The
character of the diggings was changing before his very eyes. Nowadays,
except on an outlying muddy flat or in the hands of the retrograde
Chinese, tubs, cradles, and windlasses were rarely to be met with.
Engine-sheds and boiler-houses began to dot the ground; here and there a
tall chimney belched smoke, beside a lofty poppet-head or an aerial
trolley-line. The richest gutters were found to take their rise below
the basaltic deposits; the difficulties and risks of rock-mining had now
to be faced, and the capitalist, so long held at bay, at length made
free of the field. Large sums of money were being subscribed; and, where
these proved insufficient, the banks stepped into the breach with
subsidies on mortgages. The population, in whose veins the gold-fever
still burned, plunged by wholesale into the new hazard; and under the
wooden verandahs of Bridge Street a motley crew of jobbers and brokers
came into existence, who would demonstrate to you, a la Ned, how you
might reap a fortune from a claim without putting in an hour's work on
it--without even knowing where it was.
A temptation, indeed! . . . but one that did not affect him. Mahony let
the reins droop on his horse's neck, and the animal picked its way among
the impedimenta of the bush road. It concerned only those who had money
to spare. Months, too, must go by before, from even the most promising
of these co-operative affairs, any return was to be expected.
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