By this time his ‘mate’—a ‘dividing mate,’ in the eye of the law, socially and otherwise—had, as he himself expressed it, ‘picked up surprisin’’—after the first week or two on the road, he would be (he stated) in hard condition again, fit to go for a man’s life. Originally of the flawless constitution peculiarly the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon, and, as such, contemptuous of hardship by land or sea, nothing but his own folly had power to harm it. The wonderful recuperative power common to the race had reasserted itself—conjointly with a regular system of food and rest. The typical miner’s boundless optimism and sanguine expectation bore him up as upon wings—and, as they drove along in the clear atmosphere, under a cloudless sky, the Commissioner’s face lost its troubled expression.
The ‘township,’ when they got there, was such a one as the Commissioner had never before seen in all his varied experiences; never in his dreams had he imagined such a mining camp. A person of restricted imagination, or feeble sympathies, might even have described the landscape as ‘unspeakably desolate, and ghastly.’ A certain appearance of grass, even if trodden down, and fed off by horses and bullocks, had always been visible on goldfields where he had borne rule formerly.
Here there was none, absolutely _none_. Dust of a red hue, subtly pervading all nature, was the chief elemental feature. Water was more or less available for sluicing, puddling, cradling, or other purposes connected with mining operations,—here there was _none_ to be seen except in the small quantities required for partial lavation and for engine work. This last was of course procurable, but being generally salt or brackish, required to be subjected to the condenser, lest damage to the engine should ensue. In the hotels it was dearer than wine or beer in the coast cities—was always, indeed, _charged for separately_ in the bars when supplied with alcohol!
‘What a desert!’ thought the Commissioner. ‘Have we reached Arabia by any magical process? And here come the camels proper to the scene.’ As he spoke, a long string of those Eastern-seeming animals came nearer, and the Afghan drivers, turbaned and with flowing garb, heightened the resemblance.