In the Roaring Fifties by Edward Dyson (best classic books TXT) 📖

led him into with a placidity that amounted almost to quiet enjoyment, and tickled Done's sense of humour immensely.

'Man who drifts down the stream o' life in a painted barge on the broad of his back among the Persian rugs, with a fat cigar in his teeth, an' all his favourite drinks within reach, has gotter strike a snag now 'n agin,' said Long. 'The question's just this--is it wuth it?'

'I can't understand why a tired man like you takes the trouble to shave,' Jim said to him one night.

'Ever been tarred 'n feathered in your busy career, Mr. Done?' answered Long.

Never.'

'If you had you'd realize that the onpleasantest thing that kin happen to a man this side o' the great hot finish is to get his chin whiskers full o' tar. In my native town tarring the man you disagreed with was a favourite amusement.'

'But there is no tar here.'

'Well, no; but I guess this has become instinctive.' He passed a hand over his fat, smooth face.

Chow-baiting was a later development. The Chinese and Mongolians came early to Victorian rushes, and remained long. They were never discoverers, never pioneers, but, following quickly upon the heels of the white prospectors, they frequently succeeded in securing the richest claims in the alluvial beds, and from the first they were hated with an instinctive racial hatred, that became inveterate when the whites found in Sin Fat a rival antagonistic in all his tastes and views, in most of his virtues, and in all his pet vices, bar one. The Chows were industrious diggers; they worked with ant-like assiduity from daylight to dark, and often long after that were to be seen at their holes, toiling by the light of lanterns.

They had vices of their own, and not nice ones, but they gave way to only one of the amiable little social weaknesses in which the Europeans indulged, and displayed the overpowering passion for gambling that has since become characteristic of the China-men in all their Australian camps. They had no other amusement, and desired no leisure; they were squalid in their habits, and herded like animals; they were barren of aspirations, and their industry was brutish (though of a kind still belauded), since it left no leisure for humanizing exercises, no room for sweetness and light. They were law-abiding, but that was not a virtue to commend itself to the Victorian diggers at this date, and they were only law-abiding because of their slavish instincts and their lack of courageous attributes. The antipathy bred then survives in the third generation of Australians, but is less demonstrative now that laws have been enacted in accordance with the racial instinct.

The Pagans had secured a big stretch of the field close to the claim pegged out by Mike and Josh Peetree, and they were thought to have possession of the most profitable part of the alluvial deposit, but worked their claims with great caution, and were as secretive as so many mopokes, so that the whites really had no idea what their ground was like, excepting such as the experienced miners could gather from the general trend of the richer wash dirt. Extraordinary stories of the success of the Chinese were in circulation, and provoked strenuous profanity and exceeding bitterness in the Europeans, Particularly in those whose luck was not good. There was already talk of a white rising to drive the heathen from the field, and Done found his mates entirely in sympathy with the common sentiment; to him; also the Celestials became exceedingly repellent as he grew more familiar with their habits and manners, although he was opposed to making differences of race an excuse for wholesale robbery.

The Chinese camp was strictly apart from that of the whites, and there was no intercourse between the two parties, Levi Long being the only man who seemed attracted to the squalid huts into which the Mongolians packed themselves by some process mysterious to the Caucasian understanding. Men in whom gambling was an absorbing passion could never be wholly objectionable to a man of his peculiar principles; but he came back from his third visit to their camp with his hands sunk to the bottoms of his pockets and a troubled look on his smooth countenance.

'They've sprung a new game on me down there,' he said to a crowd in the shanty, nodding his head back. 'I thought I'd picked up something about it, an' it's cost me every bit o' glitter I had on me to demonstrate to my entire satisfaction that I was quite wrong. I haven't got a scale left. I'm feelin' like a little boy who's been tryin' to teach his gran' mother all about eggs.'

'Fantan?' said Burton.

'Somethin' o' that character an' complexion. Boys, I begin to think that p'r'aps after all we're doin' wrong in submittin' to the encroachments o' the alien.'

Hear, hear!' shouted half a dozen voices.

'It strikes me that the inferior race that can skin Levi Long to his pelt in a gamble is providin' no fit associates for guileless an' confidin' children o' the Occident, like yourselves, f'r instance.'

Long's professional pride was hurt; the idea of being beaten at his own business by a pack of unlettered Asiatics made him sad. 'It kinder destroys a man's faith in himself he said. As a result of his eloquence the miners knotted windlass-ropes together, and stole down upon the Chinese camp in the small and early hours of morning. There were twenty men on each cable, and one lot kept to the right of the camp, the other to the left, and, going noiselessly, they dragged the ropes through the frail huts and kennels in which the Mongols were sleeping, mowing them down as if they had been houses of cards, and towing an occasional screaming Chow out of the ruins, rolled in his filthy bedding. The whole camp of huddled shanties was razed to the ground in about two minutes, and the diggers drew off, without having given any clue to the cause of the disaster, leaving the heathen raging in the darkness.

At about six o'clock Jim Done and his mates were awakened and brought pell-mell from their bunks by the sound of a great commotion coming from the direction of the Chinese camp. They saw the Chinamen gathered near the ruins of their dwellings, evidently in a state of tremendous excitement. A number of them were jumping about, gesticulating wildly, and uttering shrill cries, while half a dozen or so, armed with stout sticks, were energetically beating an object that lay upon the ground.

'By thunder! it's a man they're murdering!' cried Jim.

Mike and the Peetrees laughed aloud. 'Not a bit of it,' said Burton. 'They're only bastin' their Joss!'

'What's that?'

'They're beatin' their god. They keep a few of them little pottery or wooden gods round, an' if things don't go quite as well as they think they ought to go, they up an' take it out o' the god just then on the job, by knocking splinters off him.'

'They argue that Joss ain't been attendin' to his part o' the contract,' said Harry Peetree, 'an' they belt him for neglectin' his business. Saw a lot o' them blow up a big Joss at Bendigo 'cause their dirt was pannin' out badly.'

By this time the Europeans were all up and out, enjoying the spectacle, and Simpson's Ranges echoed their laughter, it being assumed that the Celestials' gods were being punished for the sins of those diggers who had wrecked the camp. Jim and Con joined a few curious men sauntering down to take a nearer view of the ceremony.

'Wha' for?' Con asked one grave Chow who was looking on.

'Welly much bad Joss!' answered the Celestial composedly. 'Let um earth shake-shake, all sem this, knockum poo' Chinaman's house down.'

A favourite way of tormenting the Chows was to rob them of their pigtails. A Mongolian's pride in his pigtail is very great, and his grief over the loss of it seems to be tinged with a superstitious fear. As soon as the diggers were made aware of this they vied with each other in reaving Sin Fat and hi brethren of their cherished adornments, and the rape of the lock was a daily occurrence at Simpson Ranges. No Red Indian was ever prouder of his trophy of scalps than the diggers were of their collection of tails, and the woe that fell upon the de spoiled Asiatics was most profound, but touched no sympathetic chords in the callous hearts of the miners.

It is not to be assumed that the Chows bore all their afflictions like lambs. They had methods of their own of getting even, and were efficient tent thieves, and peculiarly expert in the art of rifling tips, although this was not proved against them until the eleventh hour. They fought back on occasions, and one morning a big Californian was found near their claims, beaten almost to death. Evidently the digger had deserved his fate, and had been caught stealing wash-dirt from Sin Fat's tips; but his denials were readily and gladly accepted by the whites, and another excellent reason for demolishing the Chows was registered in the minds of the men.

Being up just after daybreak one morning, or not yet having gone to bunk, Levi Long was the unsuspected witness of acts of Chinese iniquity that brought about the climax of the anti-Chinese agitation. There was no water-supply at Simpson's Ranges, and the wash-dirt had to be carted four miles to the river at Carisbrook, to be puddled and washed. This morning the Chinamen were busy bright and early, carting their wash away; but the Celestials, always frugal, to save as much as possible the expense of drays, each carried two hide-bags of dirt suspended on a bamboo, and followed the loaded carts through the diggings with the peculiar trot they always adopted when bearing burdens. What Long noticed was that every now and again, when passing the tips on the claims of the Europeans, the sly Celestials dug their shovels into the wash-dirt, and threw a few shovelfuls on to their own loads or into the bags they carried. Keeping himself in concealment, Levi quietly awakened a few of the diggers, and drew their attention to what was going on. The Chinamen chattered noisily as they passed, and the movements of the crowd were evidently artfully designed to cover the depredations of the thieves.

Within a quarter of an hour every white man on the field knew what had been going on, and now the miners thought they understood the motive of the Chows in always carting their dirt away in the gray hours of morning, before the too-confiding Europeans were up and about. This was the last straw. A meeting was held very quietly, and, to Done's astonishment, his mate took an active part in the proceedings.

'The lepers have got to change their spots, I guess,' said Long. 'Is that understood, men?'

'You bet!' answered a prominent digger, and the crowd uttered a unanimous 'Hear, hear!' that left no room for doubt.

'Then, get ready!' cried Mike. 'Every man get a pick-handle. There's to be no killin'. We'll drive 'em out like sheep. If the troopers interfere, unhorse them, an' bolt the nags. Meet here again as quick's you can.'

The miners scattered, and within half an hour the whole body of the white diggers marched upon the Chinamen remaining on the claims.


XVIII

THE Chinese, most of whom were on the surface, viewed the approach of the enemy with great uneasiness, but did not anticipate the worst Evidently