Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/65

56 27th July.—The first batch of Chinamen started for Russell’s to bring up the type of the Alpine Pioneer, a newspaper which is about to be started here.

The great attraction to Kidd’s Hotel was its restaurant, for in no other on the diggings could a meal be obtained owing to the cold, the difficulty of procuring provisions, and the general discomfort which prevailed. The chance of a good meal, hot, quickly served, and to be eaten with the assistance of knives, forks, and plates, was hailed by hundreds with more than delight. To gentlemen, who, of course, were unaccustomed to cook out of doors over a miserable fire in the rain, to poor wearied diggers, arriving after a tiresome tramp of miles over bleak swampy plains, such an opportunity was not to be lost, and numbers of diggers working on the rich patches of Surface Hill appreciated the boon also, as the time otherwise lost by them in cooking was thus saved; a vast consideration when their small claims could be jumped and worked out in about an hour or so.

It may be easily conceived that, with all this in its favour, the restaurant was crowded—and such a crowd. Gold commissioners, bankers, squatters, swells, come to see the rush; burly diggers just as they had left their work, shanty-keepers, bullies, loafers, and niggers, all pierced with cold and impelled by hunger, that great leveller of distinctions, jostled and pressed eagerly to satisfy the cravings of their appetites. The eating-room, the goal striven for by so many, was a long room with only one door in the corner—a contrivance of the cute Yankee proprietor—to prevent the guests leaving without first paying the price of their entertainment. It was only wide enough to contain two narrow tables, which ranged the entire length, with just sufficient room between for the attendants who waited upon the customers to move about in. The bar was on one side, and the other was flanked by sleeping apartments. The partition dividing the rooms, not reaching more than 7 ft. high, left the whole space to the roof above open throughout the entire building. At the end of the passage, between the tables, was a port-hole into the kitchen, through which the various comestibles were handed. This elegant compartment was lighted by two candelabra, formed of squares of battens with candles stuck in the corners, suspended from the rafters. Long before the time stated for each meal the seats, intended to accommodate about fifty, were occupied by sixty or seventy hungry men, who passed the interval of waiting in horse-play, interspersed with vehement demands for the “grub.” At last the portcullis was opened, and a very Babel commenced; shouts of “Irish stew,” “liver and bacon,” “roast mutton,” were mingled with the clatter of plates and the rattle of knives until, all being served, comparative quietness lasted. Then yells for the waiter proceeded from a dozen different places at once; fellows started up, holding up their plates for a return,