One thing’s certain; Jim and I would never have had the chance of seeing as many different kinds of people in a hundred years if it hadn’t been for the gold. No wonder some of the young fellows kicked over the traces for a change—a change from sheep, cattle, and horses, ploughing and reaping, shearing and bullock-driving; the same old thing every day; the same chaps to talk to about the same things. It does seem a dead-and-alive kind of life after all we’ve seen and done since. However, we’d a deal better have kept to the bulldog’s motto,“Hang on,” and stick to it, even if it was a shade slow and stupid. We’d have come out right in the end, as all coves do that hold fast to the right thing and stick to the straight course, fair weather and foul. I can see that now, and many things else.

But to see the big room at the Prospectors’ Arms at night—the hall, they called it—was a sight worth talking about—as Jim and I walked up and down, or sat at one of the small tables smoking our pipes, with good liquor before us. It was like a fairy-tale come true to chaps like us, though we had seen a little life in Sydney and Melbourne.

What made it so different from any other place we’d ever seen or thought of before was the strange mixture of every kind and sort of man and woman; to hear them all jabbering away together in different languages, or trying to speak English, used to knock us altogether. The American diggers that we took up with had met a lot of foreigners in California and other places. They could speak a little Spanish and French, and got on with them. But Jim and I could only stare and stand open-mouthed when a Spanish-American chap would come up with his red sash and his big sheath-knife, while they’d yabber away quite comfortable.

It made us feel like children, and we began to think what a fine thing it would be to clear out by Honolulu, and so on to San Francisco, as Starlight was always talking about. It would make men of us, at any rate, and give us something to think about in the days to come.