ld
world places, but they must have come by ship-loads, the road was that
full of new chums--we could tell 'em easy by their dress, their fresh
faces, their way of talk, their thick sticks, and new guns and pistols.
Some of them you'd see dragging a hand-cart with another chap, and they
having all their goods, tools, and clothes on it. Then there'd be a
dozen men, with a horse and cart, and all their swags in it. If the
horse jibbed at all, or stuck in the deep ruts--and wasn't it a wet
season?--they'd give a shout and a rush, and tear out cart and horse and
everything else. They told us that there were rows of ships in Sydney
Harbour without a soul to take care of them; that the soldiers were
running away to the diggings just as much as the sailors; clergymen and
doctors, old hands and new chums, merchants and lawyers. They all seemed
as if they couldn't keep away from the diggings that first year for
their lives.

All stock went up double and treble what they were before. Cattle and
sheep we didn't mind about. We could do without them now. But the horse
market rose wonderfully, and that made a deal of odds to us, you may be
sure.

It was this way. Every man that had a few pounds wanted a horse to ride
or drive; every miner wanted a wash-dirt cart and a horse to draw it.
The farmer wanted working horses, for wasn't hay sixty or seventy pounds
a ton, and corn what you liked to ask for it? Every kind of harness
horse was worth forty, fifty, a hundred pounds apiece, and only to ask
it; some of 'em weedy and bad enough, Heaven knows. So between the horse
trade and the road trade we could see a fortune sticking out, ready for
us to catch hold of whenever we were ready to collar.

Chapter 24

Our first try-on in the coach line was with the Goulburn mail. We knew
the road pretty well, and picked out a place where they had to go slow
and couldn't get off the road on either side. There's always places like
that in a coach road near the coast, if you look sharp and lay it out
beforehand. This wasn't on the track to the diggings, but we meant to
leave that alone till we got our hand in a bit. There was a lot of money
flying about the country in a general way where there was no sign of
gold. All the storekeepers began to get up fresh goods, and to send
money in notes and cheques to pay for them. The price of stock kept
dealers and fat cattle buyers moving, who had their pockets full of
notes as often as not.

Just