Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/24

Rh time with a pretty bunch of wild flowers and got her shilling’s worth, and returned in the evening with her “old chap,” as she called him, for dose the second. She brought other folk with her, and day after day my friend rejoiced at the vast profits he was making—“doing such a stroke.” One afternoon, a little before sunset, he came in breathless haste to my tent and said one of the women had given him the hint that the “traps” were on the look-out for sly grog-sellers, and that he had better keep a sharp look-out, and keep no more beside him than was permitted for private use, and asked if I would take charge of a case or two of Hollands for him. I told him that I would have nothing to do in the matter, and, as he would not take my advice, I had no shelter or pity for him. It was just dark when two women and two men ran into his tent and told him that forty troopers were on their way to “Moonlight,” and that someone had informed on him. “Quick! Make haste! Hide your stuff somewhere.” One of the women suggested to drop the cases into a hole close by. “Capital,” said he, and the cases were carried to the hole, and as soon carried off by an accomplice. Some bags of sugar and pairs of boots would not do to be hidden in the waterhole, so they were carried off by some one to “a place of safety,” who afterwards returned to tell the sly-grog seller that he had seen the troopers, but had put them off the scent. The storekeeper kept a watch over the waterhole, and it was only in the morning that he found out that he was the dupe of people who were too cunning for him, and who had made themselves scarce before he was aware of their duplicity.

The first gold discovery at Mount Alexander was made by John Worley and Christopher Thomas Peters at Specimen Gully on the 20th July, 1851, at which time the first-named was a bullock-driver, and the latter a hut-keeper in the service of William Barker, Esq. The late Mr. Pearce, of Castlemaine, was at that time superintendent of the station, from whom I obtained the following information:—He was present when the first dish of stuff was washed, which, to use his own words, “was black soil; as black as your hat.” It was obtained from a little gully, and panned off in a small soup tin, the result being half-a-dozen pieces of gold about the size of “wheat corns.” They did not appear to know what it was, and asked Mr. Pearce if he did. He said he did not, but told the lucky finders if they gave him some of it he would send it to Melbourne and find out. They offered him the lot, but he took two or three pieces, which he sent to Mrs. Pearce (at that time in Melbourne), who took it to a friend of hers (Mr. Stubbs, the well-known auctioneer of that town), with a message from her husband, stating that there was plenty of that kind of stuff at Barker’s Creek, and if it was of any value to send his two sons up. The next attempt was on the hill side—about 100 yards from the first