'Full Stop;' He Must Have A 'blow,'
But The D - - D Things - His Matches - Had Got Damp, And
So in a rage he must
hasten to his tent to light the pipe; that is, to put on the
Yankee garb
and complete his forenoon work in a third hole of his, whose depth and shape
recommended him as a first rate grave-digger.
And what has all this bosh to do with the Eureka Stockade?
Chapter VIII.
Fiat Fustitia, Ruat Coelum.
As an old Ballaarat hand, I hereby assert, that much of the odium of the mining
community against red-tape, arose from the accursed practice of jumping.
One fact from the 'stubborn-things' store. The Eureka gutter was fast
progressing down hill towards the Eureka gully. A party of Britishers
had two claims; the one, on the slope of the hill, was bottomed on heavy gold;
the other, some four claims from it, and parallel with the range, was some
ninety feet deep, and was worked by day only, by three men: a fourth man
would now and then bring a set of trimmed slabs from the first hole aforesaid,
where he was the principal 'chips.' There was a Judas Iscariot among the party.
One fine morning, a hole was bottomed down the gully, and proved a scheisser.
A rush, Eureka style, was the conseqence; and it was pretended now that
the gutter would keep with the ranges, towards the Catholic church.
A party of Yankees, with revolvers and Mexican knives - the garb of 'bouncers'
in those days - jumped the second hole of the Britishers, dismantled
the windlass, and Godamn'd as fast as the Britishers cursed in the colonial
style.
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