"Can you explain why there is _any_ gold here?" I asked. "There are no auriferous reefs which could shed it nearer than eight hundred miles, and, according to all geologists, the entire desert is the deposit of the ocean."

"That may be," Peter replied, "but I have conclusive proof that there is a gold-bearing reef not more than a quarter of a mile from where we stand. I have no doubt that the rocks carrying it once reared themselves above the surrounding sea; but that was--well--before our time; and now they are too deep for us to reach."

I suggested that if the men had some mechanical appliance which could treat the sand in large quant.i.ties, they might do well with the surface deposit. "Perhaps," Peter said indifferently; "but there would be too much worry attached." And seeing that Silent Ted had dinner ready, we changed the subject.

Long Tom and four of the men had gone out emu-and kangaroo-shooting, and were not expected back for a week, and knowing that neither Mac nor I could be of any special service to the men at dry-blowing, we at length resolved to proceed to the Gulf, as was our original intention.

Our companions were very sorry when we announced this; but I told them we had come out expressly to study the aborigines at home, and that when we had done so we might come back.

"You'll see them before you go far," said Shandy Bill.

"An' don't go foolin' near a corroborree, Scottie," warned Little Bob; "'cos if ye does thar will be a funeral, as sure as them currants in that damper there is only ants."

Dead-broke Peter was evidently qualifying for a Silent Ted reputation, for it was only when kicked repeatedly by that individual that he roused himself, and in effect said, "Remember, if you happen to get into trouble, that the various corroborrees are only stages in the grand Bora; and that the signs used in their working have a wonderful resemblance to those of a certain society to which I see you belong."

This information was startling, to say the least of it; but Peter had again fallen into his listless att.i.tude, and could not be induced to say more: so, after receiving many messages, written and verbal, to despatch from the first settlement reached, we departed.

Eight days later we crossed the north Cooper (here called the Thomson river) at Jundah--it was in flood here(!)--and in another four days we reached Winton. From this unique township we made good time northwards through a well-watered country, which, although in the tropics, is blessed with a pleasant climate; and while running down the Flinders river had our first adventure with the natives. The Australian aboriginal is believed to be the lowest form of humanity extant; but there are many things in his philosophy of which the white man has not dreamt. He fights with nature for his very existence, his food being the crawling creatures of the earth and what he wrests from other animals; and even then he is haunted with an eternal dread of devouring demons, who--according to his belief--are for ever seeking his destruction. His Bora is his only safeguard against these Ghingis and Bunyips; and it is in matters pertaining to the observance of its various corroborrees that he has achieved such triumphs over nature, and performs feats that, to the white man, are entirely inexplicable.

An ordinary corroborree is merely a meeting that may be summoned by the chief or elders of any tribe; but those relating to the Bora are a series of religious ceremonials culminating in a weird fire-test, which all young warriors must undergo before attaining to the state of manhood. This fire-test, with various modifications, is also practised by the New Guineans and South Sea Islanders; but with the latter it now seems to have degenerated into a performance for the priests alone; and in the Fiji Isles a form of fire-walking is still observed, chiefly for the benefit of the sensation-loving tourist. Among the Australian aborigines, however, the working of the Bora is the chief object of their existence, and with them the tests are very real indeed. The fire-test is worked by a procession of aspiring natives marching round on a path which leads through the centre of many fires. A figure in the fanciful attire of some strange monster apparently controls the movements of the warriors by the motion of some object which he swings rapidly round his head, and which produces a humming sound not unlike that of a steam-siren. The performance is followed by a warlike display supposed to strike terror to the heart of the dreaded Bunyip, and if that creature could see the grotesquely garbed warriors as we saw them--hiding in the mulga scrub with our bicycles lying beside us--I have no doubt that it would speedily take itself off to some less dangerous-looking part of the globe.

It is supposed that no white men have ever witnessed the higher corroborrees; but that belief is erroneous, for during our journey northwards we met several backblockers on the wallaby to the opal district who were quite familiar with the entire ceremony, and some, like little Bob, had even taken part in them, of course not willingly.

The aborigines are very scarce now, and happily, perhaps for us, most of our adventures with them tended more to be ludicrous than exciting, and in due course we arrived at Normanton, the chief town in the Gulf country.

A month later we landed at Brisbane from the ss. _Peregrine_, and in two days were completely tired out and disgusted with the artificialities of city life. The Queensland contingent of the Imperial Bushmen was to embark in the afternoon for South Africa, and we joined the cheering throng that lined Queen Street to see the men ride past. I have seen the Scots Greys in Edinburgh, but the men of "England's last hope" were not like them. Their smart dresses hung loosely on their angular frames, and their tanned faces were in vivid contrast to those of the Brisbanites.

They were all tall, and sat in their saddles in a style that was certainly not military, and their faces wore an absent-minded expression. I knew, however, that fever would have no effect on these men, that they could stand any hardship, that an earthquake could not unhorse them, and that every time those eyes with the far-away look glanced along the rifle-barrel something would drop somewhere. A shout from Mac interrupted my musings, and knowing that he always had some reason for what he did, I followed him through the densely-packed crowd, and found him in the act of hauling a trooper from his horse.

"It's Kangaroo George!" he yelled, "an' he's dreamin'!"

"Hallo, Scottie!" suddenly said the roused warrior; "did yous see the nigs?"

"Hang the n.i.g.g.e.rs!" roared Mac; "it's you I want tae ken aboot.

Hoo----?"

"I see you have got on to the South African trail after all, George," I said, grasping his hand.

"Close up there, men!" roared the sergeant.

"Darn it! Dead-broke, doesn't ye see who is here?" remonstrated another familiar voice, and next instant I was shaking hands with Sergeant Dead-broke Peter--I never knew his other name. There was now a general confusion owing to the men having to lead their horses down to the wharf where the transport _Maori King_ was waiting to receive them, and by adopting tactics not unknown nearer home Mac and I got down with the troopers.

"An' has ye not a word for Shandy Bill?" suddenly spoke another voice at my side.

"An' Sam Wilkins?" said a quiet-looking trooper.

"An' me--Corporal Vic Charlie?" cried the one who had remonstrated with his sergeant.

"Is the whole camp here?" I cried surprisedly, while Mac muttered strange words anent the results of shaving on a person's appearance.

"No; only five," answered Vic Charlie. "Gilgai and Little Bob came down too; but they were too old, an' they is goin' out west again to-night when they see us away."

"I say, boss," whispered George to me, "you knows the trail, doesn't ye?"

"Fairly well, George," I replied; "you see the Southern Cross all the way."

"Then can you give us a notion how far out our first camp is?"

"You don't camp at all. You travel night and day--that is, unless the propellor shaft or something else breaks."

"Lor!" was all George's comment, but his face spoke volumes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FAMOUS MINE IN THE GULF COUNTRY.]

We stayed with our old comrades until the last moment arrived; and then, in company with Gilgai Charlie and the giant Little Bob, who had joined us on the wharf, went and dined. These two worthies were, as they said, already "full up with the city," and when the western express left that night it had on board four men and four cycles booked through for Cunnamulla _en route_ to the opal fields. Twenty-eight hours afterwards we landed at the western terminus, and taking advantage of the full moon and the hard camel-pads leading farther west, we made sixty miles before morning.

ON THE OPAL FIELDS OF WHITE CLIFFS

There are many strange places and peoples in this world, and of those the opal fields and opal miners of White Cliffs, New South Wales, are good examples. The opal district is situated sixty miles N.N.W. of Wilcannia, a somewhat remarkable township on the Darling River, and the men who make gem-hunting their profession number over two thousand. Of this amount, less than a half belong to some branch of the Anglo-Saxon race, the remainder being a mixture of all nationalities, of which Germans are the most numerous. The township of White Cliffs stands in a hollow in the centre of the "workings," but it is merely a collection of galvanised iron drinking saloons and stores; the population living out on their claims, some in tents, some in their horizontal excavations or "drives"; and others with only the sky for a roof. When it is stated that the town also contains a Warden's residence, a hospital, and a good substantial prison--there is as yet no church--that most of the stores are run by Chinamen, and that the Jew gem-buyers form the aristocracy, the description of the town is complete. The fields, however, at present extend for three miles round the town, and in all probability will stretch further out on the great western desert when some means of providing sufficient water for the miners is devised. But the opal has been proved to exist in such vast quant.i.ties within the three miles radius, that there is as yet no need for any one to go further out.

The methods employed in searching for opal are extremely simple.

Briefly, this consists of sinking a shaft, or, if the claim happens to be located on a slope, tunnelling into the ground until a seam of gem-carrying matrix is encountered; from which the opal is then separated by means of a small "gouging" pick or other tool. These layers exist at various parallel levels from the surface down to forty feet, but no "paying" opal has yet been struck at greater depths. It is highly probable, however, that this is because the task of further sinking with the primitive means of pick, spade, and windla.s.s, the only appliances used, becomes at this point somewhat difficult, and the men, knowing the value of the shallower levels, prefer spending their energies on another shaft in fresh country. The matrix in which the gem is found consists of a hard silicious conglomeration, usually thickly impregnated with ironstone. The opal is embedded in this material in the form of thin sheets, which, however large they may be while in the formation, can only be removed in divisions of about the size of a five shilling piece.

Opal is of all colours and shades, but unfortunately for the miner a piece of exquisitely coloured blue, green, or red stone is considered absolutely valueless if not accompanied with the vivid scintillating flash which denotes its "lifeness." Tons upon tons of this worthless stuff, "Potch," as it is called, are daily thrown out of the shafts by disgusted opallers, for in common with most things in this world, the bad is very plentiful, in fact it is almost impossible to get away from it; but the gem or "live" opal is correspondingly rare. Nevertheless, fortunes are frequently made here by the merest chance, and perhaps to a greater degree than elsewhere is a man justified by results in believing that some day he will "send his pick through a fortune." As said before, the miners are of nearly all the races of mankind, and many incongruous partnerships are formed for the holding and working of a two, three, or four men's claim; but on the whole, good fellowship rules throughout the camps, and an American negro, a half-caste Chinaman, or a Turk, stands by the windla.s.s of a canny Scot, a Frenchman, or a Hindu.

There are no disputes between capital and labour in White Cliffs, every man is his own master, and follows out his own usually erratic inclinations, unless sometimes when, after a lucky find, he imbibes too much of a certain commodity falsely-labelled Scotch, and consequently the police exercise a slight control over his movements.

There are no surface indications to guide one in searching for opal, and as the most experienced "gouger" knows no more where the gem may be than the latest new chum, all work is done on chance. To such a strange state of mind has the desert environment reduced those men of the back-blocks, that they look upon the grim side of circ.u.mstances with indifference, and magnify the trivialities of life into a proportion which to the stranger suggests a land of Burlesque. But soon he, too, catches the mysterious infection, unconsciously he is overwhelmed by the influence of his surroundings, and he ceases to see anything remarkable either in his own doings or in those of his fellows. An observer, while he retained his own mental equilibrium, might see instances of this strange perversion in almost every man in White Cliffs; but, perhaps, my own experiences there may serve to give some fair examples.

My claim was staked about a mile from the town on a small stretch of rising ground which at some time in the Earth's history formed the banks of the lake, in the old bed of which White Cliffs now stands. For comrades I had a powerful Scotsman and two Australians, while the claims around us were worked by an American and a native of Mauritius, known as Black George, a German and an Englishman--the latter being termed the "Parson," a New Zealander and a Swede, and several other single miners, the chief being one called Satan. We were all good friends, and nightly gathered round a common camp-fire to discuss things in general.

Silent Ted and Emu Bill, my two Australian comrades, were perhaps the most experienced prospectors on the field; the one had a very thoughtful cast of countenance, and never spoke, and the other was a splendid specimen of the Australian pioneer, but when he spoke it was chiefly in short, crisp words, of decided colonial origin, which Mac said would have qualified him "A1 for the position of a Clyde stevedore." Together they had crossed the divide between the Darling River and Cooper's Creek, and occasionally, when the moon was full, and the Southern Cross dipping behind the Great Barrier Ranges, Bill would tell of a land where fire-flashing opal burst through the surface sands, and shone in dazzling streaks of every imaginable colour from every wind-swept ledge.

Ted would eagerly follow his comrade's words, and his wonderful face would light up with genuine admiration when Bill's word-pictures were powerfully descriptive. But he was too sympathetic, and frequently, alas! got into trouble because of that.

"Shut up, Ted!" Bill would suddenly cry, pausing in the middle of his narrative. "Is it you that's tellin' this yarn or me?"

At these rough words the silent one would slowly turn a reproachful glance upon the speaker which said as plainly as words, "Why, Bill, I did not speak."

"I knows that," would come the unhesitating answer, "but your face does, an' it's been an' got to the end of this story afore me."

This was in a manner true, and sometimes when Bill, as Hoskins the American said, was "long-winded in getting to the point," we had but to look at Ted's face for the _denouement_.

"But how vas it you came away unt leave all dat opal? There must be millions there," our German friend would say when Bill's narrative was concluded.

"I reckon there is, Kaiser," the _raconteur_ would answer, "but the country is full o' darned crows an' w.i.l.l.y-w.i.l.l.ys, an' ye can't sleep no how with the sand-flies an' snakes an' 'skeeturs. Water, did ye say? No, there ain't none."

However much Ted and Bill may have ignored the absence of the precious fluid, that was the only consideration with most of their listeners, and had there been any water, some of us, at least, would have gone out West at once and chanced everything else.