'If you had you'd realize that the onpleasantest thing that kin happen to
a man this side o' the great hot finish is to get his chin whiskers full
o' tar. In my native town tarring the man you disagreed with was a
favourite amusement.'
'But there is no tar here.'
'Well, no; but I guess this has become instinctive.' He passed a hand
over his fat, smooth face.
Chow-baiting was a later development. The Chinese and Mongolians came
early to Victorian rushes, and remained long. They were never
discoverers, never pioneers, but, following quickly upon the heels of the
white prospectors, they frequently succeeded in securing the richest
claims in the alluvial beds, and from the first they were hated with an
instinctive racial hatred, that became inveterate when the whites found
in Sin Fat a rival antagonistic in all his tastes and views, in most of
his virtues, and in all his pet vices, bar one. The Chows were
industrious diggers; they worked with ant-like assiduity from daylight to
dark, and often long after that were to be seen at their holes, toiling
by the light of lanterns.
They had vices of their own, and not nice ones, but they gave way to only
one of the amiable little social weaknesses in which the Europeans
indulged, and displayed the overpowering passion for gambling that has
since become characteristic of the China-men in all their Australian
camps. They had no other amusement, and desired no leisure; they were
squalid in their habits, and herded like animals; they were barren of
aspirations, and their industry was brutish (though of a kind still
belauded), since it left no leisure for humanizing exercises, no room for
sweetness and light. They were law-abiding, but that was not a virtue to
commend itself to the Victorian diggers at this date, and they were only
law-abiding because of their slavish instincts and their lack of
courageous attributes. The antipathy bred then survives in the third
generation of Australians, but is less demonstrative now that laws have
been enacted in accordance with the racial instinct.
The Pagans had secured a big stretch of the field close to the claim
pegged out by Mike and Josh Peetree, and they were thought to have
possession of the most profitable part of the alluvial deposit, but
worked their claims with great caution, and were as secretive as so many
mopokes, so that the whites really had no idea what their ground was
like, excepting such as the experienced miners could gather from the
general trend of the richer wash dirt. Extraordinary stories of the
success of the Chinese were in circulation, and provoked strenuous
profanity and exceeding bitterness in the Europeans, Particularly in
those whose luck was not good. There was already talk of a white rising
to drive the heathen from the field, and Done found his mates entirely in
sympathy with the common sentiment; to him; also the Celestials became
exceedingly repellent as he grew more familiar with their habits and
manners, although he was opposed to making differences of race an excuse
for wholesale robbery.
The Chinese camp was strictly apart from that of the whites, and there
was no intercourse between the two parties, Levi Long being the only man
who seemed attracted to the squalid huts into which the Mongolians packed
themselves by some process mysterious to the Caucasian understanding. Men
in whom gambling was an absorbing passion could never be wholly
objectionable to a man of his peculiar principles; but he came back from
his third visit to their camp with his hands sunk to the bottoms of his
pockets and a troubled look on his smooth countenance.
'They've sprung a new game on me down there,' he said to a crowd in the
shanty, nodding his head back. 'I thought I'd picked up something about
it, an' it's cost me every bit o' glitter I had on me to demonstrate to
my entire satisfaction that I was quite wrong. I haven't got a scale
left. I'm feelin' like a little boy who's been tryin' to teach his gran'
mother all about eggs.'
'Fantan?' said Burton.
'Somethin' o' that character an' complexion. Boys, I begin to think that
p'r'aps after all we're doin' wrong in submittin' to the encroachments o'
the alien.'
Hear, hear!' shouted half a dozen voices.
'It strikes me that the inferior race that can skin Levi Long to his pelt
in a gamble is providin' no fit associates for guileless an' confidin'
children o' the Occident, like yourselves, f'r instance.'
Long's professional pride was hurt; the idea of being beaten at his own
business by a pack of unlettered Asiatics made him sad. 'It kinder
destroys a man's faith in himself he said. As a result of his eloquence
the miners knotted windlass-ropes together, and stole down upon the
Chinese camp in the small and early hours of morning. There were twenty
men on each cable, and one lot kept to the right of the camp, the other
to the left, and, going noiselessly, they dragged the ropes through the
frail huts and kennels in which the Mongols were sleeping, mowing them
down as if they had been houses of cards, and towing an occasional
screaming Chow out of the ruins, rolled in his filthy bedding. The whole
camp of huddled shanties was razed to the ground in about two minutes,
and the diggers drew off, without having given any clue to the cause of
the disaster, leaving the heathen raging in the darkness.
At about six o'clock Jim Done and his mates were awakened and brought
pell-mell from their bunks by the sound of a great commotion coming from
the direction of the Chinese camp. They saw the Chinamen gathered near
the ruins of their dwellings, evidently in a state of tremendous
excitement. A number of them were jumping about, gesticulating wildly,
and uttering shrill cries, while half a dozen or so, armed with stout
sticks, were energetically beating an object that lay upon the ground.
'By thunder! it's a man they're murdering!' cried Jim.
Mike and the Peetrees laughed aloud. 'Not a bit of it,' said Burton.
'They're only bastin' their Joss!'
'What's that?'
'They're beatin' their god. They keep a few of them little pottery or
wooden gods round, an' if things don't go quite as well as they think
they ought to go, they up an' take it out o' the god just then on the
job, by knocking splinters off him.'
'They argue that Joss ain't been attendin' to his part o' the contract,'
said Harry Peetree, 'an' they belt him for neglectin' his business. Saw a
lot o' them blow up a big Joss at Bendigo 'cause their dirt was pannin'
out badly.'
By this time the Europeans were all up and out, enjoying the spectacle,
and Simpson's Ranges echoed their laughter, it being assumed that the
Celestials' gods were being punished for the sins of those diggers who
had wrecked the camp. Jim and Con joined a few curious men sauntering
down to take a nearer view of the ceremony.
'Wha' for?' Con asked one grave Chow who was looking on.
'Welly much bad Joss!' answered the Celestial composedly. 'Let um earth
shake-shake, all sem this, knockum poo' Chinaman's house down.'
A favourite way of tormenting the Chows was to rob them of their
pigtails. A Mongolian's pride in his pigtail is very great, and his grief
over the loss of it seems to be tinged with a superstitious fear. As soon
as the diggers were made aware of this they vied with each other in
reaving Sin Fat and hi brethren of their cherished adornments, and the
rape of the lock was a daily occurrence at Simpson Ranges. No Red Indian
was ever prouder of his trophy of scalps than the diggers were of their
collection of tails, and the woe that fell upon the de spoiled Asiatics
was most profound, but touched no sympathetic chords in the callous
hearts of the miners.
It is not to be assumed that the Chows bore all their afflictions like
lambs. They had methods of their own of getting even, and were efficient
tent thieves, and peculiarly expert in the art of rifling tips, although
this was not proved against them until the eleventh hour. They fought
back on occasions, and one morning a big Californian was found near their
claims, beaten almost to death. Evidently the digger had deserved his
fate, and had been caught stealing wash-dirt from Sin Fat's tips; but his
denials were readily and gladly accepted by the whites, and another
excellent reason for demolishing the Chows was registered in the minds of
the men.
Being up just after daybreak one morning, or not yet having gone to bunk,
Levi Long was the unsuspected witness of acts of Chinese iniquity that
brought about the climax of the anti-Chinese agitation. There was no
water-supply at Simpson's Ranges, and the wash-dirt had to be carted four
miles to the river at Carisbrook, to be puddled and washed. This morning
the Chinamen were busy bright and early, carting their wash away; but the
Celestials, always frugal, to save as much as possible the expense of
drays, each carried two hide-bags of dirt suspended on a bamboo, and
followed the loaded carts through the diggings with the peculiar trot
they always adopted when bearing burdens. What Long noticed was that
every now and again, when passing the tips on the claims of the
Europeans, the sly Celestials dug their shovels into the wash-dirt, and
threw a few shovelfuls on to their own loads or into the bags they
carried. Keeping himself in concealment, Levi quietly awakened a few of
the diggers, and drew their attention to what was going on. The Chinamen
chattered noisily as they passed, and the movements of the crowd were
evidently artfully designed to cover the depredations of the thieves.
Within a quarter of an hour every white man on the field knew what had
been going on, and now the miners thought they understood the motive of
the Chows in always carting their dirt away in the gray hours of morning,
before the too-confiding Europeans were up and about. This was the last
straw. A meeting was held very quietly, and, to Done's astonishment, his
mate took an active part in the proceedings.
'The lepers have got to change their spots, I guess,' said Long. 'Is that
understood, men?'
'You bet!' answered a prominent digger, and the crowd uttered a unanimous
'Hear, hear!' that left no room for doubt.
'Then, get ready!' cried Mike. 'Every man get a pick-handle. There's to
be no killin'. We'll drive 'em out like sheep. If the troopers interfere,
unhorse them, an' bolt the nags. Meet here again as quick's you can.'
The miners scattered, and within half an hour the whole body of the white
diggers marched upon the Chinamen remaining on the claims.