‘My husband would like to see the machinery,’ said Mrs. Lilburne. ‘What a grand view you’ve got!’
‘That’s what I thought when I first seen it, ma’am. I was pretty well told out when I got here first—thought I’d turn round and get back while I’d a little strength left. But I couldn’t help standin’ still to look at the view. The sun was just a-settin’, and there was a kind of gold and red look over that far plain country. So, thinks I, it looks mean to cut away back without proving one or two of these “gulches”—that’s what we called them in San Francisco. So I stayed and camped—and next day if I didn’t fall plum centre on the—the——’
‘The Great Pilot Mount Reef, going twenty ounces to the ton,’ said Mr. Southwater, ‘which you’re going to show these ladies and Mr. Lilburne—not forgetting a five-ounce nugget for Miss White.’
‘We’ve been breaking down the south end of the reef to-day, and got some pretty coarse gold, so the ladies has come at a good time, sir. Please to follow me, and we’ll see what we can do. It ain’t every day we see a young lady like Miss Jean. Lord bless and prosper her!’
So the party was introduced to the ‘shift boss,’ with other leading officials and men in authority; afterwards to be lowered down in the ‘cage’ to where men were working two hundred yards from the surface, in narrow alleys with gleaming white or pink walls of quartz, in which were golden streaks. Narrow bands of dull red or yellow metal, almost unrecognisable as the root of all evil, and the lure for which men—ay, and women—bartered soul and body, and were content to work in hunger, dirt, rags, and wretchedness, if only they could gain a sufficiency of the dross, so called, which people profess to despise, but which all men covet and hanker for to their lives’ end.
The atmosphere was hot and humid; the men at work in these lower levels might have passed for Red Sea stokers, as they laboured with tense muscle and sinew.
To what purpose this labour was expended—so far from the light of the sun or the fresh air of heaven—a visit to the treasure-chamber, in one side of the great gallery, was recommended. There the person in charge of the gold pointed out some of the specimens which had recently been sent in. Besides these there was the retorted gold.