e worried the surface, and, at the risk and
cost of their lives, probed the depths. Now that deep sinking was in
vogue, gold-digging no longer served as a play-game for the gentleman
and the amateur; the greater number of those who toiled at it were
work-tried, seasoned men. And yet, although it had now sunk to the
level of any other arduous and uncertain occupation, and the magic
prizes of the early days were seldom found, something of the old,
romantic glamour still clung to this most famous gold-field, dazzling
the eyes and confounding the judgment. Elsewhere, the horse was in use
at the puddling-trough, and machines for crushing quartz were under
discussion. But the Ballarat digger resisted the introduction of
machinery, fearing the capitalist machinery would bring in its train.
He remained the dreamer, the jealous individualist; he hovered for ever
on the brink of a stupendous discovery.

This dream it was, of vast wealth got without exertion, which had
decoyed the strange, motley crowd, in which peers and churchmen rubbed
shoulders with the scum of Norfolk Island, to exile in this outlandish
region. And the intention of all alike had been: to snatch a golden
fortune from the earth and then, hey, presto! for the old world again.
But they were reckoning without their host: only too many of those who
entered the country went out no more. They became prisoners to the
soil. The fabulous riches of which they had heard tell amounted, at
best, to a few thousands of pounds: what folly to depart with so
little, when mother earth still teemed! Those who drew blanks nursed an
unquenchable hope, and laboured all their days like navvies, for a
navvy's wage. Others again, broken in health or disheartened, could
only turn to an easier handiwork. There were also men who, as soon as
fortune smiled on them, dropped their tools and ran to squander the
work of months in a wild debauch; and they invariably returned, tail
down, to prove their luck anew. And, yet again, there were those who,
having once seen the metal in the raw: in dust, fine as that brushed
from a butterfly's wing; in heavy, chubby nuggets; or, more exquisite
still, as the daffodil-yellow veining of bluish-white quartz: these
were gripped in the subtlest way of all. A passion for the gold itself
awoke in them an almost sensual craving to touch and possess; and the
glitter of a few specks at the bottom of pan or cradle came, in time,
to mean more to them than "home," or