Our Butcher Would Not Let Us Have Less Than Half A Sheep At A Time, For
Which We Paid 8s. I Was Not Good Housekeeper Enough To Know How Much It
Weighed, But The Meat Was Very Good.
Flour was then a shilling a pound,
or two hundred pounds weight for nine pounds in money.
Sugar was 1s.
6d., and tea 3s. 6d. Fortunately we were Well provided with these three
latter articles.
The hungry diggers did ample justice to the dinner I had provided for
them. They brought home a tin-dish full of surface soil, which in
the course of the afternoon I attempted to wash.
Tin-dish-washing is difflcult to describe. It requires a watchful eye
and a skilful hand; it is the most mysterious department of the
gold-digging business. The tin dish (which, of course, is round) is
generally about eighteen inches across the top, and twelve across the
bottom, with sloping sides of three or four inches deep. The one I used
was rather smaller. Into it I placed about half the "dirt" - digger's
technical term for earth, or soil - that they had brought, filled the
dish up with water, and then with a thick stick commenced making it
into a batter; this was a most necessary commencement, as the soil was
of a very stiff clay. I then let this batter - I know no name more
appropriate for it - settle, and carefully poured off the water at the
top. I now added some clean water, and repeated the operation of mixing
it up; and after doing this several times, the "dirt," of course,
gradually diminishing, I was overjoyed to see a few bright specks, which
I carefully picked out, and with renewed energy continued this by no
means elegant work.
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