GOLD-MINING
One day I heard that gold had been found in a creek on the western fall
of the coast range, about forty miles from here, and that a “rush”
had already set in, so I determined to go up and see what was going
on. I was delayed for a few days by the flooded state of the creeks
between here and the diggings. While I was waiting I was joined by Dick
Absolon, formerly in our employ as stockman, and now on his way to the
new rush.
Dick Absolon is the _beau idéal_ of a colonist. Brave as a lion, which
animal he somewhat resembles in appearance, gentle as a child, with a
capacity for hard work that nothing can satisfy, and a cheerfulness
that no run of bad luck can discourage, whatever he starts at he is a
bad man to beat. His brother Jack, in every way as good a bit of stuff
as himself, was already on the diggings waiting for him. They both
came to the colony very young, and, through many ups and downs, have
stuck together ever since. To use an Americanism, they have been pulled
through all sorts of knotholes; stockriding, carrying on the road,
contract-fencing, gold-mining, copper-mining, managing stations, they
have worked hard at all of them, and finally, having made a rise, they
went into sugar-growing in the Mackay district at a bad time, and lost
all they had made.
Altogether they are sad examples of the fact that it is possible, even
in Australia, for a shrewd sensible man to work hard and keep sober,
and still to be pursued by a run of bad luck, that leaves him no richer
in pocket than when he began, and poorer by the loss of the best years
of his life. “Hope springs eternal,” however, and here they are, ready
to try again with undefeated ardour and cheerfulness, confident that
this time at last fortune’s wheel will give them a turn.
The weather, being the middle of our wet season, had been, as they say
in the west of Scotland, “showery and rain atween whiles”; but the
morning after his arrival Absolon went down to the first creek, half a
mile from the station, to see if it was crossable, while I ran up the
horses ready for a start. He came back and said he thought we could
just do it without a swim, so we settled to go.
My swag was soon ready, consisting of a pick and shovel, a tin
prospecting dish for washing gold, 20 lbs. flour, 12 lbs. beef, some
tea and sugar, a couple of changes of clothes, and a blanket, unlimited
tobacco and matches, a revolver, a quart pot, a calico fly of a small
tent, a Shakespear, a pack of cards, a piece of soap, two towels,
and a toothbrush. Having planted these scientifically on the back
of a packhorse, we climbed on to our own horses, and, lighting the
inevitable pipe, sallied down to the first creek.
It was coming down very strong, muddy and thick, but from the marks
on the banks we thought it was good enough, and, sousing in, we just
managed to sneak across without absolutely swimming, a performance to
be carefully avoided in Queensland creeks. The banks are always very
steep and high, and the bed of the creek heavily timbered, and full of
snags and fallen trees. The current is usually very strong, and the
crossing-place, where the trees in the bed and on the banks of the
creek have been cleared away, very narrow; so that if you happen to be
swept down below the opposite crossing, the chance of ever getting
out again is very small. Your horse is certain to be drowned, and the
strongest swimmer, when swept by a furious current into a forest of big
trees and saplings, and tangled masses of creepers along the banks,
has no more chance than a fly in a cobweb. Numbers of travellers are
drowned every year in this way.
Having crossed this creek we had the satisfaction of seeing it get up
rapidly behind us, effectually barring our return. The next creek was
seven miles ahead, and if that happened to be up too, we should have
the pleasure of finding ourselves between two flooded creeks, with
the cheerful prospect of sitting on the bank of one of them until it
subsided. Of course, as a rule, we should not have thought anything of
having to swim, but when you have got all your belongings with you on
a packhorse, and are on your way to a place where you cannot replace
them, you are rather shy of risking a swim.
Some horses swim most beautifully, and will carry their rider in the
saddle across almost any creek or river. Others lose all heart, and go
down like a stone or roll over on their backs. The best way is, just as
your horse gets into deep water and begins swimming, to slide quietly
off, hang on to his tail, and let him tow you across in his wake.
This time we were fortunate, and we managed to cross the eight creeks
between us and the open country without any delay, and without wetting
the pack.
We camped the first night at an old bark hut, the remains of a deserted
station, about fourteen miles from the diggings.
Next morning we made a fresh start. Neither of us knew exactly where
the diggings lay, beyond a vague idea that they were in the western
fall of the main range, somewhere to the north of us; but after jogging
along for a few miles we came across a new mark-tree line, made by
the first prospectors of the diggings, which took us right away into
them. As we got near the place, we began to overtake a few straggling
swagsmen, pounding along through the black soil as if the devil was
behind them instead of in front of them.
To the initiated it did not require the pick and shovel slung on their
backs to tell where they were bound for. The pace at which they were
going, so different from the languid dawdle habitual to men who are
merely wandering about in search of work, betrayed at once that the
“gold fever” was upon them. Once smitten by this malady, a man seldom
or never thoroughly recovers, and the exertions he will make while
under its influence are perfectly incredible.
All the evils that humanity naturally shrinks from at once assume
a cheerful aspect. When the Palmer rush broke out on the Gulf of
Carpentaria, it is a positive fact that a man walked the whole way from
Melbourne to get to it, a distance of nearly 2000 miles.
While I was on Mount Britten diggings, a man came in, wheeling his
Lares and Penates before him in a wheelbarrow. The whole certainly
weighed over 150 pounds, and he had wheeled it through 200 miles of
heavy black-soil country, in pouring rain, in just a fortnight’s time.
The true professional digger passes his life in wandering about from
one new rush to another. Any regular employment he considers beneath
him; and except for the purpose of raising sufficient money to carry
him on to the next diggings, he will never work for wages. No class of
men work so hard; as soon as it is light in the morning he is off, and
seldom knocks off before dark. That a man should work so hard to get
gold is not in the least odd, but it is odd that the value he sets on
it should be in exactly inverse proportion to the trouble it costs
him to get it. And yet such is the case. As long as he is at work, no
miser could be more careful than a real digger in the actual process
of collecting gold. When he has got it, no spendthrift could be more
reckless in flinging it away. Whether up to his knees in the freezing
waters of the Snowy River, or grilling under the fires of a Queensland
sun, no day is too long for him while he is on gold. Not a crevice of
his claim is unexplored, not a particle of dirt likely to contain gold
is wasted; and he will spend as much time and trouble in collecting
the finest particles of gold in his dish, as if he were an analytical
chemist making an experiment in weights and measures. He toils
patiently on, day after day, week after week, undismayed by failure,
and quite unelated by success, until the moment comes when something
impels him irresistibly to squander all that he has collected.
The instant this happens, he knocks off work, and his fetische at once
assumes a different aspect. Not only does the gold he has taken such
pains to get become worthless, but apparently it becomes an incumbrance
that some hidden law of his being obliges him to get rid of without
delay. The only variation in the method of this madness is in the time
allotted respectively to collecting and to spending. This varies with
the individual. Some men will never work more than a week at a time
before spending all they have made; others will go on for several
weeks, even for months, before going on the spree, but invariably
with the same purpose, which seems to be simply that of collecting
sufficient to make fools of themselves. At least 90 per cent of their
earnings goes in drink, of course; and the rest in good living when it
is to be had. Whilst working, a digger generally keeps sober, but he
lives on the best of food he can get. His drinking is reserved for
when he knocks off work. As a rule, if he is getting gold, from Monday
to Friday is about as long as a digger can stand without a spree; he
then flings down his tools, leaves his claim, though he knows perfectly
well that by so doing he is liable to have it taken from him by the
first comer, and retires to the nearest public-house, to spend what
plunder he has amassed in getting hopelessly drunk till Monday morning.
He then creeps back, dejected in appearance, and shaking in every limb
from the effects of the poisonous liquor he has swallowed, probably to
find that some less fortunate individual, who had not raised sufficient
for a spree by Friday, and so had to go on working, had “jumped” his
claim. A row ensues, which is referred for immediate settlement to the
arbitration of a couple of shovels, or whatever weapons are handiest,
and subsequently to the decision of the Warden of the goldfield.
The idea of saving any money, and settling down anywhere to live
comfortably, never enters a digger’s head. He goes on at the same old
game, sometimes for twenty or thirty years, exactly as eager to get to
a new field and peg out the best claim as the first day he started,
until drink, exposure, and disease put an end to his wanderings. It is
only the new chum who occasionally has sense enough to let well alone,
and clear out on his first rise. I remember a man who had only been a
few months in the colony, who used to dig in our garden at the station.
He went up to the diggings, with no more notion of a digger’s craft
than of astronomy. He had not been above a week or two at it when he
stumbled across a nugget of pure gold weighing seventy ounces. The very
same day he set off down to the coast, climbed on to the first boat
that started, and went back to the old country. I never saw anyone in
such a hurry to get anywhere. But he was a very rare instance of an
uneducated man who did not get more harm than good by finding gold.
Although gold-digging is a profession requiring the exercise of some
of the best qualities of human nature--enterprise, perseverance, a
disregard of hardships, accompanied by unceasing toil--still there is
something about the acquisition of the raw material direct from the
ground that has anything but an elevating effect upon the lives of
those who make it their business. This is probably accounted for by
the enormous element of pure chance that enters into it. When employed
in any other profession, a man knows that, with fair abilities and
advantages, hard work is likely to be followed by the acquisition of
money in direct proportion to the amount of energy and perseverance
displayed. Profit follows labour to a greater or less extent, as
regularly as day follows night in summer or winter.
But it is quite otherwise with the profession of mining, which is,
in fact, the rankest gambling. Not only does a digger know that it
is quite possible he may find a great deal of gold with very little
trouble, but, worse still, he knows he may work very hard without
getting any gold at all. He may toil for ten hours a day, and not
“raise the colour,” while his neighbour in the next claim, with half
the exertion, is getting an ounce of gold to the dish. He therefore
very justly ceases to connect the idea of profit and labour in any
way, and comes to regard his profession as one of pure chance. Both
wealth and labour lose their true value in his estimation, the one from
its being occasionally unmerited, the other from its being frequently
unrewarded.
The history of a new colony teems with examples in every profession
and occupation of money quickly made and lightly lost; of men, on the
one hand, who have squandered vast fortunes in the attempt to increase
them, and, on the other hand, of men who have started with nothing
at all, and by their own exertions and perseverance amassed colossal
wealth.
The subsequent career of many of the latter has shown them to be
capable of employing their riches to the credit of themselves and for
the benefit of mankind. It is reserved for the profession of mining to
deal destruction to its followers with the two-edged sword of profit
and loss; and it would seem that the only worse thing that can happen
to a man than losing money at it, is that he should make any.
Numerous as are the instances of enormous fortunes made in mining, I
doubt if the history of the Australian Colonies affords a score of
examples where money so made has not done more harm than good. As a
rule its possessor becomes bitten with an incurable mania for wild
speculation, if for nothing worse; and whether he makes a few ounces
out of a pot-hole in a creek and spends it at the nearest shanty, or
makes a rise of £100,000 out of a good reef and fools it away trying to
get more, it seems to be an inevitable law that money made by mining
should be provided with something worse than wings.
Innumerable are the cases where it has brought utter ruin; a whole
legion of the lost rises before me when I think of it.
I remember four men on Gympie, who in a short time took £25,000 a-piece
out of a claim. Previous to their striking gold they had been sober,
industrious men; but in two years three out of the four, and one of
their wives, were dead from drink, and the fourth had lost all he was
worth in prospecting other claims.
Another sad case I remember, of a man on Charters Towers. He was a
blacksmith by trade, but he dabbled a little in mining, and by degrees
got so much in debt to the bank that they would not allow him to leave
the field and go to the Palmer, a new rush which broke out a few
hundred miles away. He stuck to his claim, and one day struck gold. In
a short time he was in receipt of £500 a day, and continued at that for
a very long while. I do not think anyone, not even himself, ever knew
exactly how much he was worth. If he had simply sat down, and stuck to
his money as fast as it came in, he would have been one of the richest
men in the colony. But he never did any good. He taught himself to read
and write; took to wild speculation in other mines, in racehorses, in
wheat, in everything; drank like a fish; and finally completed his
downward career by becoming a member of the Legislative Assembly in
Brisbane, and his bankruptcy appeared a short time ago in the London
_Times_.
Besides the fatality that apparently attends all profits made from
mining, the statistics show that it is the least profitable of all
professions. The average value of an ounce of gold is £3:10s., but
every ounce of gold raised costs nearly £5 to get. In Victoria, where
mining is more economically and profitably worked than in any of the
other colonies, the average earnings of every man connected with it in
1873 was only £98 per head, considerably less than he could have made
at the lowest wages work in the colony. When we consider that every
year some few individuals make enormous fortunes at it, the balance of
loss to be distributed amongst the remainder is considerable.
Still, it is an industry most necessary to the world at large, and
especially conducive to the prosperity of a young colony, and it is
well that there are men found willing to carry it on. The _auri sacra
fames_ is a very pretty subject for a moral essayist to decry, but it
would be extremely awkward if that particular form of it which impels
men to seek gold in the earth were eliminated from a community. It is
to that same hunger that no surfeit can satisfy, and no defeat blunt
the edge of, that we owe the constant supply of victims, eager to
embark in an industry which all must allow is a very necessary one, but
which is clearly proved to be anything but profitable to those actually
employed in it. Besides the race of veteran diggers, a new rush, of
course, always attracts a heterogeneous crowd of outsiders, many of
whom have never handled a pick and shovel in their lives, and whose
pale faces and dissipated appearance proclaim them town-loafers, and
strangers to the bush and hard work.
When I first arrived on Mount Britten goldfield there were seventy men
on it, all living in tents. The only building that had any appearance
of permanence about it was a butcher’s shop and store, made out of a
few sheets of bark and saplings. Flour had run out, the drays having
all stuck in the mud half-way from port to the diggings; but there were
tea, sugar, and tobacco, and a few tools to be had, and any amount of
beef, supplied by fat cattle from the neighbouring run, two or three
of which were run in every week into a sapling yard near the butcher’s
shop, and killed. For some time beef was all we had to eat; but it was
very good, and there was plenty of it, so we were glad enough to get it.
The diggings are very prettily situated in the centre of a horse-shoe
formed by a spur running out from the main range on to the plains. A
heavily-timbered creek running up the centre of the valley was where
the gold was found first. Vast ranges of mountains rise up all round,
the slopes of which are covered with forests of gigantic trees, and
patches of dense scrub. The summit of the range is formed by a crown of
cliffs, which rise sheer from the slopes below to a height varying from
400 to 1000 feet, the red and yellow tints of their rocks contrasting
beautifully with the sombre mass of dark-green woods below them.
Three very startling peaks, known as the Marlingspikes, guard the
entrance to the valley; bare sugar-loaves of weather-beaten gray
rock, quite detached from the main range, which rise right out of the
surrounding country to a height of 1700 feet, and form a glorious
landmark over miles and miles of the adjacent plains.
The first time I saw the valley of Mount Britten was about sundown, and
I never remember a more beautiful sight. To the dwellers in the valley
the sun sets early behind the false range that lies between them and
the west. But just at the head of the valley there is a narrow dip in
the range, and through this the sunlight streams long after the sun
himself has disappeared. As I surveyed the scene, seated on a rock at a
considerable elevation above the valley, the effect was most startling.
Below my feet was stretched out a vast forest of every conceivable
shade of green, from black to emerald; here and there the stem of some
gigantic tree showing white and ghostly against the surrounding mass of
foliage.
Along through the forest the creek wound its way, its course distinctly
marked by the darker green of the trees that fringed its banks. A soft
blue mist, the smoke of many a camp-fire, was rising and creeping
gently up the valley, lingering just above the tops of the trees, as if
unwilling to leave their shelter. In the centre of the valley rose a
stupendous mass of rock, the rugged offspring of some awful convulsion
of nature, towering like a ruined castle over the woods below, shadowy,
vast, and indistinct in the deepening shades of evening.
Away to the head of the valley, through the gap in the range, there
swept across the forest a flood of amber light, the dying glory of
a setting sun, turning rocks and trees, where it touched them, into
figures of molten gold, and lighting up the face of the opposite cliffs
with a ruddy glow, made all the more startling by the gloom of the
valley beneath. To the east, above the cliffs, the soft azure of an
autumn sky was hardening into the pure steel-blue of a night such as
only Queensland knows.
Not a cloud marred the purity of the expanse above, not a sound broke
the stillness of the valley below. One by one the stars blazed out
in the deepening blue of their eternal home, the green shades of the
valley sank to rest in the obscurity of advancing night, and still the
amethyst light lingered on the face of the cliffs above. The effect was
so weird I was spellbound as I watched it, and began to experience an
uncomfortable feeling of unreality, which was fortunately dispelled by
a _deus ex machina_, in the shape of a green-head ant, which just then
bit the back of my neck. The bite of this insect is well calculated to
dispel any momentary illusions as to the reality of existence. For some
minutes the pain is excruciating, and by the time I had recovered my
temper the last rays of sunlight had departed, leaving me to stumble
down the steep side of a mountain covered with long grass and rocks the
best way I could.
Most of the men who were on the ground when I arrived were getting fair
gold, though nothing heavy had as yet been discovered. Alluvial digging
in Queensland is never worth very much; in fact, with the exception
of the Palmer, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, nothing worth calling an
alluvial diggings has as yet been discovered. In Victoria the alluvial
diggings are of enormous extent and great richness. They are worked
on a scale requiring a large capital, and go on for years and years
yielding tremendous profits.
The underground workings of many of them are on a gigantic scale. But
in Queensland the run of gold is very irregular, and never of any great
extent.
Seldom at any depth, it is generally confined to “potholing” and
“crevicing” in the banks and bed of the creeks. This was the case at
Mount Britten. The alluvial digging never extended above a few yards
from the banks of the creek, and all the heavy gold was found in
the bed of the creek itself, and cost little or no trouble to get,
beyond the bare labour of shifting and washing the soil. No sinking or
timbering was required, and what gold was got, paid those well who got
it.
Taking into account the comparative worthlessness of alluvial in
Queensland, and the richness of many of the reefs, Jack Absolon had
not thought it worth while to peg out a claim in the creek, but was
spending his time prospecting the ranges at the head of it, in search
of a reef.
From the appearance of the gold found in the creek, which was very
little water-worn, and mostly in the form known as “specimen,”--that
is, quartz and gold mixed,--and from the formation of the surrounding
country, it seemed certain it must have come from a reef somewhere in
the ranges to the head of the creek. As yet nothing in the shape of a
reef carrying payable gold had been found; but a prospector, Charley
Gibbard by name, had got on to a leader carrying nice gold, at the head
of the valley.
Jack Absolon and I had a consultation, and it was determined that he
and I, and his brother Dick, should go on looking for a reef, without
troubling about the alluvial. Henceforth we were what is known on a
diggings as “dividing mates.” No written agreement is necessary. The
fact of two or more men working together on a diggings constitutes a
partnership in colonial law, which enables either party to claim his
share of anything found by the others, and which can only be dissolved
by the parties forming it declaring before witnesses that they are no
longer mates.
[Illustration: GOLD DIGGING: CRADLING AND PANNING-OFF.]
The process of searching for a golden reef is often one requiring
unlimited patience, and a great deal of hard work. The first thing
to do is to apply to the Warden of the goldfield you are on for a
Protection Area. You can get one 400 yards square for a month. In this
piece of ground the prospector has the exclusive right of hunting for
a reef. No one else can come on to it, provided he works eight hours a
day on it. Having secured his ground, the prospector sets to work to
see if he can find gold on the surface, by washing prospects of surface
dirt in a tin dish. Often he has to carry the dirt a long distance to
water, and to wash hundreds of dishes before he gets a colour of gold.
Once let him get on a trail of gold, however, if he knows his trade he
will never lose it. He will follow it up with the instinct and patience
of a hound, and it is a hundred to one, unless the country is very
broken, he will find the reef it came from.
Having followed the gold as far as he can trace it on the surface, he
then knows the reef is not below him, and begins to look for it above.
The usual course of true reefs is nearly due north and south; sometimes
they crop out of the surface of the ground, with what is called a big
“blow” of quartz.
Generally, however, the cap of the reef is a little distance below the
surface, and it is necessary to dig for it, which is done by cutting
narrow trenches, a foot or two deep, east and west, so as to cut across
the course of the reef you are looking for.
Sometimes the reef or leader is merely a thread of pipeclay, or rotten
quartz, no thicker than a sheet of paper, but there is no mistaking the
formation when once you know it.
Having hit on the reef, if it is what is known as “mullocky”--that is,
soft and rotten--the next thing is to take out a prospect from between
the walls, and wash it to see if it carries gold. If the reef is well
defined, and the quartz hard, it requires to be crushed in an iron
mortar before the prospect is washed.
Day after day the Absolons and I used to scour the ranges, opening
up and prospecting numerous reefs and leaders, without coming upon
anything that looked at all payable. Meanwhile, every hour brought news
of richer alluvial finds in the creek below.
A real rush had now set in. Men poured in by hundreds, and the whole
creek was pegged out in claims from the lowest point where gold had
been found right up to the head in the ranges where we were working.
In two months from the time I came there were nearly 2000 men on the
field. Hundreds came from the adjacent colonies, and many even from
New Zealand, attracted by the fabulous reports that never fail to be
circulated about a new rush, and never fail to be believed.
These mad stampedes to a new rush are occasionally attended with very
serious consequences. Thousands flock from all sides, each anxious
to get first on to the field, without the slightest idea of how he
is going to support life when he gets there, and usually entirely
destitute of means to carry him away from it should the new field prove
a failure.
Rockhampton, the second largest town in Queensland, owes its existence
to a “duffer rush.” Gold was discovered at a place called Canoona,
thirty miles higher up the Fitzroy River. In a short time there were
about 50,000 men deposited by steamers on the bare banks of the
Fitzroy, with no means of procuring food, or of getting away again.
The Government was obliged to supply them with means of getting
away; but before this was done, many of them were reduced to absolute
starvation. The township of Rockhampton was formed to supply the
diggings.
The rush to Mount Britten was stopped before it assumed a serious
phase, but at no time was the field capable of supporting more than
200 men on payable gold. Most of those who came were rank new-chums
at digging. Instead of setting to work to look for a new run of gold,
they generally confined themselves to the melancholy pastime of sitting
down and watching others getting it, and by and by, finding that, with
a few exceptions, gold is no more to be picked up without hard work on
a diggings than anywhere else, they cleared out, leaving the fortunate
ones who had secured good claims to work them out.
It is always difficult to estimate the amount of alluvial gold taken
from a field, owing to the unwillingness of all old hands to tell
anyone how much they have got or are getting. But I reckon that at
least 10,000 ounces must have been taken from the two miles of the
creek to which the diggings were confined, and, from the inexperience
of many of those who worked the ground, it is certain that as much gold
was wasted as was got.
By and by a mob of Chinamen, the most patient, persevering,
hard-working of all races under the sun, will start and systematically
“ground-sluice” the whole course of the creek, from one end of the
workings to the other, and make a real good thing of it.
A dead set has been made at this unfortunate race by the inhabitants
of Queensland. A poll-tax of £10 a head has been imposed upon them on
entering the colony, and they are not allowed upon any goldfield until
it has been open two years.
Very heavy gold was now being got in the creek below where we were
working, and the finding of nuggets ranging from ten to twenty
ounces was no unusual occurrence. Occasionally a wild shout would
come ringing up the valley, hailing the appearance of one of these
“welcome strangers.” A knot of men would immediately congregate round
the finder, whose joy betrayed him a novice at the trade, and the whole
lot would probably adjourn incontinently to the “pub.,” and, handing
the plunder over the counter, never cease drinking as long as the
publican’s conscience impelled him to supply them with liquor, which
would probably be to about one-fourth of the value of the gold he had
received from them.
These repeated cries of joy were getting too much for Dick Absolon. The
gold fever attacked him with a violence not to be allayed by wandering
about the ranges looking for a reef. It was with difficulty that Jack
and I dissuaded him from going to try his luck at the alluvial. But the
more gold they found in the creek, the more certain we were that there
must be a good reef somewhere near us.
Meanwhile Gibbard was opening up his reef, which looked very promising;
so when he offered to sell me an eighth share in the claim, I closed
with him. He had christened his reef the “Little Wanderer.”
One day soon after this, Jack, who had been patiently following a trail
of gold up a little gulley in our Protection Area, discovered the cap
of a reef from which it seemed likely the gold had come. A few hours’
work exposed the reef clearly defined between two walls about two
feet thick. The cap was of hard, hungry-looking spar; but when we had
removed that, a vein of very healthy-looking bluish quartz was opened
up. We broke up a few pieces, and in almost every one gold was plainly
visible.
It is very rich stone that shows gold when you break it; usually it has
to be crushed to powder and washed before gold shows, and many reefs
pay well to work in which you never see a colour of gold in breaking
down.
Jack and I looked at each other, and our countenances expanded into
a smile of satisfied delight. Dick was called up from where he was
working a bit down the side of the mountain, and we all sat down and
had a smoke, a solemn rite never neglected by an Australian when
entering upon a new phase of his career.
Alas! _Aurum irrepertum et sic melius situm!_ Perhaps it would have
been better for me if we had never found it at all. No such misgivings
crossed our minds at the time, however, and we hit out with a will to
see what our new reef was worth.
A few days’ sinking on the underlie of the reef opened up such a
fine-looking body of stone, carrying splendid gold, that we decided to
give notice to the Warden of the finding of a payable reef, and get him
to come and lay off our claim.
Anyone finding a reef that in the opinion of the Warden of the field
is a payable one, can take up as much ground along the line of reef as
he pleases; but he is bound by the Government regulations to keep one
man at work on it for every hundred feet he takes up, until there is
machinery on the ground, and after that, one man for every fifty feet.
The breadth of a reef-claim is always 400 feet.
A few feet to the north of where we first found the reef, its course
was intersected by what is known as a cross-course; that is, a belt of
foreign country cutting diagonally right through the reef, and shifting
the course of it away towards the east. Beyond this cross-course we
found the reef again, carrying still richer gold than below, and it was
here we finally decided to commence operations.
We applied for six men’s ground; that is, 300 feet along the reef,
which, with a reward claim of 100 feet which is always given to
the first prospectors of a new reef, would give us a claim 400 feet
square. Nothing can be done without the sanction of the Warden of the
goldfield, whose business it is to see that the Government regulations
are carried out, and who has full power to settle any disputes about
claims that may arise in the most arbitrary manner.
Mount Britten was not yet of sufficient importance to be honoured with
a Warden of its own, so the Warden for Clermont had his jurisdiction
extended to take in our field. Clermont is 180 miles from Mount
Britten, and often we had to wait a couple of months before getting the
decision of the Warden as to some point in dispute.
The first thing to do upon finding a new reef is to christen it.
After some discussion we decided to call ours the “Erratic Star”; its
subsequent behaviour fully testified to the justice of the first part
of the title. I do not suppose there ever was a reef whose wanderings
so entirely mystified those who attempted to follow them.
This time the Warden was not long coming; but by the time he came we
had already driven a tunnel in along the course of the reef for some
distance, opening up magnificent stone as we went along. Our claim was
situated on the fall of a very steep spur of the range, down the centre
of which the course of the reef ran.
The Warden climbed up the hill to inspect our workings, and we invited
him to scratch a prospect out of the reef for himself. He took a few
pieces of stone from different parts of the reef, and we all retired
down to the creek to crush them and wash out the gold. A mob of at
least a hundred idlers, attracted by the smell of gold, sat round, like
crows round a killing-yard, to watch the proceedings.
When the prospects were washed out, the excitement amongst the crowd
was immense. As the last particles of dirt were deftly washed out of
the dish by Jack Absolon, leaving the gold exposed, the Warden’s jaw
dropped, and his eyes started out of his head with surprise. Even Jack
and I began to stare at each other. We had expected to get a good show;
half a pennyweight, or a pennyweight at most, which would have been
a tremendously rich prospect. Instead of which, though the stone was
by no means carefully crushed, we got at least a quarter of an ounce
of gold out of about a pound and a half of stone. As soon as he had
recovered from his astonishment the Warden congratulated us upon our
discovery, and laid off our claim on the spot.
In anticipation of this auspicious moment I had armed myself with a
couple of bottles of rum, with which we proceeded to celebrate the
occasion.