Who Could Have Told Me On That Easter Sunday,
That The Unknown Hill Which I Had Chosen For My Rest, Would Soon Be Called
The Massacre Hill!
That next Christmas, my mate would lie in the grave,
somewhere forgotten:
And I in the gaol! the rope round my neck!!
Let us keep in good spirits, good reader, we shall soon have to weep
together enough.
Gravel Pits, famous for its strong muster of golden holes, and blasting
shicers, was too deep for me. The old Eureka was itself again. The jewellers
shops, which threatened to exhaust themselves in Canadian Gully, were again
the talk of the day: and the Eureka gold dust was finer, purer, brighter,
immensely darling. The unfaithful truants who had rushed to Bryant's Ranges,
to knock their heads against blocks of granite, now hastened for the third time
to the old spot, Ballaarat, determined to stick to it for life or death.
English, German, and Scotch diggers, worked generally on the Gravel Pits,
the Irish had their stronghold on the Eureka. The Americans fraternised
with all the wide-awake, 'ubi caro ibi vultures.'
Here begins as a profession the precious game of 'shepherding,' or keeping
claims in reserve; that is the digger turning squatter. And, as this happened
under the reign of a gracious gold commissioner, so I am brought to speak of
the gold licence again. First I will place the man before my reader, though.
Get a tolerable young pig, make it stand on his hind legs, put on its head
a cap trimmed with gold-lace, whitewash its snout, and there you have the ass
in the form of a pig; I mean to say a "man," with this privilege, that he
possesses in his head the brains of both the above-mentioned brutes.
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