CHAPTER VII.

COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.

I had not been long in town before I experienced the feverish discomfort of a sand-storm, known by the familiar name of “a brickfielder,” and happily not more frequent than great storms in England. The weather had been extremely hot for two or three days, with a thirsty breeze coming from the parched plains of the interior, the sky became of a dirty light drab colour, and the dust, heat-dried and light, began to be whirled about in columns taller than the house tops. Woe to the wayfarer when the road proves too narrow to admit of an escape. Let all who can, seek shelter, for the columns begin to take the form of clouds; close doors and windows, stuff chink and crevice, cover beef, bread, butter, everything that will not bear the duster, for we begin to have it thick and fast. The air is darkened by the multitude of atoms borne along in it, to a height above the steeple tops. All traffic in the streets has ceased, no sound from without is heard but the rushing wind and the hailing of the larger particles upon the panes, while the finer grains come spueing through the seams like thin grey smoke. From the highways on the windward side, dust, sand, and leaves, drifting in thick volume come pouring like a torrent in upon the devoted city, burying it in a cloud so dense that the thickest mid-day fog of England does not produce a greater darkness within doors. The closed houses become like heated ovens, the butter that has been covered up loses its form and begins to spread itself along the bottom of the dish, the shirt that in the morning was stiff with starch, now hangs wet and clinging to the shoulders of its owner, while the head that has to wear a hat heavier than the lightest straw, escapes delirium only by such perspiration as puts the covering out of shape, and brings it slipping down about the brows. Those unhappy ones whom necessity has compelled to be outside have their sweated faces so begrimed, that without the aid of the voice it were difficult to recognise them, eyes, nose, and mouth being caked with the grit, and their clothes of one even dusty hue, with every lurk and fold laden so that the cloth itself is hidden. In the streets not a stone or wall but the dust has gathered in wreaths round its leeward angles, ready for a new flight on a change of wind. Before that could happen on the occasion that I speak of, a copious shower of rain fell, and transformed it into mud. The gale as usual, lasted only a few hours, and ceased shortly before sunset. Several of my new acquaintances, about the time it reached its height, had crept underneath the bedsteads, in the hope of the floor there being less heated than that in the full light of the windows. This being their last resource, and it failing them, they began to curse the country for being nothing better than a dust-bin, and were answered by a hollow groan from the fire place, from a youth who, for coolness (which he was not finding) sat in it with his head a full foot up the chimney. After sundown, however, the fierceness of the heat abated, the rain clouds came, the dust was laid, and the clear air made soft and pleasant, and, as we stood grouped under the verandah a little before bed time, we were led to confess that either our senses were very grateful for relief, or there was something in an Australian summer night that was peculiarly enjoyable now that the rain had gone and a light wind was coming sighing from the forest, smelling fresh and sweet, as if earth and leaf were yielding their fragrance to its healing breath.

The acquaintances I have mentioned had but newly arrived from Ballarat, each with about fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of gold. Immediately previous to bottoming their claim, their prospects had looked desperate. They had spent their all in the sinking of the shaft, which was 150 feet deep, and slabbed from the surface to the bottom. The gutter in which the gold lay appeared, by the signs of business above ground along a wavy line of claims, to be taking a course outside of theirs, but, on bottoming within one or two feet of the given depth, they had driven downward on the slope of the bottom bed, with anxious, hopeful haste, and found the gutter had taken one of its uncertain turns and traversed one side of their claim for a length of twenty feet. It was but little sleep they got until they had all removed and washed, and safe in the hands of the commissioner. They were all of them seamen, and all single men. Happening to live under the same roof with them, it was occasionally my fortune to hear them discuss their adventures of the past night, in places and with people regarding whom Solomon has left us much solemn warning. After a time, their pleasure palled on them, they wanted change, and went to Geelong, leaving the house quiet and orderly as it had been before. On the third day, however, two of them returned for a further supply of money, and, observing mysterious but evidently deeply conscious silence regarding their intentions, quickly disappeared again. Four days later, on entering the house in the early evening, I found these two sitting with two well-dressed strangers in serious consultation with the landlady. The strangers were their wives, for a double marriage had taken place during their brief absence. The conversation was somehow far from brisk; the new husbands were beginning to get sober and reflective, which they had never fairly been since they struck the gold four weeks before. One of the wives I would say was aged, but the other was very young, with a simple-hearted cheerful look about her, that seemed likely to make her sailor husband Peter, take kindly to the fireside when he got one for her to sit down by; but so busy had he been in getting married, the idea of a house being needed to put her into had not until now come under his consideration. He had never been very fastidious about a bed, or who shared the room with him, if they kept quiet when he wanted sleep, and he seemed willing to wink at trifles now, but the house being a bachelor’s home, he was overruled, and was glad of my company in his search for other quarters down about Low Collingwood. His comrade, whom he had led almost against his will into this nice dilemma, appeared with mysterious suddenness to have fallen into meek subjection to his late spinster’s wishes. He prepared to go along with us, she did the same and at the first turning, making some slight excuse about there being a double chance if we separated in the search, she led him off, he looking much like one who has been asked to accompany a policeman to the station, when he would rather not. Peter was at a loss what to make of her proposal; he was hardly prepared to be thus thrown upon his own resources in the new and untried life, and as she nodded back to him across her shoulder as they walked away, he quietly confessed himself “done brown,” and scratching his head with an outwitted air said “he had never been left with so much slack in his hand before.” We wandered up and down through many streets, finding plenty of lodgings for single men, but none for wives. At last in one of a detached row of newly erected wooden houses, we found a family who made no positive objections. Tired with repeated failures, Peter thought to overrule any little scruple they might have, by saying that the price was no object with him, but this, together with the absence of anything very husband-like in his air or manner, awakened suspicion that caused the young housewife to send for her father to have some talk with us, but the addition of three shillings to the twelve that had been at first named for the week removed the difficulty. We were then asked to look at the accommodation. Peter replied that it was no matter, he supposed it was all right, but followed me as far as the room door, and turning his head right and left, said it would do as well as the very best. For floor there was the bare earth, with a few tufts of withered and foot-trodden grass, and with a plentiful sprinkling of wood shavings, chips and sawdust, which of course would be broomed out before Peter with his wife returned to take possession; the bedstead was made of wood with the bark still on it, if what was seen of the low post feet told a true tale; there was a small table made of an old chest lid, with four slim new legs; a broken looking glass, one chair, a long stool, and nothing more. The family seemed personally decent, and Peter’s money would no doubt help them to complete their furnishing, but he remained with them only a few days.

He had no notion of the use his money might be put to. He saw no call for distressing himself with work when he had so much in the bank, but to occupy some of the time that would otherwise have hung heavy on his hand, he bought a horse and dray, always drawing upon his capital when his earnings were deficient, until at last, but not till after I had left the colony, his capital became so small that he banked it in his pocket. His married comrade not having been so left to his own guidance, is now living in comparative independence, and having had to forsake the company of his old associates, his manner towards them so betrayed obedience to a resolution that was not his own, that out of consideration for him, they gave over troubling him, but not before one of them was treated by the wife to an unsolicited opinion of him and his confederates, too near the truth for repetition to be desirable. Previous to the visit to Geelong, Peter and the young woman whom he married were perfect strangers to each other, but discovering they were from the same small town in the north-east of Scotland, they appeared to think it recommendation enough, and quickly came to their agreement. The other two had been slightly acquainted years before; a good idea of the value of money on the one side, and the excitement of drink on the other, brought them to conclusions with Peter’s help, Peter disliking to get married alone.

About the time of the marriages, another seaman, a fellow townsman of the bridegroom’s, came to town for a few weeks to recruit from the fatigue of twelve months’ constant labour at the diggings. He told no one what success he had met with, but from his manner on being questioned, it was judged he had got enough to satisfy him for the present. He was known by the name of “Roddie.” He was bald, but liked not to be told so, and when his age was spoken of had ever the same answer, that he could lead some of us young men a dance we durst not follow him in, he was not so old but he could do that—in fact he was not old at all. The case of his friends causing marriage to be talked of, we affected to think he would greatly consult his own interest and comfort by marrying some one to take care of him in his declining years, but, winking slyly, he said he knew a great deal too much for that, he had not been born with a fool’s hood on his head. It so happened however that a young woman in service in the neighbourhood, came on a visit to the landlady, one evening when Roddie was at home. She was about half his own age, stout, not very good-looking, and rather grey in the skin, but with no airs about her, and, as far as we could see, not likely to object to become “Mrs Roddie.” We did our best to raise a flame, but Roddie would not burn, though as he seemed not to fret under our very plain attempts, we persevered from time to time, but ever got the same sly wink and the remark that “he knew too much for that.” At length, however, the landlady, in confidence, showed us some manuscript poetry, the production of her friend, whom she familiarly called “Peggy.” The rhyme was very middling, and not well measured; the sentiment was of love, and was very serious and simple. In due time, Roddie was given the luxury of a reading in our absence. On our return we found him spelling his way through it for the third time. Our opinion being asked, we proved more amiable critics than young poets generally meet with, but were careful not to say too much, and lest we might, we shortly began to talk of something else. Before bed time the landlady asked him for the paper, but he seemed reluctant. She begged it of him, and put out her hand to take it, on which he put it in his pocket. She implored him to return it to her, as she was afraid if Peggy knew she had been showing it, she would never visit her house again, but Roddie was not to be moved, and ended the matter for the present by telling her to let Peggy know that he wanted to get the verses off by heart. Our help was but little needed after this, the poetry had done the business. He began to visit her, and was every now and again bringing some new verses to delight us with. Sitting down by another young man and me, his heart swelling with feeling too big for him to hold it all, the act of letting loose the excess threw him into raptures that were sometimes too plainly honest for amusement to be drawn from them. Not an expression of hers the least uncommon, but was repeated to us, not a trait observable, but was made the subject of a long warm discourse. Her life however being rather commonplace, there were visits made in which nothing really novel or out of the ordinary course came to the surface, however much they helped to confirm their growing sympathy. He maundered considerably after these seasons of level happiness, and made us at times wish he had her and was done with it, but, though inclined enough to talk, he had not quite yet reached the marrying emotion. It took him some weeks to do that, and a lot of new poetry descriptive of the married state had to be written before he did. I happened to be at a distance when the wedding took place, so was not there to see, but learnt that it had been a grand affair. Neither of them having any friends, at whose house to celebrate the event, he hired a tavern in Little Bourke Street, and kept open house to all comers. All went well until near midnight, when the general public, who were being treated so handsomely withal in the lower rooms, moved by a very natural desire to see their benefactor, went in a crowd up stairs, and unceremoniously ushering themselves in among the marriage guests, had all quickly in an uproar. Roddie was not sure about this behaviour being quite proper, but feeling powerless to command the storm, and much too happy at heart for outside disturbance to disquiet him greatly, he calmed the commotion in Peggy’s breast, by telling her the men meant no harm, it was just a way they had, it would all come right enough. Distrusting them, however, he saw reason to retire with Peggy shortly after the irruption, but being quickly missed, and followed, their bedroom door was forced, and the old and unseemly custom of “bedding” was observed, with just such ruthless barbarity as might have been expected of drunken men. They thronged the room—they crowded upon the bed. Roddie besought and prayed they would “give over,” but his bald head had no reverence in their eyes, and got many a slap as he was told to hide it beneath the clothes, and not till Peggy cried and wailed as if her heart would break, could the room be cleared.

I heard of them afterwards living on the diggings, he so proud of her that he had committed to her care the management of all his movements and concerns, and was thriving none the worse for having done so. He had before been only a single unit in the crowd, herding and shifting with it undistinguished, but now he had got both name and habitation. Friends came to visit him, and, under his hospitable roof, enjoyed cheerful home-like hours, that my own experience taught me must have been precious to humble unmated wanderers, laying on their minds impressions then little heeded, but destined to exercise, it might be, unmeasured influence, when time and circumstances, and the heart unsatisfied, would cause them to lean their heads upon their hands, and run back among the memories and shifting homeless scenes that seemed to be repeating themselves without end.

There were too many seeking clean-handed occupation for one to be readily successful, and I was thankful at last on getting employment as yard-hand in a small brewery, at two pounds a-week, out of which went about sixteen shillings for provisions, which I had to buy and cook myself. For the better protection of the property, I required to sleep upon the premises at one end of a low wooden shed, lumbered with bags of corks and bottle racks. The situation, close to the depot for Government emigrants at the west end of Little Collin Street, was lonely. The time was winter, so that, as my work was limited to daylight, I had long nights of leisure; and being very content with books for my companions, I read much, and I look back upon the quiet enjoyment so derived under the peculiar circumstances with subdued but not sorrowing remembrance. The wind whistled and wailed about the frail erection, and whirled the rustling straw about the yard, as I sat with my feet to a small pan of glowing wood—the feeble rays of the small yellow candle barely lightening the box-like darkness round about, and bringing a dreary feeling creeping over me, that occasionally, before I had got quite accustomed to the singular distinctness of sounds heard by night, caused me to see shapes in shadows, and hear fingers as it were feeling for the latch.

There were many places of amusement in town at this time, though not so many as now. The one that most attracted me was at the head of Great Bourke Street, East, an old circus transformed into a promenade concert room, where, though the assembled company might not be strictly select, the music was. My visits there, however, seemed but to make my loneliness at home more dull. To save me from rats, and to serve in some way for a companion, a dog was given me, a melancholy-looking animal, short-haired, with brown spots on a white ground, and with a tail about the length of my fore-finger. He cowered and trembled, and seemed ever so ready to run out of the way into a corner, when I moved or rose from my seat after a short stillness, that, apart from the effect of strangeness in me and in the place, I saw he had been unkindly treated in his youth. The place swarmed with rats; they clambered up and down the walls, and, gnawing their way into boxes, made sorry work with my provisions, and when my blankets happened to hang down from the “stretcher” on which I slept, they over-ran myself as if not satisfied with the provisions only. One night I was awakened by one with its fore-feet in my whiskers, and its nose dotting cold points upon my cheek. The dog lay alongside within reach of my arm, sound asleep and snoring. I called him while the enemy was yet audibly scampering under cover, but he did not understand, and only licked my hand as if in humble appeal to me not to beat him, he had not been guilty of anything he knew of. I felt angry, and, by a cuff, was about to let him know it, when my uplifted hand was rendered powerless by the recollection of something that happened on the previous day, in which, had cuffs been a meet reward for neglect of duty, I would have had one; the tongue gave another lick, and followed the retreating hand with more. The poor animal whimpered and rose with his fore-feet on the bed, and licking my face, as good as asked me what I wanted with him. I would rather he had remained dull and stupid on the ground, for I was troubled at the contrast between his conduct and my own, and lost some sleep by thinking over it.

My work, consisting mainly of bottle and brew-cask washing, lay outside in the cold wintry weather. There was too little bodily exercise in it to keep one warm. Much rain fell, the unpaved yard was miry, my feet and legs became wet and clogged with clay, and the loose bag on my shoulders failed to keep my body dry. My thoughts began to turn upon the better life I had forsaken in the old country—began, upon reflection, to fancy myself a worse man than then, not so God-fearing, ruder in feeling, and unable to see harm where before harm was plainly visible. Old attachments that I thought forgotten began to win their way back to my heart. Recollections of old office-mates, and of my race with them for preferment mingled with the rest, and made me restless. After losing close upon three years, was it possible to overtake them now? I felt the spirit moving that would try, but for some time hesitated at the thought that, once returned, I might find my chances marred, without the easy alternative of such humble occupation as this with the brewer. Balancing the arguments in my mind, while picking my steps through the thinnest of the mud, I observed my poor dog following me wistfully about, his tail down, his legs bent under him, his body arched, and plainly shivering with cold. I stood and looked. Drooping his head he crept closer to me, looked pitifully up, and, wiping his nose with his ever-ready tongue, gave a low trembling whine that seemed the nearest thing to a cry I had ever heard from a dog. He tried to reach my hand, and, forgetting for the moment where he stood, dipped his tail into the mud in an offer to sit for a more upright look at my sympathizing face. I felt it was good for neither of us to be there. In his unhappiness, I saw as it were my own reflected. He tipped the balance in favour of old home, but, poor fellow, in doing so he lost a friend.

APPENDIX.

As some may be interested in a fuller account of gold-digging than the limited scope of the personal narrative allowed, the following particulars are added.

In the Bendigo district, the shafts are generally 10 to 15 feet deep, through loose gravel, and sometimes through sandy earth that requires only the spade in digging. For raising the stuff from the bottom, rudely constructed winches are employed in the deeper holes, and, for the shallower, simple swing bars, which are merely one stout pole balanced horizontally on the forked end of another set upright, a counterbalance, rather in excess of the weight to be raised, making the operation of lifting both quick and easy. At Tarrangower, the usual depth was much the same as at Bendigo: there was, in the parts wrought when I was there, a thick crust of hard pebbly concrete to go through, at which unskilled workmen hammered in vain. At the neighbouring diggings of Maryborough, Burnt Creek, and Victoria Hill, there was a stratum similar, but more formidable, and bearing marks of fire and partial fusion, so that even heavy hammer-picks made no impression on them. Steel gads were used, struck by heavy malls, but weeks of patient toil were required to pierce a thickness of a few feet. Gunpowder was sometimes employed, but it shook the ground too much, and was generally condemned. At “Hard Hill,” in Burnt Creek, I was one afternoon crossing the line of holes, when a man as white as any miller came out of one for a breath of fresh air. We spoke. He had been a month already in sinking ten feet, three of which were crust, and he expected to be another month in bottoming on the pipe clay. I looked down and could hardly distinguish the present bottom through the floating grit that hung smoke-like within. The ground down in the flat, where the sinking was easier, was not yielding even bare bread to the few still lingering about it, and discouraging reports—common on the diggings even in the best of times—coming from Tarrangower and Maryborough at the time, those thus labouring on the “Hill” not knowing but that they might remove only to fare worse, were for the time resting satisfied with their hard pickings so long as they could live by them. In the first days of the diggings, men would not work ground if the gold was not plentiful enough to be seen and picked out with the fingers, but latterly they became, and now are, very well pleased if they can but keep themselves decently, the generally long-deferred hope of finding a nugget, or a pocket of grains, making them bear with discomforts that would be felt as more than irksome under ordinary wage service.

In Bendigo, at first only the pipe-clay surface, and a few inches of the earthy gravel overlying it, were considered worthy of notice. After a long interval the ground was re-opened, and a foot more of the earthy gravel removed and washed and found to pay very well—as things then went. Later on, as men’s views further modified, it was considered that there was gold enough in the whole mass of earth above the pipe clay to remunerate, if adequate means were employed to separate it. Parties with small capital combined, made dams and water sluices, and washing the earth wholesale, reaped a profit. Where the gold lay mixed with clay however, a process termed “puddling” required to precede the sluicing and the cradle-washing. In the case of individual diggers with small means, the puddling is done with a spade in an ordinary tub, under three feet in diameter, the stuff being swilled and stirred until the clay is all dissolved and washed away, but when the quantities are considerable, as in workings belonging to a company, the tub used might be ten or twelve feet in diameter, and five or six feet deep, sunk in the ground, with an upright shaft in the centre, fitted with projecting blades as in an ordinary pug mill, and made to revolve by one or two horses yoked to arms projecting from the top of the shaft. If the gold is very fine, it is necessary to renew the water frequently to allow of the fine grains settling to the bottom.

The cradle in ordinary use for washing is in shape much the same as the piece of homely furniture it takes its name from. It is furnished with rockers, and when at work has its head raised a few inches higher than the foot, for the due escape of the water used. A quantity of stuff from the puddling tub is placed in a hopper at the cradle head, and a stream of water turned to flow quietly and regularly upon it, at the same time that the rocking is commenced, the smaller particles and with them the gold, thus set in motion, are washed down between the bars, into a compartment beneath, and from it into a second, and thence down to the discharge opening along the bottom of the box, across which at short intervals are check bars about an inch deep, which intercept the gold as it is rocked along close on the bottom, but which allow the lighter sand and the water to flow over. A careless or inexperienced hand, by pouring water in too freely, and neglecting to keep up the rocking motion, would let the gold away with the gush.

The final process is performed in a shallow, circular tin dish, about four inches deep, two feet diameter at top, and about eighteen inches at bottom. Into it is put the mixture of sand and gold, removed at intervals from behind the check bars in the cradles, then the washer balancing it in his hands by means of ear handles under the rim outside, dips it in a pool and lifts in it as much water as sets the stuff aswimming when swilled and shaken, then allows the gold to sink through the sand to the bottom by reason of its greater weight. The surface stuff is then laved out, and the process of swilling, shaking, and laving repeated until only the gold remains.

For ease and convenience the drifts and chambers underground are made in the pipe clay below the gold level, a thickness of an inch or less being left, coating the gravel of the roof, in which when sufficient breadth has been bared, examination is made with knife and candle for gold, which is found in greatest quantity on the surface of and immediately above the clay.

I was once asked down into a hole belonging to an acquaintance to see what was termed a “middling rich patch,” just then uncovered. There was no need of the near application of the candle to discover the richness, for the glittering specks spangled the roof as thickly as stars in a clear moonless winter sky. It was the first and only sight of the kind I ever saw, and for a while it infused great zeal into me.

The sinking at Ballarat requires capital, the shafts being from 120 to 180 feet deep. For the Quartz reefs, crushing mills with steam power are necessary. Many of the workings are held by companies, who hire men at a daily wage to do the labouring work. For an ordinary shaft aiming at the gutter, eight men form a common complement. Of these, two may be occupied in cutting and preparing slabs for the lining of the shaft, two below, two at the windlass, and the other two pumping the water out, and acting as reliefs, but sometimes the eighth man is employed as cook and hutkeeper for the party. These numbers vary according to the capacity of the men for work, and the greater or less hurry to get to the bottom, or, when there, to get the gold they may have come upon cleared out.

The price of provisions in the older diggings, before the railway connecting them with town was made, varied according to the weather and the state of the roads. When we first arrived at Bendigo, flour was selling at £100 per ton wholesale, and, what came nearer our mark, 1/3 per pound retail, equal to nearly £180 per ton; salt and sugar alike 2/ per pound; tea 3/6; mutton 4/ and 5/ a quarter. In the remote diggings at the present day, similar high prices rule the market in rainy seasons, and will continue to do so, till either railways are made to them, or the highways are macadamised.

_ERRATUM._

In a portion of the impression, page 8, line 4, read:—“In the case of gutters, only the holes that struck upon the line were profitable, but the line was generally so uncertain,” &c.

Transcriber’s Note: This has been changed as the author wished. The original text as printed was:—“In the case of gutters, only the holes that struck upon the line was generally so uncertain” i.e. the words “were profitable, but the line” had been omitted. In addition some minor printing errors have been corrected.