Think Of Us, Picture Us, Ye City Magnates, Toiling And Struggling That
Your Capacious Pockets May Be Filled By The Fruits Of Our Labour:
Think of
us, I say, and remember that our experiences are but as those of many
more, and that hardly a mine, out of which you have made all the profit,
has been found without similar hardships and battles for life!
Not a
penny would you have made from the wealth of West Australia but for us
prospectors - and what do we get for our pains? A share in the bare sale of
the mine if lucky; if not, God help us! for nothing but curses and
complaints will be our portion. The natural rejoinder to this is, "Why,
then, do you go?" To which I can only answer that one must make a living
somehow, and that some like to make money hard, and some to make it
easily. Perhaps I belong to the former class.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that in the heat of the summer we
were ploughing our way through salt-bogs, without water or any immediate
prospect of getting any, and realised, not for the first time, that the
prospector's life in West Australia is not "all beer and skittles."
The lake negotiated, we decided to rest under the scanty shade of a mulga
tree, and regaled ourselves on oatmeal washed down with a mouthful of
water, the last, hot from the iron casks. At a time when water is
plentiful it can be carried and kept cool in canvas bags; but it owes
this coolness to evaporation, and consequent waste of water.
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