Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/619

 process of formation. Ever and anon, a huge bucket of washing stuff, a mixture of thick, putty-like mud, stones, and gold, comes to the mouth of the shaft, is tilted into the puddling tank, and takes its share in the never-ending process of being separated into gold and tailings—vast hills of these tailings lie all around. John Chinaman puts them through a second process, and generally manages to "get a living" out of them. Johnny does not go in for deep sinking. The over-ground men proceed with their operations in comparative silence.

My landlord is speaking apart to the manager. We are to go down. We retire to the shift-room—I, my fellow-traveller Brown, my landlord, and the manager. The shift-room is about twelve feet square, and all round the walls are hung a most varied assortment of oil-skin coats, oil-skin inexpressibles, and oil-skin hats, all slop made, baggy, and mud-begrimed. We retire, or make believe of retiring, into corners, and change.

I reappear first. Enter next to me Brown, decidedly villanous-looking, then the manager, who wears his garments gracefully and professionally, last, my landlord, who, having fallen somewhat into flesh, would appear to have had some difficulty with his shift, if, at least, I might judge from certain expletives proceeding from his corner, which it is unnecessary for me here to repeat. At length, our number is complete, or, as Brown conveys to me in a stage whisper, "Enter fourth murderer," and we return to the mouth of the shaft.

This time, the bottomless box has a lid—a square, blue-gum plank, some two inches thick, fitting it exactly; that is, if the rope from the engine were severed, it would drop to the bottom. A stout iron rail rises from this plank, and at right angles to its surface, to the height of about four feet, separating it into two equal compartments. It has no other protection—in fact, consists of nothing else. I and Brown take our stand on one compartment, my landlord and the manager on the other, opposite, with our hands on the iron rail which divides us, and rises breast high. We are thus staring into each other's faces—two and two. There are four hundred feet of empty space beneath us; imagine yourself standing on the golden ball of St. Paul's, with a two-inch wooden platform between you and the churchyard, instead of the present substantial structure. The manager nods to the man in the arm-chair, and says "lower." The man in the arm-chair pulls a tap, and we are lowered. Engine, men, and puddling machines disappear from our view, silently and slowly. Yes, our motion at first is slow; nevertheless, the light diminishes with awful rapidity. I can barely see the faces of my three companions, and then I can see nothing: absolutely nothing. We are now moving more swiftly, very swiftly. It is impossible to give any description of the utter darkness; no shutting your eyes, no cellar, no railway tunnel would be of the least avail. We don't speak. I find a difficulty in believing that three heads are within a few inches of my own, that I am staring into my landlord's face; my companions appear to be miles and miles away. There is nothing heard save the dripping of water, and the grating, now and again, of our descending square platform against the sides of the bottomless box. We can't fall off—that is one comfort; a pin could scarcely insert itself between platform and box. What if the man in the arm-chair should miscalculate the distance, and bump us violently against the bottom!

Our rapid descent is checked, and we are bumped against the bottom; but so very gently that I doubt if we should have cracked a hazel nut if had been beneath our platform. We are now in a very blaze of light. Candles—wax candles—are fixed all round the walls of the room (or chamber) which we find ourselves in the midst of. Some half dozen trucks, loaded with washing stuff and headings, carry candles in front of them; about the same number of men, scattered in various attitudes through the chamber, have lighted candles fastened to their felt hats; and several avenues (the drives), opening off in various directions from the chamber, all possess candles in tin sconces, arranged at regular intervals along their walls. These men are evidently off work; some are eating, some smoking, and some taking a half-sleeping, half-waking rest, preparatory to resuming operations in the drives. The walls and roof of the chamber are all strongly and closely boxed, in the same manner as the shaft. So also are the various drives diverging from the chamber, as long as they take their course through loose, crumbling soil; where they pass through solid rock this becomes unnecessary. The labour of this boxing alone must have been immense.

"So," said the manager, as we alighted, and addressing me, "you have come down a little more quickly and easily than the original workers of the claim. How long do you think we took to get this far? Two years and over. We went through three beds of solid bluestone rock, fifty, thirty, and sixty-five feet—all blasting, every inch of it: with water between each pair enough to turn a pretty tidy mill. We passed through two shifting sands—all double boxing; and were driven out, a whole winter. Then our money ran out—and we had empty pockets and a flooded claim. Didn't that beat us? Not a bit of it. That's no unusual thing in Ballarat—we have a system to meet that. You show any substantial storekeeper in Ballarat that you have a promising claim on a known lead, and he'll advance you food, tools, and pumping gear for six, twelve, and eighteen months. Well, we had to go to the store-keepers (the first week's washing paid them off) and we got down here, where we're now standing."

"And then?" said my landlord, to whom the story was evidently a familiar one, and