‘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.  So far Jim Done had every reason to be grateful for his luck; and the diggers were nearly all implicit believers in luck; a faith they held to be justified by the scores of instances recited of good fortune following individuals through extraordinary conditions, when less favoured men all around them were not earning enough to satisfy the storekeepers.

Although the various Victorian rushes were much alike in general character, some peculiarity attached to each of them.  Jim Crow was famous for its vigorous and varied rascality; Simpson’s Ranges became notorious as the most reckless gambling-field in the country.  Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting.  Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest man on Simpson’s was a short, fat, complacent Yankee, who refused to handle pick or shovel because, as he said to Done, it might spoil his hand.  Jim did not doubt that hands so slick in the manipulation of cards were worth all the care Mr. Levi Long devoted to them.  Jim became rather interested in Long.  The man was an amusing blackguard, and took the ‘gruellings’ that occasional manual lapses led him into with a placidity that amounted almost to quiet enjoyment, and tickled Done’s sense of humour immensely.

‘Man who drifts down the stream o’ life in a painted barge on the broad of his back among the Persian rugs, with a fat cigar in his teeth, an’ all his favourite drinks within reach, has gotter strike a snag now ’n agin,’ said Long.  ‘The question’s just this—­is it wuth it?’

‘I can’t understand why a tired man like you takes the trouble to shave,’ Jim said to him one night.

’Ever been tarred ‘n feathered in your busy career, Mr. Done?’ answered Long.

Never.’

’If you had you’d realize that the onpleasantest thing that kin happen to a man this side o’ the great hot finish is to get his chin whiskers full o’ tar.  In my native town tarring the man you disagreed with was a favourite amusement.’

‘But there is no tar here.’

‘Well, no; but I guess this has become instinctive.’  He passed a hand over his fat, smooth face.

Chow-baiting was a later development.  The Chinese and Mongolians came early to Victorian rushes, and remained long.  They were never discoverers, never pioneers, but, following quickly upon the heels of the white prospectors, they frequently succeeded in securing the richest claims in the alluvial beds, and from the first they were hated with an instinctive racial hatred, that became inveterate when the whites found in Sin Fat a rival antagonistic in all his tastes and views, in most of his virtues, and in all his pet vices, bar one.  The Chows were industrious diggers; they worked with ant-like assiduity from daylight to dark, and often long after that were to be seen at their holes, toiling by the light of lanterns.