The Eureka Stockade [53]
Strengthen it by time with Christian courage, or else you will smother it with grief, long before your hair has turned grey! There are too many troubles to go through in this world. Take courage; there is a God, and therefore learn by heart the Psalm, 'Beatus vir qui timet Dominum.' My head has still the red hair of my youth, and yet I am a living witness of many truths in that Psalm; meditate, therefore, especially on the last verse, ending 'Desiderium peccatorum peribit.'
Had I in younger years cultivated painting, I feel satisfied that I could produce now such a tableau as to match any of my countryman, Raffaelle; so much an all-wise Providence has been pleased, perhaps for the trial of my heart, to endow me with a cast of mind that, on similar occasions as the solemn one above, whenever my electric fluid is called into action, it is actually a daguerreotype.
Chapter LXXIII.
Amare Rimembranze.
At four o'clock on Tuesday morning, we were commanded to fall in, dressed and hobbled as we were. Captain Thomas, with the tone and voice of a country parson, read to us his 'Order of the day,' to the effect that we were now under his charge for our transit to Melbourne; that if any of us stirred a finger, or moved a lip--especially across the diggings--his orders were that the transgressor should be shot on the spot. This arrangement, so Austrian-like, and therefore unworthy of a British officer, did not frighten us, and I cried, loud enough, "God save the Queen!"
Inspector Foster sprang up to me with his hopping leg, put on me tighter darbies, and together with the mulatto-rebel put us in front of the cart, giving strict orders to shoot us both down if we attempted to turn our heads. 'Veritatem dico, non mentior'; and so Messrs, Haynau, Jellachich, and Co., from that morning my hatred for you is on the decline.
They rode us through the main road as fast is it was safe for the preservation of our necks--the only thing they wanted to preserve inviolate for head-quarters.
Though it was clear daylight, yet I did see only one digger on the whole of the main road.
On passing through the Eureka, I got a glance of my snug little tent, where I had passed so many happy hours, and was sacred to me on a Sunday. There it lay deserted, uncared for! My eyes were choked with tears, and at forty years of age a man does not cry for little.
Chapter LXXIV
Della Vita Lo Spello Dal Mondo Sciolto, Al Mondo Vivo Perche Non Son Sepolto.
We were soon in Ballan. Good reader, please enter now within my mind. The lesson, if read, learned, and inwardly digested, will be of good use for the future. The troubles of this colony have begun.
It is eight o'clock of a fine morning; the spring season is in its full: the sun in his splendour is all there on the blue sky. Nature all around is life. The landscape is superb. It reminded me 'della Bella Cara Itallia'. The bush around was crammed with parrots, crows, and other chattering birds of the south. They were not prevented from singing praises each in its own language to the Creator, and all was joy and happiness with them. Unfortunately those lands lay uncultivated by the hand of man; but were not left idle by nature. Lively, pretty little flowers of the finest blue, teemed here, there, and everywhere, through the splendid grass, wafed to and fro by a gentle wind.
Look now at the foot of the picture.
There were thirteen of us all healthy, honest, able-bodied men, chained together on three carts. A dozen of dragoons, strong, sound-looking men, were riding on horseback as sharp-shooters, in all directions, before our carts in the bush. Their horses were really splendid animals. A score of troopers of the accursed stamp we had then on Ballaarat, sword unsheathed, carbines cocked, kept so close to our carts that one of these Vandemonians was half jammed on riding by a large gum-tree; was thrown from his horse, and disabled, but not killed. We are at last in Ballan, for change of horses. Captain Thomas and a stout healthy-looking man,
Had I in younger years cultivated painting, I feel satisfied that I could produce now such a tableau as to match any of my countryman, Raffaelle; so much an all-wise Providence has been pleased, perhaps for the trial of my heart, to endow me with a cast of mind that, on similar occasions as the solemn one above, whenever my electric fluid is called into action, it is actually a daguerreotype.
Chapter LXXIII.
Amare Rimembranze.
At four o'clock on Tuesday morning, we were commanded to fall in, dressed and hobbled as we were. Captain Thomas, with the tone and voice of a country parson, read to us his 'Order of the day,' to the effect that we were now under his charge for our transit to Melbourne; that if any of us stirred a finger, or moved a lip--especially across the diggings--his orders were that the transgressor should be shot on the spot. This arrangement, so Austrian-like, and therefore unworthy of a British officer, did not frighten us, and I cried, loud enough, "God save the Queen!"
Inspector Foster sprang up to me with his hopping leg, put on me tighter darbies, and together with the mulatto-rebel put us in front of the cart, giving strict orders to shoot us both down if we attempted to turn our heads. 'Veritatem dico, non mentior'; and so Messrs, Haynau, Jellachich, and Co., from that morning my hatred for you is on the decline.
They rode us through the main road as fast is it was safe for the preservation of our necks--the only thing they wanted to preserve inviolate for head-quarters.
Though it was clear daylight, yet I did see only one digger on the whole of the main road.
On passing through the Eureka, I got a glance of my snug little tent, where I had passed so many happy hours, and was sacred to me on a Sunday. There it lay deserted, uncared for! My eyes were choked with tears, and at forty years of age a man does not cry for little.
Chapter LXXIV
Della Vita Lo Spello Dal Mondo Sciolto, Al Mondo Vivo Perche Non Son Sepolto.
We were soon in Ballan. Good reader, please enter now within my mind. The lesson, if read, learned, and inwardly digested, will be of good use for the future. The troubles of this colony have begun.
It is eight o'clock of a fine morning; the spring season is in its full: the sun in his splendour is all there on the blue sky. Nature all around is life. The landscape is superb. It reminded me 'della Bella Cara Itallia'. The bush around was crammed with parrots, crows, and other chattering birds of the south. They were not prevented from singing praises each in its own language to the Creator, and all was joy and happiness with them. Unfortunately those lands lay uncultivated by the hand of man; but were not left idle by nature. Lively, pretty little flowers of the finest blue, teemed here, there, and everywhere, through the splendid grass, wafed to and fro by a gentle wind.
Look now at the foot of the picture.
There were thirteen of us all healthy, honest, able-bodied men, chained together on three carts. A dozen of dragoons, strong, sound-looking men, were riding on horseback as sharp-shooters, in all directions, before our carts in the bush. Their horses were really splendid animals. A score of troopers of the accursed stamp we had then on Ballaarat, sword unsheathed, carbines cocked, kept so close to our carts that one of these Vandemonians was half jammed on riding by a large gum-tree; was thrown from his horse, and disabled, but not killed. We are at last in Ballan, for change of horses. Captain Thomas and a stout healthy-looking man,