第38章 Part II.(2)

The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet here.

Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft,timbering --i.e.putting in a sapling prop --here and there where he worked wide;but the `payable dirt'ran in under the cemetery,and in no other direction.

Dave,Jim,and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes after tea,as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim,and started to tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.

This was Dave's theory --drawn from a little experience and many long yarns with old diggers:--He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course,covered with clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains to the depth of from nine or ten to twenty feet;he had bottomed on a gutter running into the bed of the old buried creek,and carrying patches and streaks of `wash'or gold-bearing dirt.If he went on he might strike it rich at any stroke of his pick;he might strike the rich `lead'which was supposed to exist round there.

(There was always supposed to be a rich lead round there somewhere.

`There's gold in them ridges yet --if a man can only git at it,'says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)Dave might strike a ledge,`pocket',or `pot-hole'holding wash rich with gold.He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery,found no gold,and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard.

He had prospected at the back of the cemetery,found a few `colours',and the bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery towards which all indications were now leading him.He had sunk shafts across the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking twenty feet and not a colour of gold.Probably the whole of the ground under the cemetery was rich --maybe the richest in the district.

The old gravediggers had not been gold-diggers --besides,the graves,being six feet,would,none of them,have touched the alluvial bottom.There was nothing strange in the fact that none of the crowd of experienced diggers who rushed the district had thought of the cemetery and racecourse.Old brick chimneys and houses,the clay for the bricks of which had been taken from sites of subsequent goldfields,had been put through the crushing-mill in subsequent years and had yielded `payable gold'.Fossicking Chinamen were said to have been the first to detect a case of this kind.

Dave reckoned to strike the `lead',or a shelf or ledge with a good streak of wash lying along it,at a point about forty feet within the cemetery.But a theory in alluvial gold-mining was much like a theory in gambling,in some respects.

The theory might be right enough,but old volcanic disturbances --`the shrinkage of the earth's surface,'and that sort of old thing --upset everything.You might follow good gold along a ledge,just under the grass,till it suddenly broke off and the continuation might be a hundred feet or so under your nose.

Had the `ground'in the cemetery been `open'Dave would have gone to the point under which he expected the gold to lie,sunk a shaft there,and worked the ground.It would have been the quickest and easiest way --it would have saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets of dirt along a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence.But it was very doubtful if the Government could have been moved to open the cemetery even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich goldfield under it,and backed by the influence of a number of diggers and their backers --which last was what Dave wished for least of all.He wanted,above all things,to keep the thing shady.Then,again,the old clannish local spirit of the old farming town,rooted in years way back of the goldfields,would have been too strong for the Government,or even a rush of wild diggers.

`We'll work this thing on the strict Q.T.'said Dave.

He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent.

Jim grumbled,in conclusion,--

`Well,then,best go under Jimmy Middleton.It's the shortest and straightest,and Jimmy's the freshest,anyway.'

Then there was another trouble.How were they to account for the size of the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be the result of such an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel for shallow sinkings?Dave had an idea of carrying some of the dirt away by night and putting it down a deserted shaft close by;but that would double the labour,and might lead to detection sooner than anything else.There were boys 'possum-hunting on those flats every night.Then Dave got an idea.

There was supposed to exist --and it has since been proved --another,a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field,and several had tried for it.One,the town watchmaker,had sunk all his money in `duffers',trying for the second bottom.

It was supposed to exist at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet --on solid rock,I suppose.This watchmaker,an Italian,would put men on to sink,and superintend in person,and whenever he came to a little `colour'-showing shelf,or false bottom,thirty or forty feet down --he'd go rooting round and spoil the shaft,and then start to sink another.It was extraordinary that he hadn't the sense to sink straight down,thoroughly test the second bottom,and if he found no gold there,to fill the shaft up to the other bottoms,or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.

He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him.

And the last time I heard from that field,they were boring the ground like a sieve,with the latest machinery,to find the best place to put down a deep shaft,and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore.

But I'm right off the line again.

`Old Pinter',Ballarat digger --his theory on second and other bottoms ran as follows:--`Ye see,THIS here grass surface --this here surface with trees an'grass on it,that we're livin'on,has got nothin'to do with us.