ss of the flat, and stared as if we'd seen a bit of another world. So
it was another world to us, straight away from the sad-voiced solitudes
of the bush.

Barring Sydney or Melbourne, we'd never seen so many men in a crowd
before; and how different they looked from the crawling people of a
town! A green-banked rapid river ran before us, through a deep narrow
valley. The bright green flats looked so strange with the yellow water
rippling and rushing between them. Upon that small flat, and by the
bank, and in the river itself, nearly 20,000 men were at work, harder
and more silently than any crowd we'd ever seen before. Most of 'em were
digging, winding up greenhide buckets filled with gravel from shafts,
which were sunk so thickly all over the place that you could not pass
between without jostling some one. Others were driving carts heavily
laden with the same stuff towards the river, in which hundreds of men
were standing up to their waists washing the gold out of tin pans, iron
buckets, and every kind of vessel or utensil. By far the greater number
of miners used things like child's cradles, rocking them to and fro
while a constant stream of yellow water passed through. Very little
talk went on; every man looked feverishly anxious to get the greatest
quantity of work done by sundown.

Foot police and mounted troopers passed through the crowd every now and
then, but there was apparently no use or no need for them; that time
was to come. Now and then some one would come walking up, carrying a
knapsack, not a swag, and showing by his round, rosy face that he hadn't
seen a summer's sun in Australia. We saw a trooper riding towards us,
and knowing it was best to take the bull by the horns, I pushed over
to him, and asked if he could direct us to where Mr. Stevenson's, the
auctioneer's, yard was.

'Whose horses are these?' he said, looking at the brands. 'B.M., isn't
it?'

'Bernard Muldoon, Lower Macquarie,' I answered. 'There's a friend of
his, a new chum, in charge; he'll be here to-morrow.'

'Go on down Main Street [the first street in a diggings is always called
Main Street] as you're going,' he said carelessly, giving us all a
parting look through, 'and take the first lane to the right. It takes
you to the yard. It's sale-day to-morrow; you're in luck.'

It was rather sharp work getting the colts through men, women, and
children, carts, cradles, shafts, and tin dishes; but they were a trifle
tired and tender-foo