to
their friends at home, what an enormous yield of gold was being dug
out of the ground in such a simple fashion, all the world seemed to
be moving over. At that time nobody could tell a lie hardly about the
tremendous quantity that was being got and sent away every week. This
was easy to know, because the escort returns were printed in all the
newspapers every week; so everybody could see for themselves what pounds
and hundredweights and tons--yes, tons of gold--were being got by men
who very often, as like as not, hadn't to dig above twenty or thirty
feet for it, and had never handled a pick or a shovel in their lives
before they came to the Turon.

There were plenty of good men at the diggings. I will say this for the
regular miners, that a more manly, straightgoing lot of fellows no man
ever lived among. I wish we'd never known any worse. We were not what
might be called highly respectable people ourselves--still, men like us
are only half-and-half bad, like a good many more in this world.
They're partly tempted into doing wrong by opportunity, and kept back
by circumstances from getting into the straight track afterwards. But on
every goldfield there's scores and scores of men that always hurry off
there like crows and eagles to a carcass to see what they can rend and
tear and fatten upon. They ain't very particular whether it's the living
or the dead, so as they can gorge their fill. There was a good many of
this lot at the Turon, and though the diggers gave them a wide berth,
and helped to run them down when they'd committed any crime, they
couldn't be kept out of sight and society altogether.

We used to go up sometimes to see the gold escort start. It was one of
the regular sights of the field, and the miners that were off shift and
people that hadn't much to do generally turned up on escort day.
The gold was taken down to Sydney once a week in a strong express
waggon--something like a Yankee coach, with leather springs and a high
driving seat; so that four horses could be harnessed. One of the police
sergeants generally drove, a trooper fully armed with rifle and revolver
on the box beside him. In the back seat sat two more troopers with their
Sniders ready for action; two rode a hundred yards ahead, and another
couple about the same distance behind.

We always noticed that a good many of the sort of men that never seemed
to do any digging and yet always had good clothes and money to spend
used to hang abo