The day was already near its close, there was barely time to seek out and prepare some sleeping place in the bush, even did I start at once, and the weather was too wintry for an unsheltered bed upon the ground. I had not yet determined what to do, when there came to the door one of five rough looking men who had erected a couple of blankets for a tent early in the day a few hundred yards from Watty’s. Being acquaintances of Watty’s this was a friendly visit. After a little talk, making known to him my intention of leaving, he kindly invited me to pass the night with him and his mate. I gladly accepted, and left with him shortly after. On getting among my new acquaintances, I found that one of them called Bill, had only the day before returned, the victor in a prize fight at Tarrangower. He was a short but strong and heavy-bodied man, with a dark stolid-looking eye, and very deaf. He no sooner learnt that the little mason was ill-using his wife than he swore he would have her from him in the morning. He appeared to have no thought of her objecting to the change; his faith had very likely grown to this assurance by considerable practice in similar disinterested knight-errantry among the distressed wives of the society he moved in. By their conversation I learnt that they were all old convicts, that Watty was one also, and that they were mostly natives of the town of Paisley. One of them had only half served his sentence of seven years in Van Diemen’s Land, and had stolen away in a passenger ship bound for Melbourne. On this account he was living as quietly as circumstances would permit. There seemed no lack of money, for liquor was in plenty, and they appeared fond of it. I was luckily in time to hear how Bill had fought and won his battle, in which he had received but little damage. His opponent, a “new chum” fresh from England and conceited with excess of science, had looked on him as an unlearned bumpkin upon whom his subtleties of art would be almost wasted. In part this estimate was right, Bill was brute enough not to see the beauty of the other’s fence, and being of the old barbaric school had at once rushed to blows and buttocking; feints and manœuvres he snuffed at, and going in straight at his man was ever quickly bringing him to grief. His knuckles were his pride, he had before now driven nails up to the head in pine boards with them, and cushioning one blow upon the new chum’s stomach quickly brought to light what he had been eating last and all but broke his back, a feat that he gleefully styled “doubling him up.”
It was my general habit to be civil and conciliatory in strange company and I felt no inclination to be otherwise now—whichever way my “fur” was rubbed, I made that the right way, and so succeeded that when bed time came there were two who claimed me to lie next them. Our sleeping place was the floor on a litter of brushwood; each rolled his blanket round about him, but the space was so limited, that one had scarce room to turn without jostling his neighbours. On the one hand I had to fend my face from the long greasy uncombed hair of the Vandiemonian, and on the other from the sour beery breath of Bill’s brother.
Breakfast was scarcely over, when Watty came tumbling in amongst us with an air of muddled defiance, and yet with an evident desire to put himself on the best of terms with us. Slapping as many shoulders as he could well get at, and ruffling one head of hair, by way of provoking the owner to say something pleasant, and failing in his object, the situation was becoming awkward for us all, when the dish of beef and bread from which we had been eating caught his eye. With a “hie Joe reach that dish here, the very thing I wanted,” he took it on his knee, and without uncovering commenced with his knife upon the victuals. Regardless of the coolness apparent in his hosts, he called on one of them for mustard, saying “that beef was nothing without a relish,” then nudged another with his elbow to see if there was any tea left in the billy. Wiping his lips when he had at length taken his fill—and that was not a little—he replenished his pipe with borrowed tobacco, and set himself to talk. He had a perfect command of words, and a pointed manner of expressing himself that readily attracted attention in his more earnest moods, so that the discussion he now entered on soon found interested listeners. He began by drawing a picture of their defenceless condition were misfortune or sickness to come upon them. Pointing to the disordered brushwood of the beds, and the damp dirty looking piles of blankets huddled together at the far end, he painted them lying there through days and nights of sickness, dependent on chance friendships for all those little attentions that a sick man needs, and when he had apparently sobered them to think how it might be thus, he shifted ground, and asked them to look at the men of Manchester and Liverpool, placed in like circumstances with them, but banded together in a common cause against bad times—relieving their needy, and from their mutual sympathy and support, never knowing want, while they of Paisley went their ways in solitary pairs or single tentfuls, stretching no helping hand to save a brother in distress, but with close-fisted narrow meanness, with a single eye to self, leaving fellow townsmen, old schoolmates even, to fight with their troubles as they best could, and drift away on their necessities if theycould do no better. His heart, he said, was pained at the estrangements and cold-shoulderings of those whom a long life of misfortune such as theirs should rather have drawn together in the fellow-feeling of fellow-sufferers—it led him at times, through very shame, to disown being a native of the town that had raised men possessed of so little generosity. The times in short were so grievously hard upon the working man, that with the counsel of a friend he advised the establishing of a fund, from which relief might be given as need required, and contributions from the more successful among the brethren might for this purpose be deposited in the hands of some well known party. As his subject grew upon him, his manner became more earnest, till at the close he bore the look of one ready to sacrifice himself to any extent in the good enterprise; his pipe had gone out in his enthusiasm, his eyes sought to gather the feeling of the company, but a more stolid lot of faces I never before saw grouped together. Vexed by their apathetic treatment of the scheme, he stretched out his hand to them saying “Well now men how is it to be, for the honour of our town how is it to be,” on which the Vandiemonian broke the spell by crying “to blazes with the town, much reason have we to mind its honour.” The others fell back in a roar of laughter. Watty in a fury dashed his pipe into fragments in the beef dish, and cursing their stupidity hurried from the tent in the direction of his own, the cries that shortly afterwards arose from which made known to us that his gentle partner was expiating our indifference, on which Bill, recollecting his vow of the previous night, to see to her relief, abruptly rose and catching Watty as he was coming out of his own door with the air of a conqueror, thrashed him well, but only with his open hand, for “he never made his hand a fist,” he said, “but when he had to do with men.” The wife cried bitterly when she saw it. It was not likely to help her any, and I could not help thinking that the sight of his suffering under the chastisement reanimated her old abused affection for him into throbs of tender but timid compassion. The weather was stormy and wet, which made me glad to accept my friends’ hospitality for at least twenty-four hours longer. I repaid their kindness by becoming hewer of wood and drawer of water to them.
Towards sundown the Vandiemonian and another who was a barber to trade quarrelled about some trifle. They were both the worse of liquor, but the barber having apparently a little more mind than the other for the liquor to work upon, was the more demonstrative of the two. The others soon interfered to see justice done, but so managed that the disputants saw no other way to get their rights than fighting for them. They set themselves and footed the ground unsteadily for awhile watching for what wascalled an opening, but the Vandiemonian being evidently deficient in strategy, went straight to business at once, by lowering his head and rushing with it full tilt upon the barber’s stomach, lifting him off his feet, and, as it so happened, sending him sprawling with his back across the great log fire that was blazing opposite the door. He was quickly laid hold of and lifted off, loudly protesting against that manner of fighting, but one of his hands being apparently necessary now for the rubbing of his back parts, he was content with argument for the rest of the battle, and became quite companionable again, on the Vandiemonian informing him that on account of a rupture he could fight no other way.
About two hours after sundown we were all inside, playing at cards by the light of a slim candle, when Watty appeared at the door in company with a tall, robust, rough-bearded and unwashed man, rather past the prime of life, whom he introduced in rather a stiff manner as his friend “Scottie Stratton.” They seemed both the worse of liquor, but as regards that, the others were fairly on equal terms with them. My impression was that the mental habits of the company tended little to reflection, and that the things of the passing moment were generally sufficient for their attention, but I detected an air of wariness in Bill, attributing it to his small transaction with Watty in the morning, and to his deafness, which called for the more active use of his eyes. However that may be, room was made for the new comers, and the cards were reshuffled that a new game might be begun to include them. All went well enough for a while, and the bottle passed freely from hand to hand, the absence of a glass obliging them to measure their takings in their mouths. At length a hitch occurred, Watty declared that Stratton was being imposed upon, on which Stratton knocked the candle out, and in the darkness all struggled to their feet. I was farthest from the door, and for a moment thought from the shaking of the tent pole that a fight had commenced upon the spot, and was glad on hearing Bill in the midst of the stumbling and confusion say with steady voice “O, if that’s your little game I’m ready for you, come, get outside.” A couple of candles were got and lighted. The two men, Bill and Stratton stripped, Bill shorter by a head than the other. The candles glared in the damp breeze, as they were held high above the level of our eyes. The places were taken, the word “all ready” was given, and I heard a rush and the dull sound of blows upon a face, then a lumbering fall upon the ground. Again and again was this repeated, till I began to wonder how much beating it took to kill a man. Stratton’s height and length of arm were of no avail against the determined energy of his opponent. I saw the bustling and the rushing leaps; I heard the deep muttered curses of the losing man, and theshouts and imprecations of the others, and felt as if accessory to a mad revel of damned spirits. Could I have got my blankets out unseen, the dark bush that night would have been my bed. When becoming faint with compassion for the man whose flesh was being so bruised, I heard another fall, followed by a third, and an “ugh” exclamation, that plainly told me the uppermost man had fallen with his knees upon the body of the other, but before I had time to think, there came a succession of mashing sounds that needed no interpretation. Stratton was being beaten on the ground, Bill’s blood was up, and had not his fellows rushed in and taken him off, there would have been murder done. Bill was forced into the tent, Watty with difficulty getting his man raised to his feet, staggered off with him, and I saw him no more.
When, after a time, I ventured in among them, the bottle had resumed its work. Bill was singing ballads, and the others were so elated with his fighting merits, that daylight was close at hand before they went to bed—possibly they would not have lain down at all had the liquor lasted. In the morning, after breakfast, I bade them good-bye, and wandered forth, not caring whither. I had now tasted of both frying-pan and fire, and felt truly thankful on finding myself once more breathing the air of solitude among the ranges. The low-toned sighing of the breeze among the branches overhead had a peculiar tranquillizing effect upon my mind, and set me adreaming of things old and new, of home and gold, of my ill-clad feet, and the number of days I could do without food, in the event of falling in with none. I was in the gold country, on the lower ranges of the Pyrenees, from the heights of which it was thought by many the gold found on the flats had been washed down. I had often heard the unlucky joke with one another about the pots of precious stuff yet to be discovered up there on the mountains, their jest savouring of just so much sincerity that I thought want of means alone prevented them from venturing up to seek for those real pots of the molten stuff, of which that found in the valleys was but the boilings over, the mere tricklings from the lips. But what about the quarrying of such blocks? I had no tools; and what about the carrying when thus quarried? While yet discussing these matters, I had almost without knowing it begun the ascent. The extreme summits appeared so near that I thought to reach them in time to return to the plain, if necessary, before sundown. I was charmed with the scenery. The romantic glens and shady recesses among wood and rock, with floor of bright green grass, made me at times linger on the way with what would have been a feeling of true enjoyment had I been less eager about what might be found further on. Now and again I got sight of the plain spread out below, with tentspeeping out among the trees in the neighbourhood of the diggings, and with light blue smoke curling up in many places from fires that, judging by the position of the sun, would soon be engaged with pots and frying pans for dinner. My heart softened at the sight. I felt myself in for a little hardship, but tightening my belt, I resumed my toil, and arguing with as much philosophy as the circumstances allowed, saw no reason to suppose that hunger was different on the hills from what it was on the flats. Upward and onward I sped, not neglectful the while to eye the ground in hopes of seeing something to my advantage. Much rain had fallen previously, and the surface stones and broken quartz were clean and bright, as would also be the case with the projecting knobs of the surface nuggets when I came upon them. After some hours’ fatigue, the upper summits appeared but little nearer than at first. I had still hope enough and to spare, however, until brought to a pause on the spur of a high ridge by finding myself separated from them by a deep valley about a mile in width; and I abandoned the attempt on observing that between that valley and the summits lay many another hollow, whose extent I could guess at only from the hazy atmosphere that filled them. I felt as a very atom in the scene. When the sun went down, I made a fire and prepared to pass the night, impressed with a notion that it would be well for me to retrace my steps at daybreak. When I rose with the first light of the dawn, I felt like one who has been in a night-mare, and is unable at first to assure himself it has been all a dream. Recollection coming, I got up and started to regain the beaten road, and falling in with an “old hand” also in search of work, gladly put myself under his guidance. He appeared like one just recovering from a fit of drunkenness, out of patience with himself and everything else. He was very clean, however, and his chin looked as if newly shaved with a dull razor, his nose as if he had been blowing it overmuch, though I could see no handkerchief that he used and his eyes as if he had been recklessly smoking a pipe too short to carry the smoke clear of them. Hunger and fatigue were beginning to distress me, and I felt quite of his humour to talk none but to make the best use of our legs in the hope of reaching the next station before dark. I was the more content to remain silent from observing the irritation the slightest hindrances raised in his mind, on which my air of composure had by no means a soothing effect. I was glad when we reached “The Amphitheatre” sheep station, so called on account of its situation among surrounding hills. A hutkeeper and cook being wanted for a new slaughter-yard at the Avoca diggings, which lay about twelve miles off, I was engaged, and, passing the night in the men’s hut, started in the morning to make my appearance on old ground in a new character.
I never had given much of my attention to the art of cooking, and was rather alarmed on finding I would have some seven or eight experienced bushmen to deal with. The first day’s bread we had brought with us in the cart, the frying-pan and kettle were to do the rest. The men seemed satisfied with plain things, and the superintendent appearing favourably disposed towards me, I felt less anxious than I had expected on commencing breadmaking on the second morning. I had never baked anything bigger than a three or four pound loaf before, but the process being all the same, I ventured on a stone of flour for this my first professional attempt, and not seeing well how to lay so great a cake of dough in the usual manner among the ashes, a happy idea came to me of cooking it in a large circular camp oven. I got it in very nicely, set the vessel on a bed of red-hot cinders, and heaped plenty of the same upon the lid. In about half-an-hour, I looked within to see how the work was going on, and was glad to see the top hoven up, and as brown as well-baked pie crust, quite tempting to look at. I gave it a few minutes more, to make sure that the heart was reached, and when all was done turned out upon the grass as pretty a loaf as I had ever seen, with a top like a flat dome, and sides as crisp-like as butter biscuit. Setting it upon a stump to cool, I again placed the oven on the fire to bake a leg of mutton, being careful to lay some small lumps of suet on the bottom to prevent burning. Burn it did however; turning it appeared but to present a new face to be charred. I put more suet in, and still no gravy. Dinner time drew near, and I became excited at the thought of the seven hungry men. I sighed, but got no relief thereby, in the certain prospect of being sent about my business for incompetency. The dinner party stopped their work upon the stock-yard fencing and approached. The wind was from me to them, and I noticed one or two looking curiously forward directly after I had lifted the oven lid to get the meat out, and feared the smell was telling tales on me. My hope now rested solely on the loaf. With a subdued air, silent and foreboding, I handed it to one to cut, while I served the tea out. I heard a sound as of some one at the dish that held the dry roast, and a query put, “What’s this a piece of,” and then a great guffaw of a laugh with “Well done Scottie, will we have to skin you or it I wonder.” I turned my head to look and knew not how to shape my excuse, but there was so little sign of anger in the speaker’s face that I was encouragedto tell how the thing had happened with me, and to promise better work next time. A few of the older men grumbled a good deal, and asked what I was good for to do no better than that, but Tom, the young man who had first spoken, rubbed the edge off their comments, and going with me to inspect the oven, found a small crack in the bottom had let the fat out. But hardly had the discovery been made, when a faint crash was heard; the cutter of the loaf had sent his knee through its arched top in setting it bottom up upon his lap. On clearing away the broken shell there appeared a substance “that might be either cheese or grindstone,” the man said, “which ever you please, it’s heavy enough for the one, and blue enough for the other.” Tom laughed as I never saw man laugh before, and said I would be the death of him, if he looked much longer at me. Though very grateful to him for standing between me and harm, I could not see the occasion of his mirth, and for once felt it was not contagious. There being nothing else to eat than the two things I have named, the men did the best they could with them, but Tom, as he was leaving to return to work, told me he was afraid after the “tuck out” that I had given him he would hardly be ready for the next meal, and asked if I had such a thing as a pill or two about me. Before they came back at sundown, I had baked a large flat loaf about the size of an arm-chair cushion, among the hot ashes of the large wood fire—very eatable—but the dough having been rather soft when I slid it from the sheet of bark that served for kneading-board, it had doubled up in places, and had absorbed too many cinders in its bottom crust. I had besides made ready a pile of pancakes, fried in fat, with which Tom fell so much in love that I spared not the frying-pan in maintaining the supply at all the three meals of the day. About the end of a week however, on perceiving he was not eating so freely of them as at first, and was evidently transferring his affections to the loaf, and on finding that they were not altogether agreeing with myself, I made no more.
When I had been about a fortnight thus engaged, the cartman left suddenly, and I was told that I would have to take his place for a day or so. When the information was brought to me, I was busy making ready a dinner that I assured myself would atone for all past deficiencies. All my ingenuity had been expended upon a potful of beef and mutton stew, which was slowly simmering at the fire; the fluid portion had assumed the consistency of jelly, and I flattered myself that great though the quantity was, there would be but little of it left for supper. The cart was got ready with a load for the diggings, and I was hailed to come and take charge of it. A strong breeze was making free with the lighter ashes ofthe fire, and the pot had no lid. I was hurried, and a little anxious about how a horse was managed, so that my mind was not altogether with my work. The hail was repeated, this time by the superintendent; the frying pan stood on end against a stump; seizing it I made a lid of it and ran. Shortly after returning, I looked to see how my last production had been relished. The pot stood away from the fire, full as when I left it, cold; and the meat hidden beneath a thick brittle layer of what unmistakably was mutton dripping. The phenomenon was unaccountable until, to my confusion, I recollected the make-shift lid. I had been using it at breakfast time, and in my haste had forgotten to clean it out. There was very little said to me about it, but on the following morning, on returning from a second journey to the diggings, I found an old man, a stranger, had superseded me. I tried to think that the change from cook to cartman was promotion; but for a time every fresh meal the old man set before us, humbled me into sincere thankfulness for having been spared from going on the tramp again.
A few days after the change took place, a drove of fat cattle, about twenty in number, and the first of our killing stock, arrived under charge of two horsemen from some distant station. Calved and reared at large in the open bush, they were just wild enough to fly either from or at a man on foot, but at the same time so innocently stupid, that a man on horseback might ride in and out amongst them if he but kept quiet, their distinction between friend and foe being apparently ruled by the number of his legs. The animals were too tired to make the first yarding of them difficult. On the following morning, however, when assisting to enclose a few of them in the slaughtering pen, I was made to fear that here might lie the end of my strange pilgrimage. The main yard was about thirty yards square; the twenty bullocks gathered close together about the centre, snorting and pawing the ground as we mounted the high rails and dropped inside. Refreshed by their night’s rest, and nimble with hunger, they rushed about seeking some way of escape, now and again crowding into the railed passage leading to the slaughtering floor, which served as an intermediate yard, with slip rails for barring it from the main enclosure, when we had got the animals we wanted in. A rush was made to these slip rails as often as this happened, but as often, for close upon two hours were they hurled from our hands in the act of placing them. The courage and temper of the superintendent were much tried; once I saw him fight his way singly from behind through the angry herd, to help the men who were trying, but again in vain, to close the passage. As the now infuriated beasts ran at us with lowered heads, I was too busy making my own escapeto see how his was made, but I heard some cracks given on a dull sounding body, and seeing him from my perch on the top rail a few minutes after still on the ground, with a light stake in his hand, I felt encouraged next time not to run so readily, and by a little careful observation was bye and bye enabled to distinguish signs of mischief in the animals from those merely of alarm. By what rule I judged I could not say, but believe the process was much the same as when interpreting the expression of a human face. Once, however, I presumed a little too much on my discernment, and had only time to get upon the top rail with one leg over, when the animal sprang up, and it and rail and I were thrown sprawling on the ground outside. As it did not on the instant run away, I did, as well as a stunned leg would let me.
The weight of the bodies when killed and dressed ranged from eight to eleven hundred weight, and it fell to me as cartman to carry the quarters as they were cut, from the sling bar to the cart, no light task to one who had yet to learn the art of balancing a yielding mass upon my shoulders, and who trusted only in the stiffness of his back. I only dropped one quarter the whole time I was employed in carrying, about six months, but that one was the first I attempted, and unfortunately it fell in the mud. On the second morning after breakfast, the superintendent desired me to make ready to ride the cattle out for a few hours’ feeding. It was not for me to say No, but I told him I had not practised any other riding than in a cart, and that I was doubtful he would lose his stock. He poohed at my scruples, saddled a small brown horse that had a character for sobriety and slowness, and mounting it himself, rode after the uncaged animals in their first rush to the water. When they had quenched their thirst, he headed them round to where I stood waiting under cover of a bush, but before I could take his place, they had gone off at a run, and there was nothing for it but to beat them in the race. Never, I thought, had horse flown as mine now did, over holes and stumps with flying leaps, his head erect, and his ears laid back, as if he knew his work, and expected I knew mine. After galloping thus about a mile, we got in front, but could not stop the herd; half a mile more, but still they ran. I was beginning to be alarmed, for they minded me no more than they would one of themselves. At the end of the third mile, however, their pace began to slacken, and shortly after, on reaching a fine grassy bottom, they commenced to feed. It had taken us but a short time to come this distance, but I doubted the like expedition in the return, and consequently got into the saddle again shortly after mid-day to begin it. I had a stock whip with me, the lash of which was about fifteen feet in length, attached to a handle shorter andsmaller than a policeman’s baton. I had felt quite unable to use it in the morning’s run, but now made bold to try. Throwing the lash out from me, and describing a large oval in the air with the handle end, finishing with a jerk as I had seen the drovers do, I thought to make some of the brown hides smart, but a swing of the tail round to the part touched, was for a while the only answer the phlegmatic brutes would give me, and having to stop the horse at every such attempt, thereby losing much more than was gained, I broke a branch from a tree and rode at them with it determined to bring the matter to an issue one way or another, but on raising it to strike, the horse mistook my intention and shied, nearly throwing me to the ground. I durst not repeat the experiment, but as something had to be done, resumed the whip, and now swinging it round my head, produced after many trials a soft twiney crack, that made my heart leap for very joy, seeing it made the creatures prick their ears, and snuff the wind. The horse stood quiet while I practised, meekly winking his eyes, and appearing to take no offence even when, as often happened, I got the lash entangled about his legs. At last I made a crack that rang like a gun-shot through the woods, and then another. The herd came walking as to a centre; I pricked the horse forward, shouted, and while they were yet on the move, got them headed for home, and giving them no rest, we reached a ridge about half a mile from the yard, with the sun yet a good hour high. But here the superintendent met me mounted on a tall grey horse without saddle. He was out in search of another of the horses that had gone amissing. Seeing me so near home, and all going well, he set me on the bare back of the old horse he had come on, and rode away upon the other. My new seat had a projecting back bone running down the middle, I made the best use I could of my knees to bear my weight, and might thus have saved myself from damage, but just as the yard came into view two diggers on foot appeared. Foreboding mischief I shouted and waved to them to keep away, but they did not understand or would not. The herd caught sight of them, and ran off at a swinging trot across the creek and away up into hilly ground. My knees could no longer support my weight, which at every leap the horse took, came down with cruel effect upon the ridge board I sat astride of. The men jeered and laughed, whistled, and called “Joe, Joe,” after me until I was lost to hearing. Darkness was fast approaching, and I was beginning to despair about my work, when the superintendent came riding up, and with a few cracks of the whip, quickly made the animals close their ranks, the rearmost crowding to reach the front, and all at the top of their speed to get out of reach of his anger. I had a tale to tell on reaching the hut, but did nottell it, though Tom next day let me know in confidence that a plaister of pipe clay was the finest substitute he knew for lost skin.
Next morning at daybreak I was sent with a saddle on my shoulders to bring home the missing horse from the stock yard of an out station about four miles higher up the creek, and in due time was mounted and making my way slowly back along the road. Becoming a little more confident in my seat when about half way home, I applied my single spur with the lightest of touches, and received in return a whisk of the tail across my back. The reply made me hold some little consultation with myself. The animal had turned his head slightly round as if to see what the matter was; his ears seemed fidgetty, and I wondered what that signified, but the pace becoming slower and slower until it came to a dead stop, there was no alternative but to use my armed heel as before. The hinder parts rose on the instant and I was nearly thrown. I was glad to make peace on any terms, and “woed” him quiet. We could not remain standing still however; I geehupped and chirked with my mouth in the style of my predecessor the cartman, but all in vain, until by slapping him with the end of the bridle on the neck, I got him urged forward to where a tree dropped its branches within my reach. I was becoming angry, and might have to ride him often yet before leaving the neighbourhood. Having heard it said, that according as the will of the man or of the horse ruled at the first acquaintance, so was it likely to be afterwards, a now-or-never impulse overrode my fear, and armed me for the battle. He stood peaceably looking back at me as I wrenched a branch off. Giving him one hearty whack with it behind, he winced and shook my feet out of the stirrups, and went off at a hard gallop which was never slackened till I drew him up at the hut door. My face felt rather flushed, and the horse was blowing. The superintendent came out and asked if I had not more sense than to ride a grass-fed horse at that rate. Feeling that sense had very little to do with the matter, I would have justified myself had not Tom at the moment clapped me on the back, and said with a singular grin upon his honest face that I had a very devil in me, if I but knew it. The character suggested in the remark being likely to be more serviceable under existing circumstances than the other that would have been assumed in telling the plain story, I held my peace, but shortly afterwards ascertained from Tom that a horse that has been accustomed only to a riding switch, is apt to misunderstand the meaning of a spur. The adventure seemed to have rid me of my fear. Duty became a pleasure to me when I could perform it in the saddle. The ranges were no longer hills of difficulty when other legs than my own were bearing the fatigue. The risk of losing the directionin which the hut lay ceased to be a matter of anxiety, when I had the unfailing instinct of my dumb companion to rely on, though once that instinct played me false, by bearing me to the home station at the Amphitheatre, when I meant returning to the slaughter-yard. Night came on shortly after I had slacked the rein to him, and in the darkness I failed to recognise the road that we had struck on until too late. Much hard work previously at the slaughter-yard had, no doubt, much to do with this visit on which he took me to the place where he had been foaled and reared.
Our old cook left, and in his room there came a young man newly arrived from Scotland, whose christian name was David. It took but little time for us to discover in each other kindred sympathies and habits. It was like finding a green place in the desert. Had we been Frenchmen, we might have kissed, and sworn life-long brotherhood, but being creatures of less impulse we merely “hung our harps upon the willows” and mourned over departed joys, and the small prospect at present of meeting new ones. He had been at college, with a view to becoming a minister, but something which he could not well explain had unsettled him, and sent him—here. He talked of books, and was yet so full of the school, that he was often on the floor reciting passages from the classic authors; Greek and Latin seemed to be the languages that best suited him, when the pots and pans did not require his attention. Very companionable, and with an expression of face, that looked somewhat like a sly laugh taking a rest, he had unfortunately become possessed of the idea, that there was no securing personal independence but by keeping strict guard upon the personal dignities. He quickly made himself acquainted with the duties proper of a cook and hutkeeper, but beyond these he would not go when the superintendent himself was not concerned. This was soon made plain to his fellow-servants, who thereupon took in hand to correct the evident errors of his education. David was in their mouths at every turn of their leisure in and about the hut. Not a draught of water or light to a pipe was wanted but he was called upon, and as for face washing, there was more of it in a week now than I had seen in a whole month before, for David was the water carrier, and they could not think to see him idle. When there was a sheep to kill no hand but mine interfered to help, for who but David had any business with it. He at length lost heart; I tried to counsel him, but he could not bend, nor could he leave, for he had engaged himself to serve twelve months upon the station. The superintendent at last got him removed to a bush hut, to cook and shift the hurdles for two shepherds. In this isolated and lonely situation, without books, and with, in all likelihood, the rudest of societyin the men he shared the hut with, the yet fresh memories he had related to me of his early homes and haunts and his hopeful studies, would begin to burn within him, run in his dreams by night, and waste the vigour of his mind in vain imaginations by day, until the dull routine of his duties saddened him down to passive acquiescence. A few weeks after he left us, I received intelligence from Melbourne that called for my presence there, and never saw him again.
I had not heard from home for about twelve months, and it was by mere chance that a note to me addressed “Post Office, Avoca,” came to hand. It spoke of letters and of the arrival of an old friend from Glasgow. I left the slaughter yard on the second morning after receiving the information, and, carrying only a pair of blankets, and a hook pot, with a little bread and tea, started for Ballarat, there to take the coach for Geelong, thence to Melbourne by the steamer, being much too impatient to think of walking all the way, though my pay of thirty shillings a week with rations, could ill afford the expense. My mind running so much on home during my journey down, I looked with somewhat modified impressions on the scenes traversed; they had no longer novelty to recommend them, and I found myself contrasting them with those of the old country. I thought of the old hawthorn hedges there, of the quiet little villages, where, to the passer by, peace and contentment seemed to find a home, and where perhaps, when the children were at school, few were to be seen—an ivy-covered spire, rearing its modest head above the thatched roofs near, with a little graveyard, hallowed to the villagers as the resting place of their dead—every nook and corner associated with some story of the past, almost every house intimately connected with the memories of preceding generations—green lanes and shady walks, where the aged in their feeble rambles find the young following in their early footprints with just such blushing tales of confidence and love, and just such simple-hearted hopefulness, as they can remember of themselves: whereas here, everything in which man has a hand seems new, and hardly finished, the smell of paint and fresh split timber predominant through all, with occasionally a scent upon the air of green-wood fires. Little for the old world superstition yet to fix upon outside of the mind; the few hillocks that have begun to dot a corner of the township must be multiplied—familiar voices must first be missed, and memory dwell upon the bygone years in which they were accustomed to be heard—the living must feel themselves walking near the dead—before those old home impressions about things unseen, that make men grave and uneasy, they know not exactly how, can renew their troubling influence in dreams and times of loneliness. Without local tradition to establish mentalsympathy with the place, and with people of strange dialects and tongues gathering around, the heart may miss much of its accustomed comfort, but there is work to be done, and good reward for it, and while that is being realised, old habits modify, friendships and local interests arise, so that gradually the place becomes to all intents a lasting home.
Melbourne consists of two portions, older and newer. The former, which grew much slower than the latter, lies between two low, irregular, broad-browed ridges. These are of no great length, and flatten out their south ends on the Yarra-Yarra river which here flows westward in front of them. Elizabeth Street, the main thoroughfare of Melbourne, runs along the bottom of the valley between these ridges, and in line with it is now the highway to the Diggings in the north. The streets, unlike those of the cities in the hot countries of the East, are wide and straight, and run at right angles. This, while affording scope for traffic, is attended with a sacrifice of comfort, as the rays of the sun, reflected from the white plastered walls, and smiting direct upon the surface of the roads, make the feet sweat and burn, while eyes unused to it and perhaps fresh from the green shade of the forest, are oppressed by the constant glare, and in vain seek relief in umbrellas and broad-brimmed hats. The town lies two miles from the shipping direct, or four by the river. The latter has its source in a diminutive spring in the Snowy mountains, about a hundred miles to the eastward of Melbourne. The banks are in general abrupt, and in many places high, and well wooded, with here and there flats and gentle slopes of limited extent occurring. The scenery is picturesque, the foliage diversified. Every short distance presents new combinations of beauty in tree-clad height and hollow, with birds of bright plumage, and schools of chattering parrots on the wing. At Heidelberg, about seven miles above Melbourne, and at intervals along the river side between, small farmers, market-gardeners, and vine-growers have taken possession of the slopes and alluvial bottoms, and brought them under cultivation. In times of drought, when hot winds and clouds of dust come sweeping from the plains, these settlers may congratulate themselves on their situation. They are exposed, however, to danger ofanother kind, for the river, slow of descent, winding much, and confined in basin, occasionally fails to carry off the waters poured down during the heavy rains. The bottom lands and lower slopes are then laid fathoms deep under a turbid flood. On reaching Melbourne, an elbow in the course at Richmond, and abrupt projecting banks, a little lower down, in the neighbourhood of the Botanic Gardens on the one side, with trees ranked close along the margin of the other, retard and heap back the waters upon the lower portions of the townships of Richmond and Low Collingwood. Should this occur by night, and the condition of the weather at the time allow it to be heard, the rippling of the current against the angles of the houses which stand nearest to the swelling tide-way, may give early warning to sleepers not too dull to unusual sound, but in places more remote the water surrounds the habitations silently, progressing from fence to door step, from doorstep to hearth, and steals upward on the lighter furniture, and at last with slow oscillating motion, floats it gently off the floor. Were an ear awake to listen, it might now and again hear sounds like half-hushed lisping whispers, when the surface of the deepening pool reaches the lips of empty vessels, and begins to trickle into them; but the slumbering sense is inwardly engaged with the incoherent details of dreams, the filling is accomplished, and the silence that has scarce been broken is resumed. Before the mattresses on which the sleeping inmates lie are reached, some one, more sensitive to cold, or more lightly covered than the others may awaken, and struck by the singular raw-smelling freshness of the confined air, and the strange blackness where before he has been accustomed to see only the varying shadow of the floor, puts his foot or his hand out, in an effort to get up to learn the reason, and so discovers it. Wading may still save them; there is little time for hesitation when life may depend on a few inches more or less of depth on the uneven ground that has to be crossed in the dark to a place of safety.
The flood is released only after passing under and around Prince’s Bridge, abreast of Melbourne. It there finds room to spread, upon the wharves and the streets adjoining, on the one hand, and the low marshy ground between Emerald Hill and the town on the other. River and roads, all are alike swallowed up in the wide deluge. A few tree tops and roofs, a frothy swirl above submerged clumps of scrub and tea-tree, with a drifting wreck of wooden houses and furniture, proclaim the extent of the yet uncompleted disaster to the anxious, interested crowds on the heights around. During the heavy rains, all unmacadamized or unpaved roads are reduced to an almost impassable puddle. Elizabeth Street, from its low situation, receives nearly the whole of the surface drainage of the valley slopes, and,during rain-storms, becomes impassable on foot. One morning during a flood of only ordinary magnitude, I found myself with many others at the crossing of Great Collin Street, cut off from communication with the opposite side, by a torrent that ran leg deep close in by the foot path, while two men were ferrying people across in carts. I never till then had known a man in danger of being swept away and drowned at his very door. This was immediately after a rather heavy and protracted fall of rain, but the capacious causewayed side-channels, and the elevation of the footpath above the level of the road, showed that emergencies of this kind were not unlooked for. It is good to turn from these accidents of situation, to the contemplation of the climate, with its generous salubrity, as exhibited in the fields and strips of garden ground. Vines flourish, and when trained on rods round doors and windows, serve at once for ornament and shelter from the sun.
The scarcity of houses that followed the sudden increase of the population, led the Government to apportion a piece of Reserve ground, near the south end of the bridge, whereon tents might be erected. At the time of my arrival, about twenty families were so housed, some of them looking as if they thought they had left home truly, and were in the wilderness. Their firewood was scarce, and their hearth on the hill side, their couch a brush bed on the ground, and the candle after nightfall revealing unpleasantly their every movement by the shadows on the cloth-walls. In the course of a walk through, I came upon a few loose branches, and a blanket thrown over them as if to dry. I heard a mumbling of voices, but was at a loss to know from what quarter, till something round dimpled the blanket from underneath. There was life there—I was looking on the roof of a house. A laugh, and more dimpling as if by elbows and hands, then a merry commotion, during which the roof fell in, and disclosed the inmates—two beardless youths—reminded me as I walked away, while they were disentangling themselves from the ruins, that happiness is not dependent on outward circumstances, else these two, without a pillow or a dish, save one ship hook-pot, and with the rain sapping its way under them down hill and gathering in the hollows of their knee-high ceiling, to be dislodged by an upward punch of the hand when found to drip too fast, would have been too serious for such exercise of limb, as revealed their state to me.
On the northern or Melbourne side of the river, a vacant piece of ground fronting the end of Elizabeth Street, came somehow into use as a ready off-hand market place, where the needy might dispose of their spare clothes, and such things as guns and pistols, razors, watches, trinkets, books, chests, &c. Symptoms of feeling and of sadness were observable now and then inthose who were thus engaged, but in no instance so very plainly as in that of a man well up in years, decently but humbly dressed, who was offering for sale a fishing-rod, a fiddle, and two walking sticks. When I approached he was seated on the shafts of a loose cart; he had perhaps grown weary waiting, and had taken the fiddle up, and was softly playing a sweet simple air. His eyes were bent upon the ground, and his body drooped like one whose thoughts were elsewhere than with the scene around him. A very little girl, who had no doubt grown weary too, was standing by his knee, just old enough to know, on being told, that the things were to be sold, if any one would buy them, but too young to have any memories associated with the instrument that was deepening the father’s melancholy reverie. Eagerly she eyed those loitering past, in the hope of some one stopping to look at the slender stock; her young simple face expressive of wonder and disappointment, and, I thought, of hungry wistfulness, as she saw her father’s neighbours getting money and he none. I never think of him but my heart reproaches me for leaving without speaking, but I was then too poor to help him much, and more than likely the story of the past that seemed revisiting his mind was incommunicable to a stranger, while such words as he might have spoken, failing to embody the dejection visible, might possibly have weakened the impressions already made by making his case seem only common after all.
The market increased in importance. The articles at first had been exposed on boxes and chest lids, and in umbrellas opened and inverted, or on the ground, but as trade grew brisker, tables and light stalls were brought by those who, on making a good beginning, had commenced to buy the stocks of others, and adopt the business regularly. Jews were very numerous in the town, their faces began to appear among the throng, the trade was quite in their way of life, and they soon expanded it to such an extent, that a removal to more roomy quarters became necessary. Two unoccupied building-sites, one in Great Bourke Street, East, and the other in Great Collin Street, West, received them. Open-fronted frame tents, and light temporary wooden shops were raised, and the character of the business so changed from its recent humble original, that a poor dealer with a box, or a yard of bare ground only, for the exhibition of his wares, must have felt like a vagrant on forbidden ground.
The community of tents at the bridge end, which latterly was known by the name of Canvas Town, met eventually with a somewhat different fate. In Melbourne, house rents were high, and the place being of easy access from the town, many workmen were induced to make their homes there; and, stretching calico on light spar frames, with a calico door framed onhinges, a turf fire-place and chimney at the end, they were enabled to live comfortably enough in mild weather. Men with small means—builders in the first stage of development—erected such places, and let them by the week. Small shops were opened; hand-printed cards, announcing that tailoring or cobbling was done within, began to appear, pasted to the sides of doorways, with perhaps a pair of newly-mended boots, or a small sheet of square cloth patterns. Before long, jobbing carpenters and coopers found they need not cross the river, or go to the adjoining townships in search of work, when the want of benches and stools and water-barrels increased with the growing inclination of their neighbours to settle permanently. Habitations that in the beginning of the week had stood alone, would before the close have become hemmed in all round by a crowd of new erections. The buzz of life grew louder, and the hill-side began to be trodden bare by the increasing multitude of feet. Tents where, on a stall before the door, a modest trade in harmless effervescing drinks had been established, began, as the neighbourhood became more populous, to outgrow their early humility, and aspire to stronger liquor; the painted sign-board was set up, the wings of the establishment spread out, and nightly from underneath came sounds of clamour and reeling men, who, jostling and rubbing their way home along the frail cotton walls, indenting the thin fabrics with staggering thrusts of their numb elbows, made the place no longer habitable for the timid or the weak. Lying beyond the city limits, the police had hitherto left the inhabitants to their own care and keeping. This suited well the tastes and habits of many about town, who, for reasons understood by the police, but better known to themselves, gladly took the opportunity to escape from observation, and came and settled down on the hill-side amongst the unsuspecting tent-dwellers. Cries of distress, however, began to be too common in the neighbourhood of the bridge after dark, for this their retreat long to escape public notice. Every morning came fresh reports of robberies and personal ill-usage, blows struck from behind putting it past the power of the victims to say or know more than that the thing was done. Policemen were set to patrol the district, but they only shifted the crime from a centre to outlying roads and pathways. The ground the tents stood on formed part of a Government Reserve. The people had been allowed to settle on it only to meet a temporary want of more regular accommodation, but, as they increased in number, the opportunity for trade had induced many from choice to set up business among them in the hope of Government yielding to the claims of vested rights and occupation, and allowing them to buy the ground for the permanent formation of a township. It was agreed that were this done, substantialbuildings would quickly take the place of the existing motley and camp-like assemblage of canvas coverings, but the authorities appeared to think that lawlessness had struck too deep root to be so easily eradicated, and shortly before my return to town, gave orders for the whole to be cleared away. The Brighton road now sweeps over the silent site.
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, andtheir 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 theirintentions, 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 woulddo 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 greatlyconsult 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 ofnew 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 premisesat 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 withmore. 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.