even aware of a growing sense of relief that he was not required to take the road next morning. The cob would be better for a few days’ rest, before doing more mountain work. He would like also to ramble about this neighbourhood, and see what the farms and sluicing claims were like. And a better base of operations than the Bunjil Hotel, no man need desire.
He had gone to the stable with Carter, as became a prudent horse-owner, where he had seen the cob comfortably bedded down for the night with a plenteous supply of sweet-smelling oaten hay before him, and an unstinted feed of maize in the manger.
“They’re all right for the night,” said Carter. “Your nag will be the better for a bit of a turn round to-morrow afternoon, just to keep his legs from swellin’. I’ll be off about sunrise, and back again the fourth day, or early the next. They’ll look after you here, till then.”
Mr. Blount was of opinion that he could look after himself from what he had seen of the establishment, and said so, but “was nevertheless much obliged to him for getting him such good quarters.” So to bed, as Mr. Pepys hath it, but before doing so, he rang the bell, and questioned Sheila—for that was her name, as he had ascertained by direct inquiry—as to the bath arrangements.
“I shall want a cold bath at half-past seven—a shower bath, for choice. Is there one?”
“Oh, yes—but very few go in for it this time of year. The P.M. does, when he comes round, and the Goldfields Warden. It’s one of those baths that you fill and draw up over your head. Then you pull a string.”
“That will do very well.”
“All right—I’ll tell George; but won’t it be very cold? It’s a hard frost to-night.”
“No—the colder it is, the warmer you feel after it.”
“Well, good-night, sir! Breakfast at half-past eight o’clock. Is that right? Would you like sausages, boiled eggs and toast?”
“Yes! nothing could be better. My appetite seems improving already.”
The Kookaburra chorus, and the flute accompaniment of the magpies in the neighbouring tree tops, awakened Mr. Blount, who had not so much as turned round in bed since about five minutes after he had deposited himself between the clean lavender-scented sheets. Looking out, he faintly discerned the dawn light, and also that the face of the country was as white as if it had been snowing. He heard voices in the verandah, and saw Little-River-Jack’s horse led out, looking as fresh as paint. That gentleman, lighting his pipe carefully, mounted and started off at a fast amble up the road which skirted the range, and led towards a gap in the hills. Mr. Blount thought it would be as well to wait until Sheila had the fire well under way, by which he intended to toast himself after the arctic discipline of the shower bath, with the thermometer at 28 degrees Fahrenheit.
The bi-weekly mail had providentially arrived at breakfast time, bringing in its bags the local district newspaper, and a metropolitan weekly which skimmed the cream from the cables and telegrams of the day. This was sufficiently interesting to hold him to the arm-chair, in slippered ease, for the greater part of an hour, while he lingered over his second cup of tea.
His boots, renovated from travel stains and mud, standing ready, he determined on a stroll, and took counsel with Sheila, as to a favourable locality.
The damsel was respectful, but conversed with him on terms of perfect conversational equality. She had also been fairly educated, and was free from vulgarity of tone or accent. To him, straight from the old country, a distinctly unfamiliar type worth studying.
“Where would you advise me to go for a walk?” he said. “It’s good walking weather, and I can’t sit in the house this fine morning, though you have made such a lovely fire.”
“I should go up the creek, and have a look at the sluicing claim. People say it’s worth seeing. You can’t miss it if you follow up stream, and you’ll hear the ‘water gun’ a mile before you come to it.”
“ ‘Water gun?’ What ever is that?”
“Oh! it’s the name of a big hose with a four-inch nozzle at the end. They lead the water for the race into it, and then turn it against the creek bank; that undermines tons of the stuff they want to sluice—you’ll hear it coming down like a house falling!”
“And what becomes of it then?”
“Oh! it goes into the tail-race, and after that it’s led into the riffles and troughs—the water keeps driving along, and they’ve some way of washing the clay and gravel out, and leaving the gold behind.”
“And does it pay well?”
“They say so. It only costs a penny a ton to wash, or something like that. It’s the cheapest way the stuff can be treated. Our boys saw it used in California, and brought it over here.”
So, after taking a last fond look at the cob, and wishing he could exchange him for Keewah, but doubting if any amount of boot would induce Carter to part with his favourite, he set out along the bank of the river and faced the uplands.
His boots were thick, his heart was light—the sun illumined the frost-white trunks, and diamond-sprayed branches of the pines and eucalypts—the air was keen and bracing. “What a glorious thing it is to be alive on a day like this,” he told himself. “How glad I am that I decided to leave Melbourne!” As he stepped along with all the elasticity of youth’s high health and boundless optimism, he marked the features of the land. There were wheel-tracks on this road, which he was pleased to note. Though the soil was rich, and also damp at the base of the hills and on the flats, it was sound, so that with reasonable care he was enabled to keep his feet dry. He saw pools from which the wild duck flew on his approach. A blue crane, the heron of Australia (Ardea) rose from the reeds; while from time to time the wallaroo (the kangaroo of the mountain-side) put in appearance to his great delight.
The sun came out, glorifying the wide and varied landscape and the cloudless azure against which the snow-covered mountain summits glittered like silver coronets. Birds of unknown note and plumage called and chirped. All Nature, recovering from the cold and darkness of the night, made haste to greet the brilliant apparition of the sun god.
Keeping within sight of the creek—the course of which he was pledged to follow—he became aware of a dull monotonous sound, which he somehow connected with machinery. It was varied by occasional reports like muffled blasts, as of the fall of heavy bodies. “That is the sluicing claim,” he told himself, “and I shall see the wonderful ‘water gun,’ which Sheila told me of. Quite an adventure!” The claim was farther off than he at first judged, but after climbing with stout heart a “stey brae,” he looked down on the sluicing appliances, and marvelled at the inventive ingenuity which the gold industry had developed. Before him was a ravine down which a torrent of water was rushing with great force and rapidity, bearing along in its course clay, gravel, quartz, and even boulders of respectable size.
He was civilly received by the claim-holders; the manager—an ex-Californian miner—remarking, “Yes, sir, I’m a ‘forty-niner,’—worked at Suttor’s Mill first year gold was struck there. This is a pretty big thing, though it ain’t a circumstance to some I’ve seen in Arizona and Colorado. This water’s led five hundred feet from these workings. See it play on the face of the hill-side yonder—reckon we’ve cut it away two hundred feet from grass.”
Mr. Blount looked with amazement at the thin, vicious, thread of water, which, directed against the lower and middle strata of the mass of ferruginous slate, had laid bare the alluvium through
