espects,
but the essential decencies of life were observed among us as well as
they were in any other community of which I have been a member. As time
went on many of the diggers brought their families to the creek. I can
remember several pretty girls whose dwellings were so many shrines for
respectful worship. A disrespectful word towards a woman would have
entailed serious consequences to the user. One lady, a Miss Russell,
worked a claim very successfully. She eventually married the owner of
the claim adjoining hers, a Mr. Cameron. He, if memory does not play me
false, represented Pilgrim's Rest in the Transvaal Volksraad. There
were no franchise troubles in those days.

As memory dwells on this period, the people with whom I foregathered
become very real and very human. I suppose that, in the natural order
of things, most of my fellow-pilgrims have reached the end of their
pilgrimage. Those mighty limbs and strong thews which held crowbar and
pick to be mere playthings, are dust; those feet which scaled, untired,
the highest and steepest ranges are at rest for ever. Yet my
recollection of these people is as clear as though it were yesterday,
and not five and thirty years ago when I saw them last.

The head of the community was the Gold Commissioner, Major Macdonald.
He was at once fountain of justice, dispenser of such patronage as
existed, and collector of taxes. "Mac" was an American, and had fought
in the War of Secession on the Confederate side. He was not an ideal
administrator, but his hands were clean, and he would always do one a
good turn if it lay in his power. A tall, thin man with a stooping
figure, a goatee beard and iron-grey ringlets showing under the brim of
his slouch hat, Major Macdonald's appearance exactly suggested the
conventional Yankee of the period of Sam Slick. He played a good game
of poker, and was never, so far as I know, seen without a cigar in his
mouth. I believe he died a few years since at Uitenhage, where he held
the railway cartage contract.

There were several ministers of religion on the creek, but it is
nevertheless to be feared that we were a rather irreligious lot. All
old Pilgrims will remember the Rev. G B, whose church stood in the
lower left-hand corner of the Market Square. Mr. B belonged to the
Church of England, and was, for those comparatively unenlightened days,
an advanced ritualist. He furnished his church with those symbols which
used to fill all good Protestan