Chapter 4

Here was a new mishap: but these things will happen in the diggings; and so our adventurers, agreeing to pay the commissioner a monthly licence for their ground, intending to return in the dry weather to work it, removed bag and baggage to another part of the river. Here they dug away, but it appears with no tempting success; and they took care to return to the commissioner in time, as they thought, to implement their monthly bargain. On tendering the money for their licence, however, they discovered that they were just half an hour too late, and that the functionary had disposed of their forty-five feet to another bidder. What to do now? They fell in with a man, an old friend of Mr Rutter, just setting off on a journey of sixty-two miles to the north, where he told them a piece of gold had been found weighing 106 lbs. This invaluable man they instantly took into partnership, and purchasing fresh horses, they struck their camp, and followed their new companion across the country, in search of a place called the Devil's Hole, near the World's End. It is no wonder they lost their way. As there was no such thing as a road, they were obliged to transport their goods on the horses' backs; and the interesting nature of their journey may be guessed at from the fact, that they had to cross a creek with steep banks sixteen times in the course of five miles.

They at length reached the Louisa Diggings, near those quartz-ridges where, in fact, a 106 lb. lump of gold had been found. They encamped in the dark; and getting up betimes the next morning, looked eagerly out on this land of promise. It was a dull, dreary morning, and a heavy continuous rain plashed upon the earth. About 200 persons were taking the air in this watery atmosphere, their dress and movements corresponding well with the aspect of the hour. Some were covered with an old sack, some with a blanket, some with a dripping cloak, but all glided slowly about in the rain, with a stick in their hands, and their eyes fixed upon the ground. These phantoms were gold-hunters; and the silent company was immediately joined by our adventurers, who glided and poked like the rest. The ground was new, and during two days gold was obtained in this way, from a particle the size of a pin's head to a lump of nearly an ounce. When the surface was exhausted, digging commenced; but the soil was too tough for the common cradle, and although rich in gold, it would not repay the trouble of washing. Upon this, the company broke up, each pursuing his own way; and our adventurer and another agreed to go down the country together to Maitland, prospecting on the way.

The place where the large mass of gold was found is an intersection between two quartz-ridges, rising from a high table-land in the midst of a congeries of mountains, offshoots from the range that extends from Wilson's Point, on the south, to Cape York, on the north. The clay soil covers many acres below and around the ridges, and wherever it was prospected by our adventurer, gold was found. On the 12th of September, he reached Maitland; and here he found a letter awaiting him, which determined him to choose a new hunting-ground. Some years before, it seems, a man he knew, who was at that time a shepherd in the Wellington District, while crossing the country on his master's business, lost his way in the gullies, and did not find it again for two days. While sitting down, in his dilemma, on a quartz-rock, he observed something glittering beside him, and breaking off with his tomahawk a piece of the stone, he carried it home with him as a curiosity. At home it lay for years, till the reported discoveries of gold induced him to offer it for sale to a goldsmith in Sydney. The result was, that he connected himself with a party of adventurers, and they all set forth for the place where he had rested among the gullies. His companions proved treacherous; and when they had come sufficiently near to be able, as they thought, to find the spot without his assistance, they turned him adrift. They sought the golden rock for three days--but in vain; and he went back to Sydney, to invite Mr Rutter to accompany him. Here ends our narrative for the present; and a most instructive one it is. The search for gold, our informant tells us plainly, is a mere lottery, its results depending almost wholly upon chance. Plenty as the metal is, it frequently costs twenty shillings the sovereign's worth; and, in short, we are at that point of transition when the mania is dying away, and the science has not begun. When capital and skill are brought to bear upon the process of mining in Australia, it will become a regular, though by no means a miraculously profitable business; and even at present, steady labouring-men may spread themselves over thousands of miles of the auriferous creeks, if they will be satisfied with a profit of seven or eight shillings a day.

According to his experience, the place to look for gold is in the neighbourhood of distinct traces of volcanic action, or in small streams coming direct from hills of volcanic formation, or rivers fed by these streams. An abundance of quartz (commonly called spar) is universally reckoned an indication of the presence of gold; and if trap-rock is found cropping up amid this quartz, and perforated with streaks of it, so much the better. Sometimes the solid quartz itself is pounded, and gold extracted by the aid of quicksilver. When the gold is found in rivers, or on their banks, prediction is vain: nothing will do but the actual trial by the wash-pan. But where there is a bar or sand-bank, the richest deposit will always be on the side of the bank presented to the descending stream. The metal in such digging is almost invariably found in small spangles, that appear to have been granular particles crushed or rolled flat by some enormous pressure. In California, these spangles were the beginning of the gold-finding. When the streams and their banks were well searched, the crowds of adventurers tried, in desperation, what they could do by digging deep holes in the plains; and there the metal was found in such different forms as to indicate quite a different process of deposition. Some of these holes were productive--although it was severe labour to dig fifteen or eighteen feet through a hard soil merely as an experiment; and in the course of time the plains were covered with tents. The influx of adventurers continued; and the old diggers, dissatisfied with gains that seemed to the new prodigious, retired further and further back, and began to grope in the terraces on the sides of volcanic hills, and among the detritus of extinct craters. Here the harvest was rich, and as the crowning effort of the gold-passion, unassisted by machinery, they actually in some cases cut away the sides of the hills! 'My own impression is,' concludes our informant on this subject, 'that, both in California and Australia, the chances of individual enterprise, and even of small companies, are decreasing rapidly; but that when the mines so wrought have ceased to pay, capital and machinery, directed by science, will receive profitable employment for ages to come.'

The wash-pan we have mentioned may be of tin, if not required to be used with quicksilver, otherwise of copper or wood; but of whatever material made, it should be some 15 inches in diameter at the top, 10 or 11 at the bottom, and 5, or 5-1/2 inches deep. The manner of using this is learned only by practice and observation, and consists in a peculiar motion, by which the heavier substances sink to the bottom and remain there, while the soluble and lighter parts are washed out. The principal use of the wash-pan is in rewashing the partially washed 'stuff' taken from the rocker, and in prospecting to ascertain by trial the value of a new place.

This rocker, or cradle, may be made of half-inch softwood, and consists of a trough 10 inches deep, 18 inches broad, and 4 feet long, closed at the broad end, and open at the other; with a transverse bar at the upper part, two feet from the broad end, to receive the tray. This machine is placed on rockers, like a cradle, and deposited so near the water that, when at work, the man who rocks with his left hand may be able to reach the water with a small tin baler, provided with a wooden handle two feet long. A bucketful of the earth to be washed is thrown into the tray, and the person who is to rock the cradle taking a balerful of water, throws it uniformly on the mass in the tray, and keeps rocking and washing till the gold becomes obvious. These are the simpler implements of gold-hunting; and provided with them, the little company of adventurers pitch their tent and continue to dig, till they come to earth they think will pay for washing. The next morning, they get up perhaps at daylight, for the sake of the coolness of the hour, and pass through the sieve ten or fifteen buckets before breakfast. After breakfast, all hands resume work till about twelve o'clock, when they dine, then rest through the heat of the day till three o'clock, and go on again till dark. They usually divide the work as follows: one in the hole digs, fills the bucket with earth, and, if necessary, bales the water out of the hole; another takes the bucket and empties it into the tray of the machine; while a third rocks, supplies the machine with water, and empties the tray of the large stones. This, it will be seen, is no child's play: your gold-hunter is no idle wanderer, but a hard-working man, subjected to a thousand discomforts unknown in civilised life.

The quicksilver cradle is a more complicated and expensive machine, requiring six men instead of three to work it. It is understood, however, to save at least 20 per cent. of the metal, and indeed to be indispensable in some places in California, where the gold is in too fine particles to be detected by the common rocker. Quicksilver has so strong an affinity for gold, that the minutest particle of the latter having once touched, it is deprived of the possibility of escape; and when the process of washing has been completely gone through, the whole mass of gold particles will be found bound together by the quicksilver into a compact lump, in size and shape often resembling an egg. The gold is thus obtained in the form of an amalgam; but the quicksilver is easily evaporated, if its loss be of no consequence, or separated without loss by a more scientific process.

We have more than once used the word _prospecting_, which, we believe, is peculiar to this kind of mining. The deposits of gold are so capricious, that the adventurers, in order to lose as little time as possible in removing from place to place, detach one of their number on the hunt for a mine--and this is called prospecting. He sets out with a few provisions, a rifle, a pick and shovel, at all events, with a pan and large knife; and on reaching some hopeful-looking locality, he makes experiments on the soil by washing. The considerations that determine his calling the company to the spot are of course influenced by the circumstance of their having a common or a quicksilver cradle. He calculates the average value of the gold he finds in several panfuls of the soil at different depths; and he takes into account the distance it has to be carried for washing, the means of transit there exist, and how far off is the nearest store. The prospector, therefore, is a very important member of the concern, and in many cases the success of the adventure depends upon his experience and sagacity.

THE HISTORY OF JANE A POOLE.

In the latter part of the fourteenth century, an incident occurred in the family of the Earl of Suffolk, which affords a curious illustration of old manners in England. We shall follow the account of the circumstance, given in a manuscript in the British Museum.

Sir Michel Poole, second Earl of Suffolk, had several sons and daughters. First was Mighell, son and heir; then William, second son; and afterwards ten additional olive branches, of diverse names and both sexes--all of whom, however, died, and went down unmarried to the cold tomb. Some fell off like nipped blossoms in their infancy; convents and wars absorbed the rest, till only the eldest two were left of all that numerous family to perpetuate the name of Poole, and raise the fortunes of the race. In due course of time, Sir Mighell married Elizabeth, daughter of the right noble knight, Thomas Duke of Norfolk; and these together had two children, Jane and Katharine, but, alas! no son. Years passed on, and the hope of an heir was at an end; but before that hope was quite laid aside, the tragedy of the house began.

Jane, as yet heiress and darling, a round, bright, wilful cherub, beautiful and loving, but mighty in her passionate force, and indomitable in her infant will, beyond all power of control--the one most cared for, and on whom was anchored such a rich argosy of hopes and first fond love--was one day given into the safe keeping of Maud, a young serving-girl, a rough, untutored peasant-girl, who was one of the underwomen to the bower-maidens. The king was coming to the castle that night, and every female finger that could work was employed on the last stitches of a dainty tapestry-bed, which was to receive His Majesty as became his lordly dignity. Even the mother's care must give way to the housewife's duty; even love must yield to loyalty.

Left alone in an upper apartment with her young charge, Maud became weary of confinement, and resolved at all hazards to descend to the great hall, and have her share of the general amusement. Down, accordingly, she went. Jane, of course, accompanied her, and, contrary to orders, was allowed to romp about at pleasure. The day was cold, and the fire burned brightly in the open hearth. Nearer and nearer the little one crept to the blazing logs, watching the sparks fly up in a golden shower when the crackling masses fell to the ground, or when some rough soldier struck them with his mailed hand. No one looked to her while she played by the open hearth, and tried to seize the vivid sparks; once only, a trooper caught her roughly back; but again she stole towards the great blazing logs, and this time she was less fortunate. Suddenly, a cry was heard. Jane's clothes were in flames. Maud extinguished them as she best could. She crushed the burning with her hands in such haste as she might make; but, alas! to what a wreck had the fire reduced the child! Her long fair hair was withered to its roots; her pretty eyes were closed, and the curling lashes scorched to the skin; her pure neck was blackened and blistered; and, a mass of pain and sore, she lay like a dead thing, but for the wailing moans which shewed her sad title yet to a ruined existence. Alas for her that she did not die! Wo, that life was so strong in her now, when, blemished and disfigured for ever, she might not hold its honours or taste its joys!--now, when she must endure a worse thing than death for the sake of her family name! 'Therefore,' says the chronicle, 'she was in a manner loathed of her parents, and kept forth secretly from the common knowledge of the people.'

'The house of Poole must have no charred mummy for its heiress,' said old Dame Katharine; and Sir Mighell and his lady bowed their heads and acquiesced.

It was agreed, then, that she should be sent to a house of 'close nuns,' to be made a woman of religion, and so kept out of the sight of all men's eyes. With this view, she was brought up; taught nothing else; suffered to hope for nothing else; suffered to speak of nothing else. But they could not bind her thoughts; and by a strange perversity of will, these went always to the open fields and the unfettered limb, to the vague picturing of freedom, and the dreamy forecast of love. Yet she kept her peace; not daring to tell her mind to any, and nourishing all the more strongly, because in silence, the characteristics which destroyed the charm of a conventual life. When she came to the years of discretion, she was to be professed; but, in accordance with an old custom, before her profession she required to enter the world for a season, that her 'vocation' might be judged of, whether it were true or not, or simply the effect of education on the one hand, and of ignorance on the other; and thus, when she was fifteen years of age, she was dismissed to her father's house for the space of six months' nominal trial, after which time she must return to the convent for ever.

Now, Dame Katharine a Poole, Jane's paternal grandmother, was a fierce, proud old woman, whose heart was set on the creation of her son's house, and whose very virtue was her family pride. When she heard of Jane's return to the outer world of men, she hastily rode over to see this ugly, despised thing, and to take her from her father's castle to the grim quiet of her own dungeon-like home, if so be that she was as unlovely as report had spoken her. They met; and for a moment the proud old dame was struck as by death. The seamed and scarred face, the closed eyes--one perfectly sightless, the other well-nigh so--the burnt and withered hair growing in long, ragged patches only, the awkward gait and downcast look; all were like daggers in Dame Katharine's heart; and 'she rebuked her greatly, seeing that she was too loathly for any gentleman who was equal to her in birth.'

Poor Jane bore all these coarse reproaches with much outward meekness; but the spirit which they woke up in her was little interpreted by the drooping head and tearful eyes. A fiery demon, breathing rage and vowing revenge, took such meek-seeming as this, and blinded the old grandam to the mischief she was working, until it was too late to repair it. Dame Katharine took the girl home; Sir Mighell and his wife consenting in gratitude to be so well delivered from such a heavy burden. Dame Elizabeth, the girl's mother, truly shed a few tears, quickly dried; and so young Jane parted for ever from her father's house.

Like a dead thing, revived by the fresh winds of heaven, Jane's comparative freedom aroused in her the most passionate abhorrence of the life to which she was destined, and the most passionate desire for liberty and affection. With each breath she drew by the open casement, with each glance cast into the depths of the dark woods beyond, rose up the strong instincts of her age, and turned her for ever from the convent gate. In vain the dame insisted; Jane stood firm; and declared that she would still refuse, at the very altar, to take the vow. Yet was she timid in all things but those of love and liberty; and Dame Katharine, by violence and threats, so worked on her fears, that she at last consented, amid grievous tears and bitter reproaches, to be deprived of her name and state, and given forth to the castle people as a poor gentlewoman, godchild to the dame.

'Anything for freedom!' sighed Jane, as she took the oath of secrecy. 'Any deprivation rather than that living tomb of the nun!'

It was now the dame's chief care to be rid of her charge. She cast about for suitors, but even the lowest squire shook his head at the offer. At last, she married her grandchild to the son of an honest yeoman of Suffolk, and so sent her forth to take her place in the world as the wife of a common peasant, and the mother of a family of peasants. Such was the fate allotted to Jane a Poole, daughter of the proud Earl of Suffolk!

Of her issue, we need say but little. Suffice it to know, that Jane and her ploughman William had four children, three sons and one daughter; of whom William, the second son, married an honest man's daughter, whose name was Alice Gryse, and whose children were living in 1490, when this chronicle was written.

Return we now to the puissant lord, Sir Mighell, Earl of Suffolk. He was not long suffered to enjoy his home; indeed, so ardent a soul as his would have eaten its way through his castle walls, as a chrysalis through its silken tomb, if he had been long inactive. If war had not been his duty, he must have made it his crime; if foreign foes had not called upon his valour, too surely would domestic friends have suffered from his disloyalty. Born for the fight, he would have fulfilled his destiny by force if he might not by right. At the battle of Agincourt (1415), he perished along with many other of England's nobles.

Sir Mighell having died without a son, his titles and estates went to his brother, Sir William. Dame Elizabeth, widow of Sir Mighell, and her daughter Katharine, shortly afterwards, as was usual in these times, went to reside in the Abbey of Brasenode; and there they ultimately died.

Meanwhile, and for years afterwards, no one knew anything of Jane, who, though exiled from her rank and family, perhaps enjoyed more real happiness than those who had been guilty of her maltreatment. At length, her husband died, which was a source of grief. Honest William had thought her queer in manners; but he loved her for all that, and was proud of her, as the daughter of a poor gentleman. He blessed her on his death-bed; and she remained a widow for his sake. Many yeomen wished to marry her, but she refused them all. This went on for many years--long after Sir William a Poole had become fourth Earl of Suffolk, and had had children born to him; long after Alice Gryse had become Jane's daughter-in-law, and made her more than once a grandmother too; and then the whole of this strange story became known. Jane had kept her vow of secrecy with perfect fidelity; never had she breathed a syllable to her husband or children as to the family to which she belonged. It was only, late in life, through confession she made to a priest, that who and what she had been was revealed. Shocked with the depravity of her unnatural parents, this pious and learned doctor, says the chronicle, 'commanded her to publish this account to her children and their issues, that they might know of what race they came, if so be, by the great mercy of Providence, they might claim their own again. And not only to them, but also to make it known to all men, as far as was consistent with her own safety; for he said, that the great power of Almighty God should be published to all the world. For this reason was the chronicle written--that all men might take warning; for no deed of wickedness is done in the dark, which shall not be dragged forth to the light; and no oppression on the innocent shall prosper before the right hand of Eternal Justice.'

THINGS TALKED OF IN LONDON.

_March 1852._

The lecture experiment at the Museum of Practical Geology, in Jermyn Street, has proved eminently successful. There were a thousand more applications for tickets than could be supplied, in consequence of which the executive very wisely determined, that the course should be repeated until the demand was satisfied. This fact of numbers speaks highly in favour of the working-men of London--none others are admitted to the course here referred to; and once having got the knowledge, it is to be hoped they will be able to turn it to good account. One of the lecturers told me, that the hall is always crowded, and that a better-behaved auditory has seldom been seen in any quarter, which we may consider to be an encouraging sign of the times. The other courses are also going on for those who are able to pay high fees, and attend during the day. The titles of a few of the lectures will give you an idea of the nature of the instruction offered; namely--The Relations of Natural History to Geology and the Arts; On the Value of an Extended Knowledge of Mineralogy and the Processes of Mining; On the Science of Geology and its Applications; On the Importance of Special Scientific Knowledge to the Practical Metallurgist; and On the Importance of Cultivating Habits of Observation. You must remember, that the institution is a government school of mines as well as a museum of geology.