Was it then his being
an esquire that brought his administration into contempt? The fact is,
a clap of "The Thunder" from Printing House-square boomed on the tympanum
of my ear. We diggers got the gracious title of "vagabonds," and our massa
"Joe," for his pains to keep friends with us, was put down "an incapable;"
all for the honour of British rule, of course.
"Wanted a Governor," was now no longer a dummy in 'The Argus'; but, unhappily,
no application was made to the people of Victoria.
Give a dog a bad name--and the old proverb holds good even at the antipodes.
My trampings are now transcribed from my diary.
With the hot winds whirled in the Vandemonian rush to the Ballaarat Flat.
My hole was next to the one which was jumped by the Eureka mob, and where
one man was murdered in the row. At sixty-five feet we got on a blasted log
of a gum-tree that had been mouldering there under a curse, since the times
of Noah! The whole flat turned out an imperial shicer. (You do not sink
deep enough, Signore Editor.) Slabs that had cost us some eight pounds
a hundred would not fetch, afterwards, one pound. We left them to sweat
freely in the hole; and all the mob got on the fuddle. My mate and myself
thought we had been long enough together, and got asunder for a change.
I was soon on the tramp again. Bryant's Ranges was the go of the day,
and I started thither accordingly.
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