Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/618

  France, in 'the recess of the Legislative Body, engaged ostensibly to defend oppressed editors and patriots whose enthusiasm has overstepped the law, but really in a campaign of political opposition to the present régime. Emile Ollivier, less adroit than his colleagues, by this course provoked his dismissal from the bar. Thus the French, who love excitement, have plenty of it in the summer, during the assizes; thus, in spite of the repressive policy of the government, ideas hostile to it penetrate the mass under the protection of the very law itself.

" they let us down? Yes, if you treat them—say, half a dozen of brandy—I think they are twenty-four partners in all—four men to a bottle."

The scene was Ballarat, a few yards from one of its most ordinary features the tall brick chimney and large irregular wooden shanty, or shedding, marking the site of a deep underground claim. The speaker was my landlord, who had kindly driven me over in his own pony phaeton, from the hotel to "Frenchman's Lead"—a line of gold workings some three or four years opened up, and now in active operation.

The chimney of this shanty is not an unhandsome structure. All round, for miles upon miles, we see hundreds of such chimneys; and, if we trace them more closely, find them adhering, with greater or less irregularity, to certain curving and meandering lines, which are the various leads composing the Ballarat deep sinkings. A lead may be of any length from half a mile to six miles. It obeys no law, that has ever yet been discovered: it turns and twists; it throws off branches, and takes them back again; it goes under a hill, and crosses a valley; it turns back on itself; it leaves you unexpectedly in the lurch, and resumes its course in the very last place you would have dreamt of; it crosses other leads, as the gentlemen of the Ballarat long robe have good reason to know to their profit. Two or three leads pass right under the town of Ballarat itself—(city, I believe, I should now call it)—my landlord's hotel is built over one of them. The surface of the ground affords no possible indication that a lead is, or is not, beneath it. The miner must just "chance" his claim as Fortune directs—about fifty yards lineal, in a straight line, to each partner, according to the new Frontage Act. When he has got down, say four hundred feet, to the supposed level of the lead, he must look for it—north, south, east, or west, as the same fortune may direct. By the terms of the Frontage Act, he knows that no one is permitted to come between his shaft and the lead, whatever its distance may be—without this deep-sinking would be the veriest of gambling. Going down is called sinking—looking north, south, east, or west for the lead, when you have got down, is called driving. If a miner strikes the lead he is rewarded, generally amply. If he don't strike the lead, he gets nothing at all. He ought to go down in about twelve months; an unusual quantity of subterranean water, or rock strata, may make it two or three years. Driving is, of course, according to circumstances. Some have the luck to "drop on" the gutter, or central gold-yielding line of the lead, but they are very few. More often the water gets ahead of the work, and the claim is abandoned.

We enter the somewhat rude congregation of sheds, constituting the surface portion of the "Great extended claim," Frenchman's Lead, Ballarat—and stand over the shaft. A hot, moist vapour rises out of it, like smoke out of a chimney. We gaze down into pitchy darkness—we hear only the dreadful "plump" of a drop of water falling into some receptacle below, and imagination alone assists us to conceive the operations going on beneath. The shaft is a square box, formed of the iron-hard, and iron-heavy, blue gum of the country, and is without lid and without bottom. This box is about three feet square and four hundred deep.

A few yards from it stands the engine; the most important piece of mechanism connected with the claim. The engine lets you down and up the shaft; pumps up water, and sends down fresh air; hauls up the excavated soil (or headings) which is to be thrown away, and also the washing-stuff which is not to be thrown away, until it has passed through a very careful process; then it turns to, and goes through the process of puddling, washing, and cradling the gold from the washing-stuff. There is a large arm-chair beside the much-performing engine, in which a large, fat man sits. You are particularly requested not to speak to the man in the arm-chair, who, by-the-by, does not appear to invite conversation: if you talk loud, or make other noise, he looks less inviting still. That man is all ear—nothing else—when on duty. From the bottom of the shaft a wire extends to the arm-chair, and executes a very audible knock there—one, two, three, &c., as the case may be. Such is the simple code of signals to which, and to which only, the man in the arm-chair is bound to attend. Nay, lest in the confusion of the day, or silent watches of the night (most of these deep claims work night and day) any temporary forgetfulness of their interpretation should occur to him, the code itself is written out on a large black board with white letters suspended straight before him, thus:

{{block center|{{smaller block| {{dtpl|One knock|Man coming up.}} {{dtpl|Two knocks|Heading.}} {{dtpl|Three knocks Washing stuff.}}}}

And so on. Inattention is homicide, unless you choose to call it murder, which a Ballarat jury would be very likely to do. Around lie the various tanks, tubs, and implements for puddling, washing, and separating the gold. Immense stacks of wood lie ready for the consumption of the engine. Other wood, in slabs, is ready for "boxing" the drives in