roads, or rather tracks, run in and out amongst the claims,
knee-deep in mud; the ground being kept in a state of constant
sloppiness by the perpetual washing for the gold. Perhaps there is a
fight going on over the boundary-pegs of a claim which have been
squashed by a heavy dray passing along, laden with stores from
Castlemaine.

The miners are attended by all manner of straggling followers, like
the sutlers following a camp. The life is a very rough one: hard work
and hard beds, heavy eating and heavy drinking. The diggers mostly
live in tents, for they are at first too much engrossed by their
search for gold to run up huts; but many of them sleep in the open air
or under the shelter of the trees. A pilot-coat or a pea-jacket is
protection enough for those who do not enjoy the luxury of a tent; but
the dryness and geniality of the climate are such that injury is very
rarely experienced from the night exposure. There are very few women
at the first opening of new diggings, the life is too rough and rude;
and some of those who do come, rock the cradle--but not the household
one--with the men. The diggers, however genteel the life they may have
led before, soon acquire a dirty, rough, unshaven look. Their coarse
clothes are all of a colour, being that of the clay and gravel in
which they work, and the mud with which they become covered when
digging.

There is a crowd of men at an open bar drinking. Bar, indeed! It is
but a plank supported on two barrels; and across this improvised
counter the brandy bottle and glasses are eagerly plied. A couple of
old boxes in front serve for seats, while a piece of canvas, rigged on
two poles, shades off the fierce sun. Many a large fortune has been
made at a rude bar of this sort. For too many of the diggers, though
they work like horses, spend like asses. Here, again, in the long main
street of tents, where the shafts are often uncomfortably close to the
road, the tradesmen are doing a roaring business. Stalwart men, with
stout appetites, are laying in their stores of grocery, buying pounds
of flour, sugar, and butter--meat and bread in great quantities. The
digger thrusts his parcels indiscriminately into the breast of his
dirty jumper, a thick shirt; and away he goes, stuffed with groceries,
and perhaps a leg of mutton over his shoulder. In the evening some
four thousand camp fires in the valleys, along the gullies, and up the
sides of the hills, cast a lurid light over a scene,