talking. The lady was at first very prim and reserved; but she
soon began to listen, smiled, and even tittered. A little boy about
two years old came in and stood near the fire. Having nothing else
to do, I took him on my knee, and set him prattling until we were
very good friends. Then an idea came into my head. I said:
"'I guess, Jonathan, this little kid is about the same age as your
youngest boy in Boston, ain't he?'
"Of course, Jonathan had no boy and was not married, but the sudden
change that came over that young lady was remarkable. She gave
Jonathan a look of fury, jumped up from her seat, snatched up her
sewing, and bounced out of the kitchen. The old man came in, and
told us to come along, and he would show us our bunks. We thought he
was a little queer, but he seemed uncommonly kind and anxious to make
us comfortable for the night. He took us to a hut very strongly
built with heavy slabs, left us a lighted candle, and bade us
good-night. After he closed the door we heard him put a padlock on
it; he was a kindly old chap, and did not want anybody to disturb us
during the night, and we soon fell fast asleep. Next morning he came
early and called us to breakfast. He stayed with us all the time,
and when we had eaten, said:
"'Well, have you had a good breakfast?'
"Jonathan spoke:
"'Yes, old man, we have. You are a gentleman; you have done yourself
proud, and we are thankful, ain't we, Jack? You are the best and
kindest old man we've met since we sailed from Boston. And now I
think it's time we made tracks for Launceston. By-bye, Captain.
Come along, Jack.'