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Updated: June 13, 2025
A sailor's existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship, with the hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a black wind blowing the masts down, and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands! He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite good-bye to the captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields.
Having no other friend or relative in the colonies, the child had been left with her aged grandfather, who appeared as infatuated with the gold-fields as a more hale and younger man. His strength and health were rapidly failing, yet he still dug on. "We shall be rich, and Jessie a fine lady before I die," was ever his promise to her, and that at times when they were almost wanting food.
Later on, too, when he had thawed a little, he would relate story after story of his adventures at the gold-fields, some of which convulsed his companion with laughter, while others made her shudder and nestle unconsciously a little closer to the narrator. But notwithstanding this Blanche still found time to chat occasionally with Bob.
This for a few days kindles anew the slumbering spark of "gold fever" that lingers in the veins of the people here, ever ready to kindle into a flame at every bit of exciting news, in the way of a lucky "find" near home, or new gold-fields in some distant land.
The Adelaide gold-diggings began to excite attention in the months of August and September, 1852. In October the following report was made: "Camp, Echunga, Gold-Fields, "October 2, 1852. "Sir, "I have the honour to state for the information of his Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, that since my last report sixty licences have been issued, making a total of three hundred and fifty-six.
If he enforced the license fees he angered what was rapidly becoming the largest part of the population; if he relinquished them, he left himself without means to carry on the government of the gold-fields. From this dilemma he was saved by the receipt of a general permission from the Colonial Office, toward the close of 1852, to deal with the gold revenue in the same manner as ordinary revenue.
Now the United States asked permission to make a new road, which from Fort Laramie of southern Wyoming would leave the Oregon Trail, and branch off northwest, through the Powder River and the Big Horn country of Wyoming, and on west across Montana, as a short-cut to the gold-fields.
'Way yonder through those hills towered the Chilkoot, and beyond that was the mighty river rushing toward Dawson City, toward Life and Adventure, for that was what the gold-fields signified to Phillips. Yes, Life! Adventure! He had set out to seek them, to taste the flavor of the world, and there it lay his world, at least just out of reach.
The farmer's wife, seeing that Christine was not alone, paused in her advance, and Nicholas said, 'Dear Christine, if you are obliged to do these things, I am not, and what wealth I can command you may command likewise. They say rolling stones gather no moss; but they gather dross sometimes. I was one of the pioneers to the gold-fields, you know, and made a sufficient fortune there for my wants.
Now, Tom, you must come with me and Captain Bunting to the gold-fields, and try your fortune over again nay, don't shake your head, I know what you would say, you have no money to equip yourself, and you won't be indebted to strangers, and all that sort of stuff; but that won't do, my boy. I'm not a stranger; don't I know all your history from first to last?" Tom Collins sighed.
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