s astonishing how soon, after the first rush was over, the
camp would settle down into a state of comparative order and
peaceableness. For it was always the interest of the majority to put
down plundering and disorder. Their first concern was for the security
of their lives, and their next for the security of the gold they were
able to scrape together.

When the lawless men about a camp were numerous, and robberies became
frequent, the diggers would suddenly extemporise a police, rout out
the thieves, and drive them perforce from the camp. I may illustrate
this early state of things by what occurred at Havelock, a place about
seven miles from Majorca. The gully there was "rushed" about nine
years since, when some twenty thousand diggers were drawn together,
with even more than the usual proportion of grog-shanty keepers,
loafers, thieves, and low men and women of every description. In fact,
the very scum of the roving population of the colony seems to have
accumulated in the camp; and crime upon crime was committed, until at
length an affair occurred, more dreadful and outrageous than anything
that had preceded it, which thoroughly roused the digger population,
and a rising took place, which ended in their hunting the whole of the
thieves and scoundrels into the bush.

The affair has been related to me by three of the persons who were
themselves actors in it, and it is briefly as follows:--At the corner
of one of the main thoroughfares of the camp, composed of canvas tents
and wooden stores, there stood an extemporized restaurant, kept by a
Spaniard named Lopez. A few yards from his place was a store occupied
by a Mr. S----, now a storekeeper in Majorca, and a customer at our
bank. Opposite to S----'s store stood a tent, the occupants of which
were known to be among the most lawless ruffians in the camp. S----
had seen the men more than once watching his store, and he had formed
the conviction that they meant at some convenient opportunity to rob
him, so he never slept without a loaded revolver under his pillow. One
night in particular he was very anxious. The men stood about at the
front of his store near closing time, suspiciously eyeing his
premises, as he thought. So he put a bold face on, came to the door
near where they were standing, discharged his pistol in the air--a
regular custom in the diggings at night--reloaded, entered his store,
and bolted himself in. He went to bed at about ten o'clock, and lay
awake