Soon after Harry and Donald returned to Wonga-Wonga, the station was excited by the news that gold had been found about seventy miles to the north of Jerry’s Town. At first the news was partially pooh-poohed at Wonga-Wonga.

“We’ve heard of storekeepers’ rushes before now, haven’t we?” Mr. Lawson said to the men, who were getting unsettled by the tidings. “Those fellows would make out that there was gold in the moon, if people could get there to buy their damaged goods; and nicely they’d clap it on for carriage.”
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It soon became certain, however, that something more than the mere “colour of gold” had been found at Jim Crow Creek. Three parts of the population of Jerry’s Town started for the new diggings, and yet the town was busier than ever, such a stream of people poured through it. Nearly every township between Jerry’s Town and Sydney contributed its quota, and amongst those who came from Sydney were a good many who had sailed thither from Melbourne. Perhaps they had been doing very well on the Victoria diggings, but diggers have almost always a belief that they could do better somewhere else than where they are; and so, when they hear of new diggings, off they flock to them, like starlings from England in autumn.
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Wonga-Wonga and the other stations near Jerry’s Plains soon became very short-handed. Shepherds and stockmen sloped wholesale for the Creek, sometimes helping themselves to their masters’ horses to get there. To make the best of a bad job, Mr. Lawson resolved to avail himself of the market for meat that had suddenly been created at Jim Crow Creek; and, accordingly, he and the boys started thither with some of the sheep and cattle that had been left with scarcely any one to look after them.

As they rode into Jerry’s Town, they passed a mob of Chinamen, in baggy blue breeches, who were preparing to encamp by the roadside. Most of them still wore their tails, coiled up like snakes, or dangling down like eels. The Jerry’s Town youngsters were pelting the Chinamen, and taking sly pulls at the dangling tails, whenever they got the chance, meanwhile shouting “Chow-chow” and singing in chorus—

“Here he was, and there he goes,

Chinaman with the monkey nose.”
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As the Chinamen laid down the bamboos they had carried on their shoulders, with bundles hanging from them like milk-pails from a yoke, and gathered sticks to boil their rice, their almond eyes glanced very evilly from under their beehive hats at the young outside barbarians. I am sorry to say that is not only the young barbarians who behave very brutally to Chinamen in Australia.

All the way from Jerry’s Town to Jim Crow Creek the road, that used to look even more solitary than Highgate Archway Road looks during the greater part of the year, was every here and there almost as crowded as Highgate Archway Road during the time of Barnet Fair. Men on horseback, with saddle-bags and pistols peeping from their holsters, were ambling and cantering along, singly and in couples, and in threes and fours. Moleskin-trousered pedestrians, who had “humped the swag,” were toiling along, footsore and perspiring, their red or blue shirts rolled up and laid upon the top of their heavy loads. Greenhorn-looking young fellows, fresh from the counter or the desk, were sitting down, dead beat. Tarpaulined drays ground along in a long line, monotonously jingling the pots and pannikins slung beneath.

“MEN ON HORSEBACK, WITH SADDLE-BAGS AND PISTOLS.”
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Here and there a dray had broken down, and the driver was fussing about as angry as a wasp, or smoking in sulky idleness, because he could not get any one to stop to help him right his cargo. Every public was crammed with rowdy-looking, bronzed, bearded fellows, shouting for nobblers, spiders, and stone-fences. The free commons which every traveller in Australia used to look upon as a right rather than a favour, had ceased to be supplied by either house or hut. If any passenger wanted food or drink, he had to pay for them, and pay smartly too. Some of the parties taking their meals along the road were faring jollily, but some of the pedestrians who limped past them cast enviously hungry glances on their commissariat. To say nothing of brandy, bitter beer, sardines, and potted salmon, they were speculating anxiously as to how much longer they could make sure of tea and damper.
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Jim Crow Creek was reached at last. A week or two before, it had been so quiet that the shy water-moles would come up and bask for the half-hour together on the surface of its gravy-soup-coloured water. There was nothing to startle them except the sudden scream of a flock of parrots flashing across, or the lazy rustle of the long, inky, lanky-tassel-like leaves which the grey-boled trees upon the banks dipped into the smooth stream. But now for two or three miles upon both banks there was bustle. The trees had been cut down, the banks scarped and honeycombed, and dotted with big boil-like heaps of dusty earth. The tortured creek, here dammed, there almost drained, and yonder flowing in a new channel, seemed to be as puzzled as to its identity as the old lady who had her petticoats cut all round about. Steam sent up quick, angry white puffs; windlasses went round and round at the top of yawning wells of dirt; the grinding, rattling dash of shovels into soil, the ticking click of picks on stone resounded everywhere. Cradles rocked; hip-booted men, who looked as if they had not washed either face or hands for a twelvemonth, swished their precious mud round and round in washing-pans. Scattered along the sloping sides of the creek, and jostlingly jumbled on the flat it once crept round, so sleepily quiet, were all kinds of extemporized stores and dwellings: a house or two of corrugated iron; more hastily knocked-up ones of slabs; canvas-walled houses, roofed with asphalte-felt; round tents, square tents, polygonal tents, and mere bark gunyahs. Some had their owners’ names roughly painted on the canvas. Outside one tent hung a brass plate inscribed with “Mr. So-and-So, Photographer.” Keen-looking gold-buyers stood at the doors of their wooden “offices.” A commissioner, swellish in gold lace, cantered superciliously through the bustling throngs. Policemen lounged about, striving to look unconscious of the “Joey!” which the miners found time to shout after them in scorn. Hanging about the sly grog-shop tents, there were men who might have been thought to have more time for such amusement, since smoking and nobblerizing was all that they seemed to have to do; but these gentry appeared by no means eager to attract the attention of the police. The gold-buyers looked anxious when the rascals’ furtively-ferocious eyes chanced to fall their way, and they were not the kind of man that a solitary digger would have liked to see peeping into his tent at night, or loitering before him in the bush. Everybody at Jim Crow Creek had guns or pistols of some kind, and took care to let his neighbours know that he was armed by firing off his weapons before he turned in, and then ostentatiously reloading them after the gun-powdery good night.
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Before Mr. Lawson and the boys reached the “township,” as the Jim Crow Flat was already called, their sheep and cattle were bought up by a butcher who was waiting on the road. They bought their chops of him for their evening meal, and when they found what he charged for them, Mr. Lawson was not quite so satisfied with his cattle bargain as he had been when he made it. After tea, the boys strolled out to look about them, and presently came to a large tent, with the American colours flying above it. There was a crowd at the entrance, and it was as much as two money-takers could do to make sure that they did take the admission-money from all the boisterous fellows who were rolling in. Amongst them were a few women, with faces like brown leather, who were still more boisterous.

“Let’s go in, Donald,” said Harry. “It must be those Ethiopian chaps that passed us on the road in the American waggon.”
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The boys struggled in at last, and then wished, but in vain, that they could struggle out. They were jammed in a steaming, smoking, rum-scented mass of miners, good-tempered enough in the main, but apparently of opinion that the proper place for a man’s elbows was in his neighbour’s ribs, and for his feet upon his neighbour’s toes. Not more than half had seats, and sometimes they swayed about so, that it seemed certain the bulging tent must fall. They joined most discordantly in all the choruses, and when especially pleased, pitched coppers, and sixpences, and shillings on the stage. They threw other things that were not so pleasant. One wag threw a potato, which hit Bones upon the nose just when he was propounding a conundrum to Tambourine; and Mr. Bones, in spite of his fun, being a very irascible little serenader, leaped down amongst his audience, and made frantic efforts to get at his assailant. There was very nearly a battle-royal between house and performers, and Mr. Bones was pulled up at last by his............