n safety, for the arm of God was around
him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

THE ANTIPODES.

A new scene breaks upon us now, patient reader. We are among the
antipodes in that vast and wonderful region where the kangaroo reigns in
the wilderness, and gold is sown broadcast in the land. The men we see
are, to a large extent, the same men we saw before leaving the shores of
Old England, but they are wonderfully changed! Red flannel shirts, long
boots, leathern belts, felt hats, and unshorn chins meet us at every
turn; so do barrows and pick-axes and shovels. It seems as if we had
got into a region inhabited solely by navvies. Many of them, however,
appear to be very gentlemanly navvies!

There are no ladies here; scarcely any females at all, for we have left
the thriving settlements of Australia far behind us, and are now
wandering over the Daisy Hill gold-diggings. The particular section of
that busy spot to which our attention is directed at this moment, is
named the "Kangaroo Flats."

None but strong men can get on here. Let us go forward, and see how
they obtain this yellow metal that turns the world upside down!

Here is a man issuing from a hole in the earth close at our feet, like a
huge ground-squirrel. He is tall; stout, and fair, with broad shoulders
and a fine manly countenance, which is ornamented by a thick beard and
moustache of glossy yellow hair. The silken curly hair of this man,
contrasted with his great size and manliness, is very striking. He
seats himself on a mass of clay, wipes the perspiration from his
forehead, and shouts to some one down in the earth.

"Hallo! Jack, let's hoist out the stuff now."

"Ay, ay, Harry," replies a strong voice, with a sailor-like ring in it,
from below, "I'll be on deck in a jiffy."

Let us descend and look at this miner. The hole is narrow and deep; at
the bottom of it is a dark tunnel two feet broad, between two and three
feet high, and twenty-five feet long. At the farther extremity of it
crouches a man with a pickaxe in his hands, and a candle beside him. It
is a very awkward position in which to work, and the result is that this
man pants and blows and sighs, and sometimes laughs quietly to himself
at the comicality of his attitudes, while the perspiration pours over
his face in large beads continuously. It seems very hard work, and so,
indeed, it is, but the man is an unusually big and strong fellow, larger
even than his fair companion above gro