Page:The Eureka Stockade.djvu/14

4 III.

JUPITER TONANS.

fine morning (Epiphany week), I was hard at work (excuse old chum, if I said hard: though my hand had been scores of times compelled in London to drop the quill through sheer fatigue, yet I never before handled a pick and shovel), I hear a rattling noise among the brush. My faithful dog, Bonaparte, would not keep under my control. "What's up?" "Your licence, mate," was the peremptory question from a six-foot fellow in blue shirt, thick boots, the face of a ruffian, armed with a carabine and fixed bayonet. The old "all right" being exchanged, I lost sight of that specimen of colonial brutedom and his similars, called, as I then learned, "traps" and "troopers." I left off. work, and was unable to do a stroke more that day.

"I came, then, 16,000 miles in vain to get away from the law of the sword!" was my sad reflection. My sorrow was not mitigated by my mates and neighbours informing me, that Australia was a penal settlement. Inveterate murderers, audacious burglars, bloodthirsty bushrangers, were the ruling triumvirate, the scour of old Europe, called Vandemonians, in this bullock-drivers' land. Of course I felt tamed, and felt less angry, at the following search for licence. At the latter end of the month, one hundred and seventy-seven pounds troy, in two superb masses of gold, were discovered at the depth of sixty feet, on the hill opposite where I was working. The talk was soon Vulcanish through the land. Canadian Gully was as rich in lumps as other gold-fields are in dust. Diggers, whom the gold fever had rendered stark blind, so as to desert Ballaarat for Mount Alexander and Bendigo, now returned as ravens to the old spot; and towards the end of February, '53, Canadian Gully was in its full glory.

IV.

INCIPIT LAMENTATIO.

The search for licences, or "the traps are out to-day"—their name at the time—happened once a month. The strong population now on this gold-field had perhaps rendered it necessary twice a month. Only in October, I recollect they had come out three times. Yet, "the