Joe Wilson and His Mates [56]
prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery,
found no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard.
He had prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few `colours',
and the bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery
towards which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts
across the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking
twenty feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground
under the cemetery was rich -- maybe the richest in the district.
The old gravediggers had not been gold-diggers -- besides,
the graves, being six feet, would, none of them, have touched
the alluvial bottom. There was nothing strange in the fact
that none of the crowd of experienced diggers who rushed the district
had thought of the cemetery and racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses,
the clay for the bricks of which had been taken from
sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put through the crushing-mill
in subsequent years and had yielded `payable gold'. Fossicking Chinamen
were said to have been the first to detect a case of this kind.
Dave reckoned to strike the `lead', or a shelf or ledge
with a good streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet
within the cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining
was much like a theory in gambling, in some respects.
The theory might be right enough, but old volcanic disturbances --
`the shrinkage of the earth's surface,' and that sort of old thing --
upset everything. You might follow good gold along a ledge,
just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the continuation might be
a hundred feet or so under your nose.
Had the `ground' in the cemetery been `open' Dave would have gone to the point
under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and worked
the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way -- it would have
saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets of dirt along
a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But it was very doubtful
if the Government could have been moved to open the cemetery
even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich goldfield under it,
and backed by the influence of a number of diggers and their backers --
which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He wanted,
above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again,
the old clannish local spirit of the old farming town,
rooted in years way back of the goldfields, would have been too strong
for the Government, or even a rush of wild diggers.
`We'll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,' said Dave.
He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent.
Jim grumbled, in conclusion, --
`Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It's the shortest
and straightest, and Jimmy's the freshest, anyway.'
Then there was another trouble. How were they to account
for the size of the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be
the result of such an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel
for shallow sinkings? Dave had an idea of carrying some of the dirt
away by night and putting it down a deserted shaft close by;
but that would double the labour, and might lead to detection
sooner than anything else. There were boys 'possum-hunting on those flats
every night. Then Dave got an idea.
There was supposed to exist -- and it has since been proved --
another, a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field,
and several had tried for it. One, the town watchmaker,
had sunk all his money in `duffers', trying for the second bottom.
It was supposed to exist at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet --
on solid rock, I suppose. This watchmaker, an Italian,
would put men on to sink, and superintend in person, and whenever
he came to a little `colour'-showing shelf, or false bottom,
thirty or forty feet down -- he'd go rooting round and spoil the shaft,
and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that he hadn't the sense
to sink straight down, thoroughly
found no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard.
He had prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few `colours',
and the bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery
towards which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts
across the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking
twenty feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground
under the cemetery was rich -- maybe the richest in the district.
The old gravediggers had not been gold-diggers -- besides,
the graves, being six feet, would, none of them, have touched
the alluvial bottom. There was nothing strange in the fact
that none of the crowd of experienced diggers who rushed the district
had thought of the cemetery and racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses,
the clay for the bricks of which had been taken from
sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put through the crushing-mill
in subsequent years and had yielded `payable gold'. Fossicking Chinamen
were said to have been the first to detect a case of this kind.
Dave reckoned to strike the `lead', or a shelf or ledge
with a good streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet
within the cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining
was much like a theory in gambling, in some respects.
The theory might be right enough, but old volcanic disturbances --
`the shrinkage of the earth's surface,' and that sort of old thing --
upset everything. You might follow good gold along a ledge,
just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the continuation might be
a hundred feet or so under your nose.
Had the `ground' in the cemetery been `open' Dave would have gone to the point
under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and worked
the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way -- it would have
saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets of dirt along
a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But it was very doubtful
if the Government could have been moved to open the cemetery
even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich goldfield under it,
and backed by the influence of a number of diggers and their backers --
which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He wanted,
above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again,
the old clannish local spirit of the old farming town,
rooted in years way back of the goldfields, would have been too strong
for the Government, or even a rush of wild diggers.
`We'll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,' said Dave.
He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent.
Jim grumbled, in conclusion, --
`Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It's the shortest
and straightest, and Jimmy's the freshest, anyway.'
Then there was another trouble. How were they to account
for the size of the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be
the result of such an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel
for shallow sinkings? Dave had an idea of carrying some of the dirt
away by night and putting it down a deserted shaft close by;
but that would double the labour, and might lead to detection
sooner than anything else. There were boys 'possum-hunting on those flats
every night. Then Dave got an idea.
There was supposed to exist -- and it has since been proved --
another, a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field,
and several had tried for it. One, the town watchmaker,
had sunk all his money in `duffers', trying for the second bottom.
It was supposed to exist at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet --
on solid rock, I suppose. This watchmaker, an Italian,
would put men on to sink, and superintend in person, and whenever
he came to a little `colour'-showing shelf, or false bottom,
thirty or forty feet down -- he'd go rooting round and spoil the shaft,
and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that he hadn't the sense
to sink straight down, thoroughly