und or thirty
shillings a month--I forget rightly which--and, of course, some of
the chaps hadn't the money to get it with--spent what they had, been
unlucky, or run away from somewhere, and come up as bare of everything
to get it out of the ground.

You'd see the troopers asking everybody for their licences, and those
that hadn't them would be marched up to the police camp and chained to a
big log, sometimes for days and days. The Government hadn't time to get
up a lock-up, with cells and all the rest of it, so they had to do the
chain business. Some of these men had seen better days, and felt it;
the other diggers didn't like it either, and growled a good deal among
themselves. We could see it would make bad blood some day; but there was
such a lot of gold being got just then that people didn't bother their
heads about anything more than they could help--plenty of gold, plenty
of money, people bringing up more things every day from the towns for
the use of the diggers. You could get pretty near anything you wanted by
paying for it. Hard work from daylight to dark, with every now and then
a big find to sweeten it, when a man could see as much money lying at
his foot, or in his hand, as a year's work--no, nor five--hadn't made
for him before. No wonder people were not in a hurry to call out for
change in a place like the Turon in the year 1850!

The first night put the stuns on us. Long rows of tents, with big
roaring log fires in front hot enough to roast you if you went too near;
mobs of men talking, singing, chaffing, dealing--all as jolly as a lot
of schoolboys. There was grog, too, going, as there is everywhere. No
publics were allowed at first, so, of course, it was sold on the sly.

It's no use trying to make men do without grog, or the means of getting
it; it never works. I don't hold with every shanty being licensed and
its being under a man's nose all day long; but if he has the money to
pay for it, and wants to have an extra glass of grog or two with his
friends, or because he has other reasons, he ought to be able to get it
without hardships being put in his way.

The Government was afraid of there being tremendous fights and riots at
the diggings, because there was all sorts of people there, English
and French, Spaniards and Italians, natives and Americans, Greeks and
Germans, Swedes and negroes, every sort and kind of man from every
country in the world seemed to come after a bit. But they needn't
have