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We shortly came upon four men getting out the wash-dirt, using their picks while squatting or lying down, and in all sorts of uncomfortable positions. The perspiration was steaming down the men's faces as they worked, for the heat was very great.
Now, small parties of these men bold, hardy, experienced chaps would take a pick and shovel, a bucket, and a tin dish, with a few weeks' rations, and scour the whole countryside. They would try every creek, gully, hillside, and river bed. If they found the colour of gold, the least trace of it in a dish of wash-dirt, they would at once settle down themselves.
"What's to be done? They've come to rush the Flat again; but, by thunder! I'll be a stiff 'un afore a Chow fills another dish with wash-dirt on Connolly's Creek." "And me, too!"
During the preceding summer they had carted their wash-dirt from the gully until rain came and filled the waterhole. They said they had not found any rich ground, but they could now make at least a pound a day each by constant work. Philip thought they were making more, as they seemed inclined to sing small; in those days to brag of your good luck might be the death of you.
All being made ready, and every possible precaution taken against accident, I was let down from the top of the cliff to what looked like the dried-up course of a stream composed of pebbles and wash-dirt. The whole valley presented the most dreary and desolate appearance.
'She's well in on the lead all right, said Josh, commenting on their claim that evening after tea, 'an' if we don't hit it rich I'm a Dutchman. Josh's opinion proved correct in the main. Mike cut the wash-dirt on the following evening, and after sinking in it to the depth of two feet, washed a prospect that promised the party an excellent return for their labour.
And, lastly, the sluice begat the jet, or hydraulicking proper, which is at present the highest effort of placer-mining. We thus reverse the primitive process which carried the wash-dirt to the water; we now carry the water to the wash-dirt.
But Tony had not yet returned from the diggings. He and his two companions, working more scientifically along the creek in the scrub than the others had done on Ripple Creek, had located the extent over which gold was to be found in the wash-dirt, and had then carefully and systematically worked through it, the division of labour enabling them to get over the ground quickly and effectively.
For the first month we were getting as much as an ounce and a-half to the load of sixty buckets. As I puddled the wash-dirt he cradled it, and consequently was in possession of the gold bag which held the proceeds from the cradle. Although I could detect no difference in the wash-dirt, the cradling results dwindled down by degrees to a quarter ounce per load.
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.
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