The pace was equal to that of the fastest “Defiance” or “Regulator” that ever kept good time on an English turnpike road. Here the erstwhile Cornish sailor settled himself for life. To that end he wrote to a young woman to whom he had become engaged before he left Truro on his last voyage, and sent her the wherewithal to pay her passage and other expenses. She was wise enough to make no objection to a home on “the other side of the world,” as Jean Ingelow puts it, and had no reason to regret her decision. Here they reared a family of stalwart sons, and blooming lasses—the latter with complexions rivalling those of Devonshire. They married and spread themselves over the wide wastes of the adjoining colonies, with satisfactory results, but never forgetting to return from time to time to their Tasmanian home, where they could smell the apple blossoms in the orchards and hear the bee humming on the green, clover-scented pastures.
The parents in the fulness of time had passed away, and lay in the churchyard, near the Wesleyan meeting house, which the old man had regularly attended and generously supported. But his eldest son, lamed through an accident on a goldfield, reigned in his stead. He too had a capable wife—it seemed to run in the family. So the name and fame of the Lord Rodney remained good as of old.
The prospectus and plan of operations being now regarded as “shipshape” by Mr. Tregonwell, he proceeded to sketch the locality. “It’s an awfully rough country—nothing you’ve ever seen before is a patch on it. We shall have to walk the last stage. A goat could hardly find footing, over not _on_, mind you, the worst part of the track. How Charlie Herbert, who discovered the show, got along, I can’t think. He was more than half starved, ‘did a regular perish,’ as West Australians say—more than once. However it was a feat to brag about when he _did_ come upon it, as you’ll see when we get there.”
“Yes! he and his mate. You won’t find him far off, unless I’m handy. It doesn’t do to leave such a jeweller’s window to look after itself. There are two wages men, Charlie takes one and Jack Clarke the other, when they work. They get lumps and lumps of ‘native silver’ worth £50 and £60 apiece.”