as we were leaving Bendigo, another feature of the colony, not indigenous and by no means so pleasant was brought up to our minds to their considerable discomfort for the moment.  We were just clear of goldfields sounds and company, and involved in the utter solitude of the primeval bush, when we espied a party approaching us on the road.  They numbered five, all on horseback.  Somehow, the circumstances considered, we had all, independently, concluded that there was no small chance of their being bushrangers; for already the towns and goldfields—­the latter, of course, mostly—­swarmed with these unmitigated ruffians, arrived chiefly from Tasmania.  We discussed the chances—­three, four, possibly even five to one in our favour—­and considered what we should do in case even five to one failed us in the lot.  What we could do was the practical question.  We had also, I think, five of a party, and Bell was a huge, strong fellow, able for a couple of ordinary mortals; but what availed all that against desperadoes each doubly armed with revolver and rifle.  We calmed ourselves as best we could as we mutually approached; our salute was cordially returned, and then we found that we owed an ample apology for having for once so grievously mistaken honest men.

Another goldfields feature was of the most pleasing and inspiring character.  In no goldfield we had then visited did we ever meet with so much as one drunken person.  With most laudable prescience, our authorities had prohibited the ingress of and the dealing in any intoxicating drink on all proclaimed goldfields.  The good order in consequence was quite marvellous, and we seemed as if in some earthly paradise, where mankind had, as with one consent, dropped the worst of human vices and passions.  But this was only so far as drink and drunkenness were concerned; for rude circumstances made rude men, to say no more of the pervading convict element.  Nor were the goldfields free from “sly grog selling,” as it is called.  Still, the difficulties put in the way kept them thus sober.  Of course, outside the goldfields’ limits there was drunken riot enough, intensified, no doubt, by the enforced sobriety within.  Troops of diggers, or their employees, with their pockets full of gold, would start for town, or for the nearest “public,” there to run up a score till the whole “pile” had vanished.  We were told of one country hotel called “The Porcupine,” whose keeper was making 40,000 pounds a year of net profit.  These riotous crowds, at each public-house, indulged in such shocking excesses of language and conduct as to make mere drunkenness the very innocence of the case.  But withal I confess to a greatly disappointed feeling when, having left the colony on a Home visit early in 1853, and returned late in 1854, I found that the influence of the great “spirit interest” had succeeded in removing all restriction from the goldfields.  By this time, however, the police and other authority were better organized, so that there was a very considerable mitigation of bad effects.