e or underwood; but
the greater part is bare and sandy, or sprinkled over with thin, dry
waving grass. As far as the eye could reach upon the plain, and up the
river-banks, the smoke of fires was rising from hut, tent, and
upturned wagon, which served for temporary dwellings. Groups of men
were hard at work in small trenches, and numbers more stood with pan
and cradle, washing out the gold in the shallow creeks of the river.
'Our location,' as the Americans called it, was an earthy promontory
jutting far out into the water. Close by its landward base we pitched
our tents, turned up our wagon--the bullocks that brought it belonged
to the Americans, who promised to sell us a share when they were
killed--and commenced operations. Digging out tenacious clay, and
washing its sandy particles for minute grains of gold, sleeping under
canvas at night, and living on half-cooked and not very choice
provisions, have little in them of interest worth relating. The first
thing that struck me, was the silence that prevailed among the
workers. In a district so populous, scarcely a sound was heard from
tent, trench, or river. Caravan after caravan, as it arrived, pitched
its tents, and fell to work in the same quiet fashion. A cynical
character might have attributed this to the absence of all feminine
faces, for in my time there was not a woman at the diggings.
Incredible as it may seem to the fair ones themselves, they were not
missed; but nobody missed anything except gold. Relations parted; old
comrades left each other with scarcely a leave--taking in search of
better gatherings; our American friends began to get tired of the
bluff that flogged creation; for although we were getting gold, it was
but little, and the more impatient spirits of our company departed
with them to find another.

I wondered that Bill did not join their company. He was long ago weary
of gold-washing; the work was too regular, and the returns far too
slow for him. He used to declare that shopkeeping was better; and it
is probable that most of us had similar convictions regarding the
vocations we had left in Britain; but except occasionally cooking for
the rest, smoking the tobacco he had providently brought with him, and
suggesting wild projects of digging down the bluff, and dredging the
river for lamps of gold, which, he said, all the grains we found came
off, Bill at last did nothing at all. With hard labour and harder
fare, we had collected some of us mor