Gold was next found at Turton’s Creek, which proved one of the richest little gullies ever worked by diggers.  It was discovered by some prospectors who followed the tracks which Mr. Turton had cut over the scrubby mountains, and so they gratefully gave his name to the gully, but I never heard that they gave him any of the gold which they found in it.  A narrow track from Foster was cut between high walls of impenetrable scrub, and it soon became like a ditch full of mud, deep and dangerous.  If the diggers had been assured that they would find heaven at the other end of it, they would never have tried to go, the prospect of eternal happiness having a much less attraction for them than the prospect of gold; but the sacred thirst made them tramp bravely through the slough.  The sun and wind never dried the mud, because it was shut in and overshadowed by the dense growth of the bush.  All tools and provisions were carried through it on the backs of horses, whose legs soon became caked with mud, and the hair was taken off them as clean as if they had been shaved with a razor.  Most of them had a short life and a hard one.

The digging was quite shallow, and the gully was soon rifled of the gold.  At this time there was a mining registrar at Foster, as the new diggings at Stockyard Creek were named, and some men, after pegging out their claim at Turton’s Creek, went back down the ditch to register them at Foster.  It was a great mistake.  It was neither the time nor the place for legal forms or ceremony.  Time was of the essence of the contract, and they wasted the essence.  Other and wiser men stepped on to their ground while they were absent, commenced at once to work vigorously, and the original peggers, when they returned, were unable to dislodge them.  Peter Wilson pegged out a claim, and then rode away to register it.  He returned next day and found two men on it who had already nearly worked it out.

“This claim is mine, mates,” said Peter; “I pegged it out yesterday, and I have registered it.  You will have to come out.”

One of the men looked up at Peter and said, “Oh! your name is Peter, isn’t it?  I hear you are a fighting man.  Well, you just come down off that bare-legged horse, and I’ll kill you in a couple of minutes, while I take a spell.”

“It’s no use your talking that way; you’ll see I’ll have the law on you, and you’ll have to pay for it,” replied Peter.

“You can go, Peter, and fetch the law as soon as you like.  I don’t care a tinker’s curse for you or the law; all I want is the profits, and I’m going to have them.”

This profane outlaw and his mate got the profits, cleared all the gold out of Peter’s claim, and took it away with them.