Benjamin Farjeon - At the Sign of the Silver Flagon

It is December, and the sun marks the record of a hundred and six in the shade. We are at the golden end of the world, in Australia, at Silver Creek, twelve months ago a wilderness, now a busy and thriving township. Within this brief space, an infant in the history of cities has grown into what promises to become a strong and healthy man. Unknown, unthought of but a year ago, the name of Silver Creek is already a household word in a new and flourishing colony, and holds an important place in the journals of commerce.

There are turnings and thoroughfares in Silver Creek sufficiently irregular to drive land surveyors into a state of distraction, and there is but one street which exhibits anything like regularity in its formation; but this is a result more of accident than design. It is the principal street in the township, and is lined with wooden tenements and calico tents, in which the business of the town is transacted. Stores of every description, in which all things necessary, and many things unnecessary, for the requirements of life, are to be found within the limits of this thoroughfare, which is known to the residents as High Street. If you are curious in such matters, you may calculate how many stores High Street contains by setting its length at a mile and a half, and giving each store an average frontage of sixteen feet. A few of the buildings are of wood, the majority of calico, and the inhabitants of one Englishman's castle can hear the inhabitants of the next talking and bargaining during the day, and sighing and murmuring during the night. Not that the inhabitants of Silver Creek are all Englishmen. Other nations thirsting to have their fingers in the golden pie, have sent their representatives across the seas and through the bush, and Americans, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Mongols, and Africans, form a rare Tower-of-Babel community. As, however, they have all been drawn thither by one magnet-fashioned of bright gold-they do not emulate the Tower-of-Babel folk, but hob-a-nob amicably with one another, and make common cause of it with the ubiquitous Englishman. The pie is a rich one, but the fruit is unequally distributed, and there are many waste places in it (unfortunately not seen until the crust is dived into), the discovery of which brings disappointment and despair to the hungry seekers. The despair does not last long; they are soon tearing up the earth again, animated by new hopes of coming suddenly upon rich pockets of gold.

High Street had only one side, where the stores were built. Opposite, it was open ground for a distance of some four hundred yards; then commenced the upland, on the ridge of which a long thin range of wooden buildings was erected, which formed the Government Camp, where the official business of the township was transacted. There were the resident-magistrate's court, the treasury, and, in dangerous proximity, the gaol, and all the other necessary adjuncts of civil government. The goldfields' commissioner, or the warden, as he was usually called, and his staff, and the resident magistrate, and a few of the lesser luminaries, dwelt there in snug habitations with their Chinese cooks, who were rare masters at crust and paste-which is but natural, as they are proverbially light-fingered. There these children of the sun and the moon chattered, and cooked, and smoked opium in their little wooden pipes, of which they were as tenderly solicitous as though they had been children of their blood; and went elsewhere, to the vilest and dirtiest nest of thoroughfares the imagination can conjure up, and which was known as the Chinese Camp, to gamble away their hard earnings. In this camp, of course, was the Joss-House, with its absurd and senseless mummeries; and there, also, were certain dens, which every night were filled with Chinamen, smoking themselves into helpless idiocy. The provision stores in the Chinese camp were stocked with curiosities in the eating way which made fastidious persons shudder: such as preserved slugs and snails (delicious delicacies to the Chinese palate), and bottles crammed with what seemed to be pieces of preserved monkey, while thousands of shreds of shrivelled meat hung from the calico roofs, which were black with smoke. These shreds weighed about an ounce each, and looked like the dried and twisted skins and tails of rats. To judge from the glistening pig-like eyes of the children of the celestial sphere when these morsels were on their platters, and they were preparing to discuss them with their chop-sticks, they must have contained some exquisite and delectable charm, which was hidden from the sight and sense of the English barbarian. If ever night was made hideous, the the Chinamen made it so in their dirty camp with the clanging of their gongs and tom-toms, and the harsh treble of their voices. To unaccustomed ears it appeared as though Bedlam had been turned loose in this remote part of the globe.

Between the Government Camp and the High Street ran a valley through which a sparkling stream of water meandered; this was the Silver Creek, from which the township derived its name. At the back of the High Street stores, dotting the hills and gullies for miles around, and in the rear again of the Government Camp, were the white tents of the gold-diggers. There was a range of hills from which one could look down upon the scene, and it was well worth the labour to climb this height on a moonlight night, and gaze at the perspective of snow-white roofs, beneath which the tired miners were sleeping, and at the silver stream of water threading its way through the undulations. Then there were the Government buildings, prettily situated, and here and there clumps of silver-bark trees, and, in the distance, shadows of great ranges melting into the clouds. It was a picturesque scene, and the solemn silence and its romantic history afforded food for the mind as well as for the eye.

The Silver Creek diggings more than fulfilled the promise of its name, for gold was found in its soil instead of silver. It was first discovered by Chinamen, who had been hunted off another goldfield fifty miles away, where their presence had been considered an abomination by the European miners. They brought this judgment on themselves by stealing, in the dead of the night, golden dirt which did not by right belong to them, and severe skirmishes had taken place between the rival races, in which the Chinamen were worsted. They had to fly for their lives, and they wandered wearily, and yet with spirit, further into the interior of the country, prospecting here and there for gold, but without satisfactory results until they reached the hitherto unexplored district of Silver Creek. Here, by their discovery of the precious metal, their wanderings came to an end, and they pitched their tents and lit their fires, and worked undisturbed for a few weeks, getting much gold, and laughing doubtless in their capacious sleeves at the lucky chance which had led them to the place. But if they had indulged in the dream of keeping Silver Creek and its precious deposit all to themselves, it was rudely disturbed one fine morning, and they screeched like magpies when they saw six lusty Tipperary men march on to their diggings, and stick their picks into the ground. The Mongolian saw his enemy before him, and waited in dread for what was to come.

The following was the order of the proceedings of the Tipperary men:

They first stuck their picks into the ground, at a distance of about twenty yards apart from each other; then they clustered together, and tightened their belts. When these were arranged to their satisfaction, they solemnly and simultaneously produced six cutty pipes, all very short and very black, and carefully lighted them. Being now, with their pipes held firmly between their teeth, prepared for action, they sauntered in an indolent kind of way towards the shafts at which the Chinamen were working, and pausing at one, watched the man at the windlass winding up the bucket. The Chinamen spoke not a word; the Tipperary men spoke not a word. For full five minutes this was the state of things, and the Chinamen proceeded sullenly with their work; from screeching magpies, they were transformed into mute, fear-stricken slaves. Wrath and animosity were in their hearts, but outwardly they were the humblest of mortals. Their sallow faces grew sallower, and they cursed their ill-fortune; for it happened that when the Tipperary men appeared upon the scene, they were pulling up wash-dirt, in which specks of gold could be plainly seen. But they cursed in silence.