taking my
place in the coach. But we were in little better straits ourselves.
When we got up to the buggy, we found it fairly stuck in the mud, in
one of the worst parts of the road, with a trace broken. I got under
the rails of the paddock in which the coach passengers were
walking--for it was impossible to walk in the road--and crossed over
to where my former mates were stuck. They were out in the deep mud,
almost knee-deep, trying to mend the broken trace. Altogether they
looked in a very sorry plight.

At the top of the hill we again mounted the coach, and got on very
well for about three miles, until we came to another very bad piece of
road. Here we diverged from it altogether, and proceeded into an
adjoining field, so as to drive alongside the road, and join it a
little further on. The ground looked to me very soft, and so it was.
For we had not gone far when the coach gave a plunge, and the wheels
sank axle-deep in a crab-hole. All hands had now to set to work to
help the coach out of the mud; while the driver urged his horses with
cries and cracks of his long whip. But it was of no use. The two
wheelers were fairly exhausted, and their struggling only sent them
deeper into the mud. The horses were then unharnessed, and the three
strongest were yoked in a line, so as to give the foremost of them a
better foot-hold. But it was still of no use. It was not until the mud
round the wheels had been all dug out, and the passengers lifted the
hind wheels and the coach bodily up, that the horses were at last able
to extricate the vehicle. By this time we were all in a sad state of
dirt and wet, for the rain had begun to fall quite steadily.

Shortly after, we reached the half-way house and changed horses. We
now rattled along at a pretty good pace. But every now and then the
driver would shout, "Look out inside!" and there would be a sudden
roll, followed by a jerk and pitch combined, and you would be thrown
over upon your opposite neighbour, or he upon you. At last, after a
rather uncomfortable journey, we reached the outskirts of a large
town, and in a few minutes more we found ourselves safely jolted into
Ballarat.

I am not at all up in the statistics of the colony, and cannot tell
the population or the number of inhabited houses in Ballarat.[13] But
it is an immense place, second in importance in the colony only to
Melbourne. Big though it be, like most of these up-country towns,
Ballarat originated in a rush.