Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/158



wending my way to Melbourne with a draft of fat cattle in the spring of 1851, when the public-house talk took the unwonted flavour of gold. Gold had 'broken out,' as it was expressed, at a creek a few miles from Buninyong. Gold in lumps! Gold in bushels! All the world was there, except those who were on the road or packing up. A couple of hundred head of fat cattle were not, perhaps, the exact sort of impedimenta to go exploring with on a goldfield, but it was hard to stem the tidal wave, now rolling in unbroken line towards Ballarat. Men agreed that this was the strange new name of the strange new treasure-hold. I incontinently pined for Ballarat. I sold one-half of my drove by the way, purchased a few articles suitable for certain contingencies, and joined the procession; for it was a procession, a caravan, almost a crusade.

The weather had been wet. The roads were deep. Heavy showers, fierce gales, driving sleet made the spring days gloomy, and multiplied delays and disasters. None of these obstacles stayed the ardent pilgrims, whose faith in their golden goal was daily confirmed, stimulated ever by wild reports of luck. The variety of the wayfarers who thronged that highway, broad as the path to destruction, was striking. Sun-tanned bushmen, inured to toil, practised in emergencies, alternated with groups of townspeople, whose fresh complexions and awkward dealings with their new experience stamped them as recruits. Passengers, who had left shipboard but a week since, armed to the teeth, expectant of evil. Mercantile Jack, whose rolling gait and careless energy displayed his calling as clearly as if the name of his ship had been tattooed