In the morning, having provided ourselves with tools, we made a beginning in a small gulley near our camping place. There did not seem to be much business doing in it, but it was nice and dry and quiet, and we had been informed that great hits were occasionally made in very unlikely spots. We had agreed to work in pairs, my lot falling in company with a decent man, a hand-loom weaver to trade, from the North of Scotland. We took spell about at the digging, short spells being in favour, as my mate argued that “the chance o’ goold bein’ below, was’na like to be ony greater, for oor hurtin’ oorsels, ye ken.” We agreed very well, but a large stone that we came on about four feet from the surface, sorely troubled us. When sitting on the top looking ruefully down upon it, and inclined to shift to some other place, a stranger with pick and shovel on his shoulder came sauntering up, joined us in looking down, asked what we intended doing, and remarked that we ought at least to see what was beneath, that many a digger would give gold to have such a boulder in his ground, they were found to have been such grand catchers of the nuggets when they came “scouring down in the flood.” As he seemed to have been longer acquainted with the diggings than we, we thought it might be true what he was saying, and that we might at least try till dinner time. The weaver dropping down, commenced afresh to pick away the clay at one side, but our friend said “No, the stone will drop on you if you go below it: you must break it up, and bring it to the surface.” “Break it up, break it up,” I heard him in the hole say, “man ye’re shurely thinkin’ its a muckle cheese ye’re speakin’ aboot,” on which the man left us to engineer as we had a mind.

Evening came, but we had not made the progress we expected, for as my esteemed mate said, “the hannels o’ the picks were aye in our road, there was sae little room to work in.” The holes were only about eight or ten feet deep, bottoming on the usual pipe clay, imbedded in the surface of which, and in the gravelly stuff immediately overlying it, the gold was found. Sometimes it was got in gutter-like depressions, in which numerous pockets occurred, full of grain gold and nuggets; sometimes it lay in patches, and often lay like seed grain in a new-sown field. In the case of gutters, only the holes that struck upon the line were profitable, but the line was generally so uncertain and took such unexpected turns, that those who in the morning might despond at being so far to a side, might in the evening be harassed with fear of the encroachments of their neighbours.

The common crowd confined its operations to the ground already opened, but kept itself ever ready for a rush to new discoveries. Numerous small parties, possessed of more than average enterprise, were ever on the move amongst the outlying ranges, sinking shafts on speculation. Did they light on gold, they passed the word quietly to their friends to occupy the ground immediately adjoining them, that the common harpies, who went spying about, too indolent to seek for themselves, might be outsided. Not long could the matter remain hidden; a rumour would get upon the wind, a few would be seen to leave their old claims hastily, with their tools upon their shoulders, and steal off through the scrub; friendly signals would be passed about, men would be seen tumbling up out of their holes, and in little more time than it takes to tell it, the bulk of the multitude were away upon the run to overtake those who were before, leaving the place that before had swarmed with life, with only a mere gleaning, which often seemed in doubt whither it was doing the best thing for itself by remaining. In one such rush we joined, but arrived too late for anything better than an uphill claim, which we bottomed at about one third of the depth that gold might be expected at. A few yards below us, two men had come up panting among the first of the runners, and on the instant marked off twelve feet by twenty four for their united claim, but thinking the ground too much on the slope, they shifted just twelve feet lower down. Another party immediately took possession of the vacated ground, and within four hours, the sinking being shallow, broke through into a bed of nuggets, worth, as was afterwards affirmed, four thousand pounds. The original claimants bottomed theirs on a few pennyweights only. There was feverish excitement in all this, and the fortunate, when wise, kept their own counsel, at least until their findings had been placed safe under the charge of the Commissioner, for conveyance down to town.

With various small fortune, my mate and I continued our labours, with bankruptcy at length ominously near. We tried surface washing, but got only sore backs by it, and returned to the sinking, there patiently to await the approaching crisis in our circumstances. One day, a little before sundown, we took our way homeward, rather downcast, and with some misgivings about supper. Happily our friends had been more fortunate than we, and the sight of half a sheep hanging from the tent pole, and of a well-known face bending over a frying pan, quickened our dull weary gait, while my companion, evidently touched with thankfulness for the visible mercies, said half to himself, “I kent the puir ravens would be fed,” adding for my encouragement,—“We’re no jist at the wab en’ yet, my man.”

The night was cloudy and dark, but calm. We had drawn a large log to the fire for want of chairs. We were in no lack of topics for conversation, and there, spread out before us was a singular panorama of tents illuminated from within, log fires among the trees in height and hollow, and groups of big-bearded men, squatted around them. The Government being at that time weak for want of policemen, all went armed, and for the protection of the tents and what was in them during the absence of the owners, dogs abounded. The firearms, partly with a view to intimidate the ill-disposed, and partly because of damp, were fired off nightly, which occasioned a protracted fusilade far and near before bed time, the dogs not being idle the while, and the uproar being increased in interest, by the uncertainty about the bullets. Putting fresh logs on the fire we go to bed, six of us in a row, with no room to spare upon the floor when we are down. In the middle of the night we are awakened by the rushing of the wind among the trees, a few drops come pattering on the roof, and we feel thankful it is cloth that covers us, but we soon hear a sound that is different from the noise of the wind as it sways the branches; nearer and louder it comes, and we hold our breath in fear; our fire outside roars in the blast, and the lighter brands are whirled down the slope. We see it all, for there is no door to our dwelling. With a fury, the like of which we never before knew, the storm breaks on us, in a moment all is confusion and dismay, and an unbroken deluge of rain drowns our voices by its drumming on our roof, which reels as if it would forsake us. The sewing gives way, and the water comes spouting through the openings; we try to stop the leaks with our caps and stockings, but we only make the breaches bigger; what matter this however, when a torrent begins to dam up behind our uphill wall, ultimately breaks through, and washes across the floor. Helpless and beaten now, we gather our blankets hastily together, roll them into balls, and sit on them. We have no help but to continue sitting till daybreak, for our fire has been washed out, and cannot be renewed till morning; with its last simmering sob expires our hope of coffee or even a light to our much desired pipes. The storm in its great violence soon spent itself, but the morning showed a wreck around of limbs of trees torn from their living trunks, while the face of the hill was furrowed deep with torrent beds. A clump of bushes to windward had alone saved our habitation from being blown away.

On reaching our hole early in the forenoon, we found it filled to the brim with water. Some of our neighbours, in like predicament, had already begun with pails to bale theirs out. Want of a pail, and the urgency of our necessities, caused us to betake ourselves to some of the deserted workings, in the hope of gleaning something there. The ground was shallow, and so much honey-combed that our search was accompanied with some little risk, when we had to use our picks upon the thin partitions. But half a sheep among six men was not likely to last long, so, providing ourselves with candles, we descended each into a separate hole, making this agreement before disappearing from each other’s sight, that any change made by either of us must be reported to the other in case of accident. Late in the afternoon I heard my name called from above, and crawled to the daylight at the bottom to answer and learn progress. In reply to his inquiries about how I was, I cried up merrily, “Pretty weel, I thank ye, in ma health, but I hae got nae goold.” “Ah weel,” he says, “never mind that, my man, we’ll speak about goold the morn, come yer wa’s up ti the tap, and bring yer tools wi’ ye, there’s been awfu’ wark gan on here I’m thinkin’.” A fight or something equally interesting immediately occurred to my mind as the occasion of his seriousness, and I lost no time in getting to the surface. I could see no crowd, and turned to him for explanation. He had come upon some yellow specks in a corner of the roof he was examining, and had used his pick in following up the clue: the hollow sound made by his blows startled him a little, and he moderated his first zeal. He began soon to be more and more sensibly aware of a smell of a particularly disagreeable nature, and which increased so much as he made the opening bigger that he was seized with nausea, in which his mind became troubled with strange apprehension unaccountable to him. He could hear no sound but what he made himself, his tallow candle but feebly lighted up the face of the wall before him, and left the pillared chamber with its crumbling drifts behind in solemn darkness. Making an attempt to shake off his depression of spirits, he made his pick fall vigorously into the hollow he had already made, and wrenched away a clod that left a cavity beyond. Seizing the candle, he held it to the breach, and to his dismay, there lay “glowerin’ oot at him, the wasted face o’ a deed man.” We made known the circumstance to a party of men whom we met on our way back to the tent; but they seemed not sufficiently interested to go out of their way to see the place. We made it known to some of our neighbours on the hill, and learnt that wood for coffins being scarce, and church-yards scarcer, it had been found convenient in the earlier days of the diggings simply to pass the bodies down a deserted hole, and fill it up with top stuff.

About a week after, we found ourselves reduced to dependence on the others of the company for the bread we ate; they were willing that it should be so, while they continued able, but I prepared to go in search of daily work, washed my spare shirt, baked a small loaf to take with me, and bade them all good bye. My mate having some prospect of joining another party, whose finances were in a better state than ours, remained in hope, but accompanied me on my way for about a mile. Having no particular occupation in view, all roads were alike to me. At starting, however, we set our faces in a direction somewhere between south and west, but when we stopped to part, we discovered we had gradually turned, and were going somewhere between north and east, judging by the sun. This specimen of our art in bush travelling caused my friend evident concern about how I would get on when left to myself, and he wished me to return and make a new effort to better our circumstances, but as my doing so would have prevented his acceptance of the offer that had been made to him, I declined, but felt my heart moved strangely when my hand loosened from his parting grasp. All day I travelled, but towards evening, when looking out for water by which to camp for the night, I came upon an old square hole, that seemed familiar to me. My mind at first was inclined to disown acquaintance with it, but the surrounding evidence was too strong, and I sat down for some minutes, overpowered by thoughts on the circumstance. I must have been travelling in a circle, for this hole lay scarce half a mile from the tent I had left in the morning, in fact, now that my attention was awakened, I could hear the barking of the dogs belonging to my late neighbours. Was it providence that was thus overruling my movements? I thought of Whittington. Or was it merely a case of inattention to the course of the sun? My whole heart went in favour of the Whittington interpretation, but there was one from whom I feared the remark, that “A bad shilling was ill to get quit of,” were I to appear among my late companions again; so I rose and walked about two miles further off, and camped in a bushy hollow. I made my bed close in among the matted undergrowth of a clump of thick growing bushes, but was awakened in the middle of the night by certain rustlings underneath and round about me, that made me a wiser man before daylight came. In all my subsequent wanderings I chose open level ground, with a shelter of my own making. Distrust of the creeping things I had heard, and thought I felt, caused me to sit up the last few hours of darkness, but one end of a decayed log I sat on being near the fire, its tinder-like substance became heated and began to smoulder. With my head resting on my hand, I was in a musing way watching the thin wreaths of smoke spueing from the cracks, a few of which extended to near my seat, when I was rather startled by the sight of a large beetle running wildly about among the crevices, but I rose quickly to my feet when a centipede about as long and as broad as my fore-finger, came crawling from the under side within a few inches of my hand. There seemed nothing left me now but to stand, until it suddenly occurred to me that mistaking my motionless legs for stumps, the creatures might be crawling up for concealment under my loose bark-like trousers, but I had not well begun to walk about to deprive them of the chance, when a new fear took hold of me, that of possibly treading on their tails. This was the first sincere misery I had met with in the country; it was the first, but not the last by many of my lonely nights in the bush. I had made an ill choice of my resting place, a small green spot surrounded close at hand by piles of mouldering wood, in which small animal life was swarming, and set astir by the heat of the huge fire I had made before lying down. Next night I camped by the side of a small marsh in an open forest scene, being very tired and retaining unimpaired the serious impressions of last night’s lesson. I looked upon a certain dampness of the ground as an assurance that I would not be similarly disturbed, but in the morning as I sat at breakfast, from time to time taking a perplexed look at my swollen hands, and passing them over my evidently ill-treated face, I began to fear that I had no longer personal appearance to rely upon in finding an employer. The musquitos had hived about me from the going down of the sun till the chilly hour before daybreak: in vain I had wrapped my head in a blanket, the knobs disfiguring my nose and brow told that the pests had found their way to me. Wearied and sore with the two days’ travelling, I had hoped to get a little sleep when I found their numbers thinning as the morning advanced, but a damp white fog hung low above the ground, and the cold from the wet turf beneath had reached me through the few twigs I had made my bed on. I became cramped in all my limbs, and was glad to rise with the first flush of the rapid dawn.