 Section 8 of the Book of the Bush. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Linda Dodge. The Book of the Bush by George Dunderdale. Section 8, out west in 1849, Part 1. I did not travel as a capitalist far from it. I went up the Mississippi as a deck passenger, sleeping at night sometimes on planks, at other times on bags of oats piled on the deck about six feet high. The mate of a Mississippi boat is always a bully, and every now and then he came along with a deck hand carrying a lamp and requested us to come down. He said it was again the rules of the boat to sleep on oats, but we kept on breaking the rules as much as possible. Above the mouth of the Ohio, the riverbank on the Missouri side is high, rocky and picturesque. I longed to be the owner of a farm up there, and of a modest cottage overlooking the father of waters. I said, if there's peace and plenty to be had in this world, the heart that is humble might hope for it here. And then the very first village visible was called the Vida Posh. It is now a suburb of St. Louis. I took a passage on another boat up the Illinois River. There was a very lordly man on the lower deck who was frequently trailing his coat. He had, in fact, no coat at all, only a gray flannel shirt and man-keen trousers, but he was remarkably in want of a fight, and anxious to find a man willing to be licked. He was a desperado of the Great River. We had heard and read of such men, of their reckless daring and deadly fights, but we were peaceful people. We had come out west to make a living, and therefore did not want to be killed. When the desperado came near, we looked the other way. There was a party of five immigrant Englishmen sitting on their luggage. One of them was very strongly built, a likely match for the bully, and a deckhand pointing to him said, Jack, do you know what that Englishman says about you? What does he say? He says he don't think you are much account with all your brag, reckons he could lick you in a couple of minutes. Uttering implications, Jack approached the Englishman, and dancing about the deck cleared the ring for the coming combat. Come on, you greenhorn, and take your gruel. Here's the best man on the river for you. You'll find him real grit. The strangers that still said he was not a fighting man and did not want to quarrel with anybody. Jack grew more ferocious than ever, and aimed a blow at the peaceful man to persuade him to come on. He came on suddenly. The two men were soon writhing together on the guard deck, and I was pleased to observe the desperado was under most. The Englishman was full of fear and was fighting for his life. He was doing it with great earnestness. He was grasping the throat of his enemy tightly with both hands and pressing his thumbs on the windpipe. We could see he was going to win in his own simple way, without any recourse to science. And he would have done so very soon had he not been interrupted. But as Jack was growing black in the face, the other Englishman began to pull at their mate and tried to unlock his grip on Jack's throat. It was not easy to do so. He held on to his man to the very last crying out, leave me alone till I do for him. Man alive, don't you know the villain wants to murder me? The desperado lay for a while gulping and gasping on his bed of glory, unable to rise. I observed patches of bloody skin hanging loose on both sides of his neck when he staggered along the deck toward the starboard-sponson. There was peace for a quarter of an hour. Then Jack's voice was heard again. He had lost prestige and was coming to recover it with a bowie knife. He said, Where's that Britisher I'm going to cut his liver out? The Englishman heard the threat and said to him, Yes, I told you so. He means to murder me. Why didn't you leave me alone when I had the fine hull to him? He then hurried away and ran upstairs to the saloon. Jack followed to the foot of the ladder and one wild-eyed young lady said, Look at that Englishman! He was sitting on a chair a few feet distant. Ain't he pale? Oh, the coward! She wanted to witness a real lively fight but she was disappointed. The smell of blood seems grateful to the nostrils of both ladies and gentlemen in the States. A butcher from St. Louis explained it thus, It's in the liver. Nine out of ten of the beasts I kill have liver complaint. I am morally sartan. I'd find the human livers just the same if I examine them in any considerable quantity. The captain came to the head of the stairs and descended to the deck. He was tall and lanky and mild of speech. He said, Now, Jack, what are you going to do with that knife? I'm waiting to cut the liver out of that Englishman. Send him down, Captain, till I finish the job. Ah, yes, I see. He's been peeling your neck pretty bad, ain't he? Powerful claws, I reckon. Jack, you'll be getting into trouble someday with your weepens. He took a small knife out of his pocket. Look here, Jack, I've been going up and down this river more than twenty years and never carried a weeping bigger nut and never had a must with nobody. A man who draws his bowies sometimes gets shot. Let's look at your knife. He examined it closely, deciphered the brand, drew his thumb over the edge and observed Wow, blame me. If that ain't one of them British bowies, a free-trade brumigan, a retin' you can't carve anyone with a thing like this, he made a dig at the handrail with the point and it actually curled up like the ring in a hog snout. You see, Jack, a knife like that is mean, unbecoming a gentleman and a disgrace to a respectable boat. He pitched the British article into the river and went up into the saloon. As Jack had not yet recovered his prestige, he went away and returned with a dinner knife in one hand and a shingling hammer in the other. He waited for his adversary until the sun was low and the deck passengers were preparing their evening meal. Two of the Englishmen came along towards the stairs and ascended to the saloon. Presently they began to descend with their mate in the middle. Jack looked at them and for some reason or other he did not want any more prestige. He sauntered away along the guard deck and remained in retirement during the rest of the voyage. He was not, after all, a very desperate desperado. During the next night our boat was racing with a rival craft and one of her engines was damaged. She had then to hop on one leg, as it were, as far as Peoria. The Illinois River had here spread out into a broad lake. The bank was low. There were no buildings of any kind near the water. Some of the passengers landed and nobody came to offer them welcome. I stood near an English immigrant who had just brought his luggage ashore and was sitting on it with his wife and three children. They looked around at the lowland and wide water and became full of misery. The wife said, What are we bound to do now, Samuel? We are me and the children to go in this miserable looking place. Samuel, I'm sure Betsy, I don't know. I've nubbed half a dollar left in my money. They said Peoria was a good place for us to stop at, but I don't see any signs of farming round here. And if I go away to look for a job, where am I to put thee in the chiller and the luggage in the bedding? Oh, said Betsy, beginning to cry, I'm sorry we ever left out England, but thou would come, Samuel, thou knows, this is the end on it. Here we are in this wild country without a house or home and with nothing to eat. I always thought that were a fool, Samuel, and now I'm sure and sartin' on it. Samuel could not deny it. His spirit was completely broken. He hung down his head and tears began to trickle down his eyes. The three children, two sturdy little boys and a fair-haired little girl, seeing their dad and ma shedding tears, thought the whole world must be coming to an end and they began howling out aloud without any reserve. It was the best thing they could have done as it called public attention to their misery and drew a crowd around them. A tall stranger came near, looked at the group and said, Good man, what in thunder are you crying for? I was told Peoria was a good place for farming, Samuel said, and now I don't know where to go and I've got no money. Well, you are a sartin, replied the stranger, just dry up and wait here till I come back. He walked away with long strides. Peoria was then a dreary-looking city of which we could see nothing but the end of a broad road, a few framed buildings, two or three wagons, and some horses hitched to the post of the Piazas. The stranger soon returned with a farmer in a wagon drawn by two fine upstanding horses, fit for a royal carriage. The farmer at once hired the immigrant at $10 a month with board for himself and his family. He put the luggage into his wagon, patted the boys on the head and told them to be men, kissed the little girl as he lifted her into the wagon and said, Now Sissy, you are a nice little lady and you are to come along with me and we'll be good friends. Never was sorrow so quickly turned into joy. The man, his wife and children actually began smiling before the tears on their cheeks were dry. Men on every western prairie were preparing their wagons for the great rush to California. New hands were wanted on the lands and the immigrants who were then arriving in thousands took the place of the other thousands who went westward across the plains. There was employment for everybody and during my three years residence on the prairies I only saw one beggar. He was an Italian patriot who said he had fought for Italy and was now begging for it in English, badly broken. So I said, You are a strong, healthy man. Why don't you go to work? You could earn $8 or $10 a month with board anywhere in these parts. But the Italian patriot was a high class beggar. He was collecting funds and had no idea of wasting his time in hard work. He gave me to understand that I had insulted him. Besides this patriot there were a few horse thieves and horned ephers on the prairies but these when identified were either stretched under a tree or sent to Texas. In those days the prairie farmers were all gentlemen, high-minded, truthful, honorable and hospitable. There were no poor houses, no asylums. All orphans were adopted and treated as members of some family in the neighborhood. I am informed that things are quite different now. The march of empire has been rapid. Many men have grown rich to use a novel expression beyond the dreams of avarice and ten times as many have grown poor and discontented. The great question for statesmen now is what is to be done for the relief of the masses and the answer to it is as difficult to find as ever. But I have to proceed up the Illinois River. The steamboat stopped at LaSalle, the head of navigation and we had then to travel on the Illinois and Michigan canal. We went on board a narrow passenger boat towed by two horses and followed by two freight barges. We did not go at breakneck pace and had plenty of time for conversation and to look at the scenery which consisted of prairies, slews, woods and rivers. The picture lacked background as there is nothing in Illinois deserving the name of Hill. But we passed an ancient monument, a tall pillar rising out of the bed of the Illinois River. It is called Starved Rock. Once a number of Indian warriors pursued by white men climbed up the almost perpendicular sides of the pillar. They had no food and though the stream was flowing beneath them they could not obtain a drink of water without danger of death from rifle bullets. The white men instituted a blockade of the pillar and the red men all perished of starvation on the top of it. The conversation was conducted by the captain of the canal boat as he walked on the deck to and fro. He was full of information. He said that he was a native of Kentucky and had come down the Ohio River from Louisville and was taking freight to Chicago, reckoned he was bound to rake in the dollars on the canal, was no doggone abolitionist, niggers were made to work for white folk. They had no souls any more than a horse. He'd like to see the man who would argue the point. Mrs. Beecher Stowe was then riding Uncle Tom's Cabin at too great a distance to hear the challenge, but a greenhorn ventured to argue the point. What about the mulatto, half black, half white? His father, being a white man, had a whole soul. His mother, being black, had no soul. Has the mulatto a whole soul, a half a soul, or no soul at all? The captain paused in his walk with both hands in his pockets, gazed at the argumentative greenhorn, turned his quid, spat across the canal, went away whistling Old Dan Tucker and left the question of the mulatto soul unsolved. When I arrived at Joliet, there was a land boom at Chicago. The canal company had cut up their alternate sections and were offering them at the usual alarming sacrifice. A land boom is a dream of celestial bliss. While it lasts, the wisest men and the greatest fools walk with ecstatic steps through the golden streets of a new Jerusalem. I have been there three times. It is dreadful to wake up and to find that all the gold in the street is nothing but moonshine. I proceeded to the Lake City to lay the foundation of my fortune by buying townlots. I laid the foundation on a five-acre block in West Joliet but had to borrow seven dollars from my nearest friend to pay the first deposit. Chicago was then a small but busy wooden town with slushy streets, plank sidewalks, verandas full of rats, and bedrooms humming with mosquitoes. I loved it penniless but proud, an owner of real estate. While returning to Joliet on the canal boat, my nearest friend, from whom I had borrowed the seven dollars, kindly gave me his views on the subject of greenhorns. The Australian equivalent of greenhorn is new chum. I had the advantage of serving my time in both capacities. No greenhorn, he observed, ever begins to get along in the States until he has parted with his bottom dollar. That puts a keen edge on his mind and he grows smart in business. A smart man don't strain his back with hard work for any considerable time. He takes out a patent for something, a mowing machine, or one for sowing corn and pumpkins, a new churn or wash tub, pills for the shakes, or, best of all, a new religion, anything in fact that will catch on and fetch the public. I had parted with my bottom dollar, was also in debt, and therefore in the best position for getting along, but I could not all at once think of anything to patent and had to earn my daily bread in some way or another. I began to do it by hammering sheets of iron into the proper curves for an undershot water wheel. After I had worked two days, my boss suggested that I should seek other employment. In a school, for instance, a new teacher was wanted in the common school of West Joliet. I said I should prefer something higher, a teacher was of no more earthly account than a tailor. The boss said that might be so in benighted Britain, but in the great United States, our prominent citizens begin life as teachers in the common schools and gradually rise to the highest positions in the Republic. I concluded to rise, but a certificate of competency was required, and I presented myself for examination to the proper official, the editor and proprietor of The True Democrat, whose office was across the bridge, nearly opposite Matheson's Woollen Factory. I found the editor and his compositor laboring over the next edition of the paper. The editor began the examination with the alphabet. I said in England we used 26 letters and I named all of them correctly, except the last. I called it Zed, but the editor said it was Z, and I did not argue the point. He then asked me to pick out the vowels, the consonants, and the flats, the sharps, the aspirates, the labials, the palatals, the dentals, and the mutes. I was struck dumb. I could feel the very foundation of all learnings sinking beneath me and had to confess that I did not know my letters. Then he went on to spelling and writing. My writing was barely passable, and my spelling was quite out of date. I used superfluous letters, which had been very properly abolished by Webster's dictionary. At last the editor remarked with becoming modesty that he himself was no account at figures, but Mr. Sims would put me through the arithmetic. Mr. Sims was the compositor and an Englishman, and he put me through tenderly. When the examination was finished I felt like a convicted imposter and was prepared to resume work on the undershot waterwheel. But the two professors took pity on me and certified in writing that I was qualified to keep school. Then the editor remarked that the retiring teacher, Mr. Randall, had advertised in the true Democrat his ability to teach the Latin language. But, unfortunately, Father Ingodsby had offered himself as a first pupil. Mr. Randall never got another, and all his Latin oozed out. On this timely hint I advertised my ability to teach the citizens of Juliet not only Latin, but Greek, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. My advertisement will be found among the files of the true Democrat of the year 1849 by anyone taking the trouble to look for it. I had carelessly omitted to mention the English language, but we sometimes get what we don't ask for and no less than 16 Germans came out to night school to study our tongue. They were all masons and quarrymen engaged in exporting steps and window-sills to the rising city of Chicago. When Goldsmith tried to earn his bread by teaching English and Holland he overlooked the fact that it was first necessary for him to learn low Dutch. I overlooked the same fact, but it gave me no trouble whatever. There was no united Germany then, and my pupils disagreed continually about the pronunciation of their own language, which seemed like that of Babel, intelligible to nobody. I composed their quarrels by confining their minds to English solely, and harmony was restored each night by song. The schoolhouse was a one-story frame-building on the second plateau in West Joliet and was attended by about 100 scholars. In the rear was a shallow lagoon fenced on one side by a wall of loose rocks infested with snakes. The track to the cemetery was near and it soon began to be in very frequent use. One day during recess the boys had a snake hunt and they tied their game in one bunch by the heads with string and suspended them by the wayside. I counted them and there were 27 snakes in the bunch. The year 49 was the annus mirabilis of the great rush for gold across the plains and it was also an annus miserabilis on account of the cholera. In three weeks, 1400 wagons bound for California crossed one of the bridges over the canal. I was desirous of joining the rush but was as usual short of cash and I had to stay at Joliet to earn my salary. I met the editor of the true Democrat nearly every day, carrying home a bucket of water from the awe plains river. He did his own chores. He sent two young men who wished to become teachers to my school to graduate. One was named O'Reilly, lately from Ireland. I gave him his degree in a few weeks from school somewhere out on the prairie. The other did not graduate before the cholera came. He was a native of Vermont and he played the clarionette in our church choir. The instrumental music came from the clarionette, from a violin and a flute. The choir came from France and Germany, Old England and New England, Ireland, Alsace and Belgium. It was divided into two hostile camps and the party which first took possession of the gallery took precedence in the music for that day only. There was a want of harmony. One morning when the priest was chanting the first words of the Gloria, the head of a little French bugler appeared at the top of the gallery stairs and at once started a plain chant, Gloria. We had never rehearsed or heard before. He sang his solo to the end. He was thirsting for glory and he took a full draft. I don't think there was ever a choir like ours but one and that was conducted by a butcher from Dolphinholm in the Anglican church at Garstang. One Sunday he started a hymn with a new tune. Three times his men broke down and three times they were heard and the whole congregation whispering ferociously at one another. At length the parson tried to proceed with the service and said, Let us pray, but the bold butcher retorted, Pray be hanged, let us try again lads I know we can do it. He then started the hymn for the fourth time and they did it. After the service the parson demanded satisfaction of the butcher and got it in a neighboring pasture. End of section 8 Section 9 of Book of the Bush This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Linda Dodge The Book of the Bush by George Dunderdale Section 9 Out West in 1849 Part 2 The cholera came and we soon grew very serious. The young man from Vermont walked with me after school hours and we tried to be cheerful but it was of no use. Our talk always reverted to the plague and the best way to cure it or to avoid it. The doctors disagreed. Every theory was soon contradicted by facts. All kinds of people were attacked and died. The young and the old, the weak and the strong, the drunken and the sober. Every man adopted a special diet or a favorite liquor. Brandy, whiskey, bitters, cherry bounce, sosparilla. My own particular preventative was hot tea sweetened with molasses and seasoned with cayenne pepper. I survived, but that does not prove anything in particular. The two papers, the Juliet signal and the true Democrat, scarcely ever mentioned the cholera. It would have been bad policy tending to scare away the citizens and to injure trade. Many men suddenly found that they had urgent business to look after elsewhere and sneaked away, leaving their wives and families behind them. On Sunday Father Ingoldsby advised his people to prepare their souls for the visit of the Angel of Death who was every night knocking at their doors. There were many, he said, whose faces he had not seen at the rails since he came to Juliet, and what answer would they give to the summons, which called them to appear without delay before the judgment seat of God? What doom could they expect but that of damnation and eternal death? The sermon needed no translation for the men of many nations who were present. Irishmen, Englishmen, Highlanders in Belgians, French and Germans, Mexicans and Canadians who could interpret the meaning of the flashing eye which roamed to every corner of the church, singling out each miserable sinner, the fierce frown, the threatening gesture, the finger first pointing to the heaven above and then down to the depths of hell. Some stayed to pray and to confess their sins, others hardened their hearts and went home unrepentant. Michael Mangan went to Bell's grocery near the canal. He said he felt pains in his interior and drank a jigger of whiskey. Then he bought a half a gallon of the same remedy to take home with him. It was a cheap prescription costing only 12 and a half cents, but it proved very effective. Old Bell's put the stuff into an earthenware bottle which he corked with a corncom. Michael started for home by the zigzag path which led up the steep limestone bluff, but his steps were slow and unsteady. He sat down on a rock and took another dose out of his bottle. He never went any further of his own motion and we buried him the next day. We were of different opinions about the cause of his death. Some thought it was a cholera, others the pangs of conscience, some the whiskey and others a mixture of all three. At any rate he died without speaking to the priest. Next day another neighbor died. Mr. Harrigan He had lost one arm but with the other he wrote a good hand and registered deeds in the county court. I called to see him. He was in bed lying on his back his one arm outside the coverlet. His heaving chest was bare and his face was ghastly pale. There were six men in the room one of whom said do you know me Mr. Harrigan? Sure devil a dog in Lockport but knows you Barney said the dying man. Barney lived in Lockport and in an audible whisper said to us ain't he getting on finally? He'll be all right tomorrow please God. And didn't the doctor say I'd be dead before twelve this day? asked Harrigan. I looked at the clock on the mantel shelf it was past ten. He died an hour later. One day the young man from Vermont rose from his seat and looked at me across the school room. I thought he was going to say something. He took down his hat, went to the door, turned and looked at me again but did not speak or make any sign. Next morning his place was vacant and I asked one of the boys if he had seen the young man. The boy said the school no more I calculate he was buried this morning before school hours. That year forty-nine was a dismal year in Joliet. Mr. Rogers one of the school managers came and sat on a bench near the door. He was a New Englander a carpenter round-shouldered tall and bony. He said I called in to tell you that I can't vote for appointing you next term. Fact is the ladies are dead against you. Don't see you at meeting on the Sabbath. Say you go to the Catholic church with the Irish and Dutch. I ain't a word to say again you myself. This is a free country every man can go for ought I care whichever way he darn well chooses to heaven or hell or any other place. But I want to be peaceable and I can't get no peace for you next term so I thought I'd let you know that you might not be disappointed. In that way Mr. Rogers washed his hands of me. I said I was sorry that I did not please the ladies but I like to hear a man who spoke his mind freely. Soon afterwards the Germans brought me word that the Yankees were calling a meeting about me. I was aware by this time that the special gathering of citizens takes place to discuss the demerits of any individual. It is advisable for that individual to be absent if possible. But curiosity was strong within me. Hitherto I had never been honored with any public notice whatever and I attended the meeting uninvited. The Yankees are excellent orators. Without bashfulness they are taught to speak pieces in school from their childhood. They pronounce each word distinctly. They use correctly the rising inflection and the falling inflection. Moreover they are always in deadly earnest. There is another miserable world awaiting their arrival. Their humorists are the most unhappy of men. You may smile when you read their jokes but when you see the jokers you are more inclined to weep. With pain and sorrow they grind like sands at the jokers mill all the days of their lives. The meeting was held at the new two-story school house. Deacon Beaumont took the chair my chair and Mr. Curtis was appointed secretary. I began to hate Deacon and also Mr. Curtis who was the only other teacher present. It was evident they were going to put him in my place. Each speaker on rising put his left hand in the side pocket of his pants. I was not mentioned by name but nevertheless I was given clearly to understand that I had been reared in a land whose people are under the dominion of the earth and a bloated aristocracy and therefore I had never breath the pure air of freedom and was unfitted to teach the children of the great republic. Mr. Tucker, an influential citizen, moved finally that the school managers be instructed to engage a Mr. Sellers of Dresden as the teacher at the West Joliet School. He said Mr. Sellers was a young man from New England who had been teaching for a term at Dresden and had given great satisfaction. He had the best testimony to the character and ability of the young man from his own daughter, Ms. Priscilla Tucker, who had been school mom in the same school and was now home on a visit. She could give from her own personal knowledge any information the managers might require. Mr. Tucker's motion was seconded. There was no amendment proposed and all in favour of the motion were requested by Deacon Beaumont to stand up. The Yankees all rose to their feet. The others sat still. All but old gorgeous, a Prussian who with his two sons had come to vote for me. But the old man did not understand English. His son John pulled him down but Deacon Beaumont had counted his vote and the motion was carried by a majority of one. So I was in fact put out of the school by my best friend, old gorgeous. I went away in a dungeon and marked off a cellar on my real estate thirty feet by eighteen feet on the top of the bluff near the edge of the western prairie. The ground was a mixture of stiff clay and limestone rock and I dug at it all through the month of September. Curious people came along and made various remarks. Some said nothing but went away whistling. One day Mr. Jackson and Paul Duffendorf were passing by and I wanted them to pass but they stopped like the rest. Mr. Jackson was reckoned one of the smartest men in Will County. He had a large farm well stocked but he was never known to do any work except with his brains. He was one of those men who increased the income of the state of Illinois by ability. Duffendorf was a huge Dutchman nearly seven feet in height. He was a great friend of mine great every way but very stupid. He had no sense of refinement. He said, schoolmaester? Bye golly. Here Mr. Jackson is our schoolmaester of verke and mitspeed and brick. How of us you like that kind of verke Mr. Jackson? Never could be such a darn fool sooner than steel answered Jackson. Duffendorf laughed until he nearly fell into the cellar. Now this talk was very offensive. I knew Mr. Jackson was defendant in a case of inpending. He had been charged with conspiring to defraud having stolen three horses with illegally detaining seventy-five dollars and on other counts which I cannot remember just now. The thing was originally very simple. Even Duffendorf could understand it. Mr. Jackson was in want of some ready money so he directed his hired hand to steel three of the horses in the dead of night. Take them to Chicago sell them to the highest bidder find out where the highest bidder lived and then return with the cash to Joliet. The hired man did his part of the business faithfully returned and reported to his employer. Then Mr. Jackson set out in search of his stolen horses found them and brought them home. The man expected to receive half the profits of the enterprise. The boss demurred and only offered one third and said if that was not satisfactory he would bring a charge of horse stealing. The case went into court and under the treatment of learned counsel grew very complicated. It was remarkable as being the only one on record in Will County in which a man had made money by stealing his own horses. It is, I fancy, still sub-judice. Both the old school and the new school remain closed even after the cholera ceased to thin out the citizens but I felt no further interest in the education of youth. When winter came I tramped three miles into the forest and began to fell trees and split rails in order to fence in my suburban estate. For some time I carried a rifle and besides various small game I shot two deer but neither of them would wait for me to come up with them even after I had shot them. They took my two bullets away with them and left me only a few drops of blood on the snow. Then I left the rifle at home. For about four months the ground and the cold was intense but I continued splitting until the snakes came out to bask in the sun and warm themselves. I saw near a dead log eight coiled together and I killed them all. The juice of the sugar maples began to run. I cut notches in the bark in the shape of a broad arrow bored a hole at the point inserted a short spout of bark and on sunny mornings the juice flowed in a regular stream clear and sparkling on cloudy days it only dropped. One evening as I was plotting my weary way homeward I looked up and saw in the distance a man inspecting my cellar. I said here's another disgusting fool who ain't seen it before. It certainly was a peculiar cellar but not worth looking at so much. I hated the sight of it. It had no building over it. Never was roofed in and sometimes full of snow. The other fool proved to be Mr. Curtis the teacher who had written the resolution of the meeting which voted me out of the school. He held out his hand and I took it but reluctantly and under secret protest. I thought to myself this my enemy has an axe or I'll be on my guard. I have been waiting for you some time. said Mr. Curtis. I was told you were splitting rails in the forest and would be home about sundown. I wanted to see you about opening school again. Mr. Rogers won't have anything to say to it but the other two managers Mr. Strong and Mr. Demond want to engage you about the school. The other down below and I came up to ask you to see them about it. How does it happen that Mr. Sellers has not come over from Dresden? I said. Joliet is about the last place on earth that Mr. Sellers will come to. Didn't you hear about him and Priscilla? asked Mr. Curtis. I asked that way. Well, I am surprised. I thought everybody knew by this time that we did not like to say much about it. I began to feel interested. Mr. Curtis had something pleasant to tell me about the misfortunes of my enemies so I listened attentively. It was a tale of western love and its course was no smoother in Illinois than in any less enlightened old Europe. Miss Priscilla reckoned she could hoe her own row. She and Mr. Sellers conducted the Common School at Dresden with great success and harmony. All went merry as a marriage bill and the marriage was to come off by and by. So hoped Miss Priscilla. During recess she took the teacher's arm and they walked to and fro lovingly. All Dresden said it was to be but at the end of the term Miss Priscilla returned to Joliet the match was not yet made. It was at this time that the dissatisfaction with the new British teacher became extreme. Miss Priscilla fanned the flame of discontent. She did not let concealment like a worm in the bud feed on her damaged cheek but boldly proposed that Mr. Sellers, a true-born native of New England, a good young man, always seen at meetings on the Sabbath, should be requested to take charge of the West Joliet school. So the meeting was held. I was voted out. Mr. Sellers was voted in and the daughters of the Puritans triumphed. Miss Priscilla wrote to Dresden announcing to her beloved the success of her diplomacy requesting him to come to Joliet without delay and assume direction of the new school. This letter fell into the hands of another lady who had just arrived at Dresden from New England in search of her husband who happened to be Mr. Sellers. The letter which that other lady wrote to Miss Priscilla I did not see but it was said to be a master piece of composition and it emptied to schools. The worker went over to Dresden and looked around for Mr. Sellers but that gentleman had gone out West and was never heard of again. The West was a very wide unfenced space without railways. The fact is, said Mr. Curtis, we were all kind of ashamed the way things turned out and we just let them rip but people are now stirring about the school being closed so long. Mr. Strong and Mr. Demmon have concluded to engage you and me to conduct the school. We were engaged that night and I went rail splitting no more but I fenced by a state and while running the line on the western boundary I found the grave of Highland Mary it was in the middle of a grove of oak and hickory saplings and was nearly hidden by hazel bushes. The tombstone was a slab about two feet high, roughly hewn. Her epitaph was Mary Campbell age seven 1827 that was all four little Mary. The common schools of Illinois were maintained principally from the revenue derived from grants of land. When the country was first surveyed one section of 640 acres in each township of 6 miles square was reserved for school purposes. There was a state law on education but the management was entirely local and was in the hands of a treasurer and three directors elected by annually by the citizens of each school district. The revenue derived from the school section was sometimes not sufficient to defray the salary of the teacher and then the deficiency was supplied by the parents of the children who had attended at the school. Those citizens whose children did not attend were not taxed by the state for the common schools. They did not pay for that which they did not receive. In some instances only one school was maintained by the revenue of two school sections. When the attendance in the school was numerous a young lady called the school marm was teaching. Sometimes as in the case of Miss Priscilla she fell into trouble. The books were provided by the enterprise of private citizens and an occasional change of readers was agreeable both to teachers and scholars. The best of old stories grow tiresome when repeated too often. One day a traveler from Cincinnati brought me samples of a new series of readers offering on my approval to substitute the next day a new volume for every old one produced. I approved and he presented each scholar with copies of the new series for nothing. The teaching was secular but certain virtues were inculcated either directly or indirectly. Truth and patriotism were recommended by the example of George Washington who never told a lie with his sword the freedom of his country. There were lessons on history in which the tyranny of the English government was denounced. Kings, lords and bishops especially Bishop Laud were held up to eternal abhorrence as was also England's greed of gain. Her intolerance, bigotry, taxation, her penal and navigation laws. The glorious war of independence was related at length. The children of the Puritans of the Irish and the Germans did not in those days imbibe much prejudice in favour of England or her institutions. And the English teacher desirous of arriving at the truth had the advantage of having heard both sides of many historical questions of listening as it were to the scream of the American eagle as well as to the roar of the British lion. Mr. Curtis was a good teacher systematic, patient, persevering and ingenious I ceased to hate him. Miss Priscilla's downfall cemented our friendship. We kept order in the school by moral suasion but the task was sometimes difficult. My private feelings were in favour of the occasional use of the hickory stick and substitute for the rod of Solomon and the birch of England. The geography we taught was principally that of the United States and her territories spacious maps of which were suspended round the school continually reminding the scholars of their glorious inheritance. It was then full of vacant lots over which roamed the Indian and the buffalo species of animals now nearly extinct. We did not pay much attention to the rest of the world. Elocution was inculcated assiduously and at regular intervals each boy and girl had to come forth and speak a piece in the presence of scholars, teachers and visitors. Mental arithmetic and the use of fractions were taught daily. The use of the decimal in the American coinage is of great advantage. It is easier and more intelligible to children than the clumsy old system of pounds, shillings, pints and farthings. It is a system which would no doubt have been long ago adopted by England, if it had not been humiliating to our national pride to take even a good thing from rebellious Yankees and inferior Latin races. We cling fondly to absurdities because they are our own. In Australia wild rabbits are vermin. In England they are private property and if one of the three millions of her miserable paupers is found with a rabbit in each of his coat pockets he has found ten shillings or sent to jail. Pope Gregory VIII demonstrated the error of the calendar then in use and all Catholic nations adopted correction. But when the adoption of the calendar was proposed in Parliament John Bull put his big foot down at once. He would receive no truth, not even a mathematical one, from the Pope of Rome. And it was only after the lapse of nearly two hundred years when the memory of Gregory and his calendar had almost faded away from the sensitive mind of Protestantism that an act had passed equalizing the style in Great Britain and Ireland with that used in the other countries of Europe. A fugitive slave with his wife and daughter came to Joliet. One day he was seized by three slave hunters who took him towards the canal. A number of abolitionists assembled to rescue the slave but the three men drew the revolvers and no abolitionists had the courage to fire the first shot. The slave was put in a canal boat and went south. His wife remained in Joliet and earned her bread by weaving drug it. The daughter came to my school. She was a pure Negro blood but was taught with the white girls. The abolitionists were increasing in number and during the war with the south the slaves were freed. They are now like Israel in Egypt if father Abraham had sent them back to Africa when they were only four millions he would have earned the gratitude of his country. Now they number more than eight millions. The sunny south agrees with their constitution. They work as little and steal as much as possible. In the days of their bondage they were addicted to petty larceny. Now they have votes and when they achieve place and power they are addicted to grand larceny. And they loot the public treasury as unblushingly as the white politicians. The nigger question has doubled in magnitude during the last 30 years and there will have to be another abolition campaign of some kind. The blacks are incapable of ruling the whites. No time was given to educate them for their new duties. If teaching them was possible the declaration of independence was in their case a mockery from the beginning. When all the old abolitionists and slaveholders are dead another generation of men brainwiser by the failure of the policy of their forefathers may solve the black problem. End of section 9. Section 10 of Book of the Bush This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Linda Dodge The Book of the Bush by George Dunderdale Section 10 Out West in 1849 Part 3 Complaint is made that the American education of today is in a chaotic condition due to the want of any definite idea of what education is aiming at. There is evidence that the ancients of New England used to birch their boys but after independence had been fought for and won higher aims prevailed. The Puritan then believed that his children were born to a destiny far grander than of any other children on the face of the earth. The treatment according to them was therefore to be different. The fundamental idea of American life was to be freedom and the definition of freedom by a learned American is the power which necessarily belongs to the self-conscious being of determining his actions in view of the highest the universal good and thereby of gradually realizing in himself the eternal divine perfection. The definition seems a little hazy but the workings of great minds are often unintelligible to common people. The American citizen must be morally autonomous regarding all institutions as servants, not as masters. So far man has been for the most part a thrall. The true American must worship the inner God recognized as his own deepest and eternal self not an outer God regarded as something different from himself. Lucifer is said to have entertained a similar idea. He would not be a thrall and the result as described by the Republican Milton was truly disastrous. Him, the almighty power hurled headlong down a bottomless perdition. Region of sorrow, doleful shades where peace and rest can never dwell. The manner in which the American citizen is to be made morally autonomous and placed beyond the control of current opinion will require much money. His parents must therefore be rich. They must already have inherited wealth and have maintained it by ability or labor. The course of training to be given to youth includes traveling for six years in foreign countries under private tutors studying human history ethnic, social political, industrial aesthetic, religious gyms of poetry the elements of geometry mechanics, art plastic and graphic Confucius, Saccha Muni Themistocles, Socrates Julius Caesar Paul, Mohamed Charlemagne, Alfred Gregory VII St. Bernard, St. Francis Savin Arola Luther, Queen Elizabeth, Columbus, Washington Lincoln, Homer, Virgil, Dante Tennyson and Lowell The boys on the prairies had to earn their bread. They could not spend six years traveling around and studying all the writers above mentioned, making themselves morally autonomous and worshiping their own deepest and eternal selves. The best men America has produced were reared at home and did chores out of school hours. When I was expelled from school by the Yankees Mr. McAvoy, the leading Irish politician, called me aside and said Whisper, you just hang around until the next election and we'll turn out the Yankee managers and put you in the school again. The Germans were slow in acquiring political knowledge as well as in learning the English language. But language, politics and law itself are the birthright of the Irish. By force of circumstances and through the otherwise deplorable failure of Ms. Priscilla, I resumed work in the school before the election. But Mr. McAvoy true to his promise organized the opposition it is always the opposition and ejected the Yankee managers. But in the fall of 1850 I resigned and went a long way south. When I returned Joliet was a city and Mr. Rendell, one of my German night-scholars, was city-martial. I met him walking the streets and carrying his staff of office with great dignity. I took up my abode in an upper apartment of the jail then in charge of Sheriff Cunningham who had a farm in West Joliet near a plank road leading on to the prairie. I had known the sheriff two years before but did not see much of him at this time though I was in daily communication with his son Silas, the deputy sheriff. It was under these favorable circumstances that I was unable to witness a general jail delivery of all the prisoners in Joliet. One charged with killing his third man was out on bail. I saw him in Matheson's boarding house making love to one of the higher girls and she seemed quite pleased with his polite attentions. Matheson was elected governor of the state of Illinois and became a millionaire by dealing in railways. He was a native of Missouri and a man of ability. In 49 I saw him at work in a machine shop. The prisoners did not regain their freedom all at once but in the space of three weeks they trickled out one by one. The deputy sheriff Silas had been one of my pupils. He was now about 17 years of age and a model son of the prairies. His features were exceedingly thin, his eyes keen, his speech and movement slow, his mind cool and calculating. He never injured his constitution by any violent exertion. In fact he seemed to have taken leave of active life and all its worries and to have settled down to an existence of ease and contemplation. If he had any anxiety about the safe custody of his prisoners he never showed it. He had finished his education so I did not attempt to control him by moral suasion or by anything else but by degrees I succeeded in eliciting from him all the particulars he could impart about the criminals under his care. There was no fence around the jail and Silas kept two of them always locked in. He calculated they were kind or unsafe. They belonged to a society of horse thieves whose members were distributed at regular intervals along the prairies and who forwarded their stolen animals by night to Chicago. The two gentlemen in jail were of an untrustworthy character and would be likely to slip away. About a week after my arrival I met Silas coming out of the jail and he said they're gone by gosh Silas never wasted words. Who is gone? I inquired. Why then two horse thieves just look here. We went round to the east side of the jail and there was a hole deep deep and just wide enough to let a man through. The ground underneath the wall was rocky but the two prisoners had been industrious, had picked a hole under the wall and had gone through. Where's the sheriff? I asked. Won't Mr. Cunningham go after the men? He's away at Bourbonnes's grove about something or other. Among the blue-noses can't say when he'll be back. Don't matter anyhow. He might just as well try to go the hell backwards as catch them two horse thieves now. Silas had still two other prisoners under his care and he let them go outside as usual to enjoy the fresh air. They had both been committed for murder but their crime was reckoned a respectable one compared to the mean one of horse stealing so Silas gave them honorable treatment. One of the prisoners was a widow lady who had killed another lady with an axe at a hut near the canal on the road to Lockport. She seemed crazy and when outside the jail walked here and there in a helpless kind of way muttering to herself but sometimes an idea seemed to strike her that she had something to do Lockport way and she started in that direction forgetting very likely that she had done it already but whenever Silas called her back she returned without giving any trouble. One day however when Silas was asleep she went clean out of sight and I did not see her anymore. The sheriff was still absent among the blue noses. The fourth prisoner was an Englishman named Wilkins who owned a farm on the prairie in the direction of Bourbonnes' Grove and a few weeks before returning home from Joliet with his wagon and team of horses he halted for a short time at a distillery situated at the foot of the low bluff which bounded the bottom through which ran the All Plains River. It was a place at which the farmers often called to discuss politics, the prices of produce and other matters in the supply of liquor. The corn whiskey of Illinois was an article of commerce which found its way to many markets. Although it was sold at a low price at home it became much more valuable after it had been exported to England or France and had undergone scientific treatment by men of ability. The corn used in its manufacture was exceedingly cheap as may be imagined when corn fed pork was in the winter of 49 offered for sale in Joliet at one cent per pound. After the poison of the prairies had been exported to Europe a new flavor was imparted to it and it became cognac or the best Irish or Scotch whiskey. Wilkins halted his team and went into the whiskey mill where the owner Robinson co-entered into the furnace under the broiler with a long handled shovel. He was an enterprising Englishman who was wooing the smiles of fortune with better prospects of success than the slow, hardworking farmer. I had seen him first in West Joliet in 49 when he was traveling around buying corn for his distillery. He was a handsome man about thirty years of age and had been well educated and was quite able to hold his own among the men of the West and accommodated himself to their manners and habits. There were three other farmers present and their talk drifted from one thing to another until at last settled on the question of relative advantages of life in England and in the States. Robinson took the part of England. Wilkins stuck to the States. He said, A poor man has no chance at home. He is kept down by landlords and can never get a farm on his own. In Illinois I am a free man and have no one to lord it over me. If I had lived and slaved in England for a hundred years I should never have been any better off. And now I have a farm as good as any in Will County and I am just as good a man as heir another in it. Now Wilkins was only a small man shorter by four inches than Robinson who towered above him and at once resented the claim to equality. He said, You as good as any other man are you? Why, there ain't a more miserable little skunk within twenty miles round Joliet. Robinson was forgetting the etiquette of the West. No man, except perhaps in speaking to a nigger ever assumed a tone of insolence superiority to any other man. If he did so it was at the risk of sudden death. Even a hired man was habitually treated with civility. The titles of Colonel, Judge, Mayor, Captain and Squire were in constant use both in public and private. There was plenty of humorous chaff but not insult. Colonels, judges, mayors, captains and squires were civil both to each other and to the rest of the citizens. Robinson in speaking to his fellow countrymen forgot for a moment that he was not in dear old England where he could settle a little difference with his fists. But little Wilkins did not forget and he was not the kind of man to be pounded with impunity. He had in his pocket a hunting knife with which he could kill a hog or a man. When Robinson called him a skunk he felt in his pocket for the knife and put his thumb on the spring at the back of the Buckhorn handle playing with it gently. It was not a British brumagim article made by a foreign or colonial market but a genuine weapon that could be relied upon in a pinch. Oh, I dare say you were a great man at home, weren't you? He said. A lord maybe or a landlord but we don't have such great men here and I am as good a man as you any day skunk though I be. Robinson had just thrown another shovel full of coal into the boiler and he held up his shovel as if ready to strike Williams but it was never known whether he really intended to strike or not. The three other men standing near were quite amused with the dispute of the two Englishmen and were smiling pleasantly at their foolishness but little Wilkins did not smile nor did he wait for the shovel to come down on his head. He darted under it with his open manner as the Roman soldier went underneath the dense spears of the Pyrrhic phalanx and set to work. Robinson tried to parry the blows with the handle of the shovel but he made only a poor fight the knife was driven to the hilt into his body seven times then he threw down his shovel and tried to save himself behind his boiler but it was too late. The dispute about England and the states was settled. Wilkins took his team home then returned to Joliet and gave himself into the custody of the squire, Hoosier Smith at the inquest he was committed to take his trial for murder and did not get bail. His wife left the farm and with her two little boys lived in an old log hut near the jail. She brought with her two cows which Wilkins milked each morning as soon as Silas let him out of prison. I could see him every day from the window of my room and I often passed by the hut when he was doing chores chopping wood or fetching water but I never spoke to him. He did not look happy or sociable and I could not think of anything pleasant to say by way of making his acquaintance. After much observation and thought I came to the conclusion that Sheriff Cunningham wanted his prisoner to go away he would not like to hang the man. The citizens would not take Wilkins off his hands. If two fools chose to get up a little difficulty and one was killed it was their own lookout and anyway they were only foreigners. The fact was Wilkins was waiting for someone to purchase his farm. The courthouse for Wil County was within view of the jail at the other side of the street and one day I went over to look at it. The judge was hearing a civil case and I sat down to listen to the proceedings. A learned counsel was addressing the jury. He talked at great length in a nasal tone slowly and deliberately. He had one foot on a form, one hand in a pocket of his pants and the other hand rested gracefully on a volume of the statutes of the State of Illinois. He had much to say about various horses running on the prairie and particularly about one animal which he called the Skellahorn Horse. I tried to follow his argument but the Skellahorn Horse was so mixed up with the other horses that I could not spot him. Semi-circular seats of unpainted pine for the accommodation of the public rose tier above tier but most of them were empty. There were present several gentlemen of the legal profession but they kept silence and never interrupted the counsel's address nor did the judge utter a word. He sat at his desk sideways with his boots resting on a chair. He wore neither wig nor gown and had not even put on his Sunday go-to-meat-and-clothes. Neither had the lawyers. If there was a court crier or constable present he was indistinguishable from the rest of the audience. Near the judge's desk there was a bucket of water and three tumblers on a small table. It was a hot day. The counsel paused and his speech went to the table and took a drink. A juryman left the box and drank. The judge also came down from his seat, dipped a tumbler in the bucket and quenched his thirst. One spectator after another went to the bucket. There was equality and fraternity in the court of law. The speech about the skimmelhorn went on with the utmost gravity and decorum until the nasal draw of the learned counsel put me to sleep. On awakening I went into another hall in which dealings in real estate were registered. Shelves fixed against the walls held huge volumes lettered on the back. One of these volumes was on a table in the center of the hall and in it the registrar was copying a deed. Before him lay a pile of deeds with a lead weight on the top. A farmer came in with a paper on which the registrar endorsed a number and placed at the bottom of the pile. There was no parchment used. Each document was half sheet full scrap size partly printed and partly written. Another farmer came in took up the pile and examined the numbers to see how soon his deed was likely to be copied and if it was in its proper place according to the number endorsed. The registrar was not fenced off from the public by a wide counter. He was the servant of the citizens and had to satisfy those who paid him for his labors. His pay was a fixed number of cents portfolio not dollars nor pounds. When I went back to the jail I found it deserted. Wilkins had sold his farm and disappeared. His wife remained in the hut. Sheriff Cunningham was still away among the blue noses and Silas was functus officio having accomplished a general jail delivery. He did not pine away on account of the loss of his prisoners nor grow any thinner. That was impossible. I remained four days longer expecting something would happen. But nothing did happen then I left the jail. I wrote out two notices informing the public that I was willing to sell my real estate. One of these I pasted up at the post office. The other on the bridge over the river. Next day a German from Chicago agreed to pay the price asked and we called on Colonel Smith the squire. The Colonel filled in a brief form of transfer, witnessed the payment of the money which was in twenty dollar gold pieces and he charged one dollar as his fee. The German would have to pay about thirty five cents for its registration. He would insert in a local journal a notice of his intention to apply for a copy which would make the original of as little value to anybody as a provincial and suburban bank note. In Illinois transfers of land were registered in each county town. To buy or sell a farm was as easy as horse stealing and safer. Usually no legal help was necessary for either transaction. By this time California had a rival gold had been found in Australia. I was fond of gold. I jingled the twenty dollar gold pieces in my pocket and resolved to look for more at the fountain head by way of my native land. A railway from Chicago had just reached Joliet and had been open three days before. It was the invitation to start and I accepted it. Nobody ever loved his native land better than I do when I am away from it. I can call to mind its innumerable beauties and in a fancy saunter once more through the summer woods among the bracken, the bluebells and the foxglove. I can wander by the banks of the brock where the sullen trout hide in the clear depths of the pools. I can walk along the path the path to paradise still lined with the blue-eyed speedwell and red campion. I know where the copes is carpeted with the bluebell and ragged robin where grow the elders and the hazels rich with brown nuts, the beaches and the oaks, where the flower of the yellow broom blazes like gold in the noontide sun, where the stock dove coos overhead in the ivy, where the kingfisher darts past like a shaft of sapphire, and the water easel flies upstream, where the pheasant glides out from his home in the wood to feed on the headland of the weepfield, where the partridge broods in the dust with her young, where the green lane is bordered by the gilder-roser wayfaring tree, the raspberry-strawberry and cherry, the wild garlic of star-like flowers, the draught fragrant as new moon hay, the yellow pimpernell on the hedge side. I see in the fields in meadows the birds' foot trefoil, the ox-eye daisy, the lady smocks, sweet hemlock, butterbur, the stitchwort, and the orcus, the long purple of Shakespeare. By the margin of the pond the yellow iris hangs out its golden banners over which rain-fly skims. The hedgerows are gay with the fall-blown dog roses. The bells of the bell-berries droop down along the wood side, and the red-hipped bumblebees hum over them. Out of the woodland an up snapperic lane I rise to the moorland, and then the seacoast comes in sight and the longing to know what lies beyond it. I have been to see what lies beyond it, and when I return once more my own land does not know me. There is another sea-coast in sight now, and when I sail away from it I hope to land on someone of the aisles of the blessed. I call on my oldest living love. She looked I thought, even younger than when we last parted. She was sitting before the fire alone, pale and calm, but she gave me no greeting she had forgotten me. I took a chair, sat down beside her and waited. A strange lass with a fair face and strong bare arms came in and stared at me steadily for a minute or two, but went away without saying a word. I looked around the old house-room that I knew so well with its floor of flags from Buckley Delph, scoured white with sandstone. There stood, large and solid, the meal-arc of black oak with the date 1644 carved just below the heavy lid, more than two hundred years old and as sound as ever. The sloping mirror over the chest of drawers was still supported by the four seasons, one at each corner. Above it was Queen Caroline with the crown on her head and the scepter in her hand seated in a magnificent Roman chariot drawn by the lion and the unicorn. That team had tortured my young soul for years. I could never understand why that savage lion had not long ago devoured both Queen and the unicorn. My old love was looking at me and at last she put one hand on my knee and said, It's George. Yes, I said, it's George. She gazed a while into the fire and said, Alice is dead. Yes, Alice is dead. And Jenny is dead. Yes, and Jenny, they are at the bottom of the sea. In that way she counted a long list of the dead, which she closed by saying, they are all gone, but Joe. She had been a widow more than twenty-five years. She was a young woman tall and strong before Bonifart, Wellington, the United States, or Australia had ever been heard of in Lancashire, and from the top of a style she had counted every windmill and chimney and pristine before it was covered with the black pall of smoke from the cotton mills. Section 11 of the Book of the Bush This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Book of the Bush by George Dunderdow. Section 11 Among the Diggers, 1853 Part 1 I lost a summer in 1853 and had two winters instead. One in England, the other in Australia. It was cold in the month of May as we neared Bendigo. We were a mixed party of English, Irish and Scotch, twelve in number, and accompanied by three horse teams carrying tubs, tents and provisions. We also had plenty of arms we were with to fight the Bush Rangers, but I did not carry any myself. I left the fighting department to my mate Philip of War. Philip was by nature and training as gentle and amiable as a lamb, but he was a young islander and therefore a fighter on principle. A colonel had tried moral suasion on the English Government long enough and to no purpose, so Philip and his fiery young friends were prepared to have recourse to arms. The arms he was now carrying consisted of a gleaming burrowy knife and two pistols stuck in his belt. The pistols were good ones. Philip had tried them on a friend in the Phoenix Park the morning after a ball at the rotunda and had pinked his man, shot him in the arm. It is needless to say that there was a young lady in the case. I don't know what became of her, but during the rest of her life she could boast of having been the fair demoiselle on whose account the very last duel was fought in Ireland. Then the age of chivalry went out. The Bowie knife was the British article bought in Liverpool. It would neither kill a man or cut a beef steak, as was proved by experience. We met parties of men from Bendigo and lucky diggers who offered to sell their 30 shilling licenses. By this time my cash was low. My $20 gold piece was all consumed. While voyaging to the new offer where gold was growing underfoot I could not see any sound sense in being niggardly. But when I saw a regular stream of disappointed men with empty pockets offering their monthly licenses for five shlings each within sight of the goldfield I had misgivings and bought a license that had three weeks to run from William Matthews. Ten other men bought licenses but William Patterson, a canny Scotchman, said he would chance it. It was about midday when we halted near Bendigo Creek opposite a refreshment tent. Standing in front of it was a man who had passed us on the road and lit his pipe at our fire. When he stood to pick up a fire stick I saw the burrler who revolved under his coat. He was accompanied by a lady on horseback wearing a black riding habit. Our teamsters called him Captain Sullivan. He was even then a man well known to the convicts and the police and was supposed to be doing a thriving business as keeper of a sly grog shop. But in the course of time it was discovered that his main source of profit was murder and robbery. He was afterwards known as the New Zealand murderer who turned Queen's evidence sent his mates to the gallows but himself died unhanged. While we stood on the track gazing hopelessly over the endless heaps of clay and gravel covering the flat a little man came up and spoke to Philip in whom he recognised the fellow countryman he said you want to place a camp don't you? Yes replied Philip we have only just come up from Melbourne well come along with me said the stranger he was a civil fellow and said his name was Jack Moore we went with him in the direction of the first white hill but before reaching it we turned to the left up a low bluff and halted in a gully where many men were at work puddling clay and tubs after we had put up our tent Philip went down the gully to study the art of gold digging he watched the men at work some were digging holes some were dissolving clay and tubs of water by stirring it rapidly with spades and a few were stooping at the edge of water holes washing off the sand mixed with the gold in milk pans Philip tried to enter into conversation with the diggers he stopped near one man and said good day mate how are you getting along the man gazed at him steadily and replied go you to hell so Philip moved on the next man he addressed sent him in the same direction adding a few blessings the third man was panning off and there was a little gold visible in his pan he was grey, grim and hairy Philip said not very lucky today mate the hairy man stood up straightened his back and looked at Philip from head to foot lucky be blowed I wish I'd never seen this blasted place here I have been sinking holes and puddling for five months and not made enough to pay my tucker and the government licence thirty bob a month I am a mason and threw up twenty eight bob a day to come to this miserable hole wherever you come from young man I advise you to go back there again there's twenty thousand men on Bendigo and I don't believe nineteen thousand of them are ruining their grub I can't well go back fifteen thousand miles even if I have money to take me back and said Philip well you might walk as far as Melbourne said the hairy man or you might take a job at stone breaking the government are giving seven and six a yard for road metal ain't you got any trade to work at no I never learnt a trade I am only a gentleman he felt mean enough to cry well that's bad if you're a scholar you might keep school but I don't believe there's half a dozen kids on the diggings they'd be of no use except to tumble down shafts fact is if you're really hard up you can be a peeler up at the camp they'll take on any useless loafers what's able to carry a carbine and they'll give you a tucker and you can keep your shirt clean but mind if you do join the joeys I hope you'd be shot I'd shoot the whole blessed lot of them if I had them away they are nothing but a pack of robbers the hairy man knew something of current history and statistics but he had not a pleasant way of imparting his knowledge pick and then a gully ended in a flat in New Timber where there are only a few diggers turning to the left Philip found two men near a waterhole hard at work puddling when he bathed them good day they did not swear at him which was some comfort they were brothers and were willing to talk but they did not stop work for a minute they had a large pile of dirt and were making hay while the sun shone that is washing their dirt as fast as they could while the water lasted during the preceding summer they had cutted their washed dirt from the gully till 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 the thing small in those days to brag of your good luck might be the death of you while Philip was away interviewing the diggers Jack showed me where he had worked his first claim and had made four hundred pounds in a few days he might marker for claim here and try it he said I think I took out the best gold but there may be a little left still here about I picked off two claims one for Philip and one for myself and stuck a pick in the centre of each then we sat down on a log six men came up the gully carrying their swags one of them was unusually tall Jack said do you see that big fella there his name is McKean he comes from my part of Ireland he is a lawyer the last time I saw him he was in court defending a prisoner and now the whole six foot seven of him is nothing but a dirty digger what made you leave Ireland Jack I asked but I guess same as you did because I couldn't live in it my father was a fisherman and he was drowned mother was left with eight children and we were as poor as church mice I was the oldest so I went to Belfast and got a billet on board ship as a cabin boy I made three voyages from Liverpool to America and was boxed about pretty badly but I learnt to handle the ropes my last port there was Boston and I ran away and lived with a Yankee farmer named Small he was a nigger driver he was working the soul out of him early in night he had a boat and I used to take farm produce in it across the bay to Boston where the old man's eldest son kept a boarding house there was a daughter at home a regular high flyer she used to talk to me as if I was a nigger one day when we were having dinner she was asking me questions about Ireland and about my mother, sisters and brothers then I got mad thinking how poor they were there and I could not help them Miss Small I said my mother is 40 years old and she has eight children and she looks younger than you and has not lost a tooth Miss Small although quite young was nearly toothless so she was mad enough to kill me and my parents say serve you right Sue, why can't you live Jack alone but Sue made things most unpleasant and I told Jonathan I couldn't stay on the farm and would rather go to sea again Jonathan said he too was tired of farming and he would go with me he could manage a boat across Boston Harbour but he had never been to sea next time there was farm stuff to go to Boston he went with me we left the boat with his brother and shipped in a whale around for the South Seas I used to show him how to handle the ropes to knot and splice and he soon became a pretty good hand though he was not smart or lofty when reefing his name was Small but he was not a small man he was six foot two and the strongest man on board and he didn't allow any man to thrash me because I was little after 18 months whaling he persuaded me to run away from the ship at Hobarton he said he was tired of the greasy old tub so one night we bundled up our swags dropped into a boat and took the road to Lawn System where we expected to find a vessel going to Melbourne when we were halfway across the island we called just before sundown at a farmhouse to see if we could get something to eat and lodging for the night we found two women cooking supper in the kitchen and Jonathan said to the younger man is the old man at home she replied quite pertly Captain Massey is at home if that's what you mean by the old man well my dear said Jonathan will you just tell him that we are two seamen on our way to Lawn System and we'd like to have a word with him I am not your dear she replied tossing her head and went out after a while she returned and said Captain Massey wanted to speak to the little man first that was me I went into the house and was shown into the parlour where the captain was standing behind a table there was a gun close to his hand in a corner two horse pistols on a shelf and a sword hanging over them he said who are you where from and where they're going to to which I replied my name is John Moore me and my mate have left our ship a whaler at Hobarton and we are bound for Lawn System oh you are a runaway foremost hand are you then you know something about work on board ship he then put questions to me about the work of a seamen making sail and reefing about mast, yards and rigging and finished up telling me to box a compass I passed my examination pretty well and he told me to send in the other fellow he put Jonathan through his sea catechism in the same way and then said we could have supper down for the night after supper the young lady sat near the kitchen fire sewing and Jonathan took a chair near her and began a conversation he said I must big pardon for having ventured to address you as my dear on so short an acquaintance but I hope you will forgive my boldness fact is I felt quite attached to you at first sight and so on if there was one thing that Jonathan could do better than another it was talking the lady was at first very prim and reserved but she soon began to listen smile and even titted a little boy about two years old came in and stood near the fire having nothing else to do I took him on my knee and set him prattling until we were very good friends then an idea came to my head I guess Jonathan this little kid is about the same age as your youngest boy in Boston ain't he of course Jonathan had no boy and was not married but the sudden change that came over that young lady was remarkable she gave Jonathan a look of fury jumped up from a seat snatched up her sewing and bounced out of the kitchen the old man came in and told us to come along and he would show us our bunks we thought he was a little queer but he seemed uncommonly kind and anxious to make us comfortable for the night he took us to our hut very strongly built with heavy slabs left us a lighted candle and made us good night after he closed the door we heard him put the padlock on it he was a kindly old chap and did not want anybody to disturb us during the night and we soon fell fast asleep next morning he came early and called us to breakfast he stayed with us all the time and when we had eaten said well have you had a good breakfast Jonathan spoke yes old man we have you are a gentleman you have done yourself proud and we are thankful aren't we Jack you are the best and kindest man we have met since we sailed from Boston and now I think it is time we made treks for a lawn system bye bye captain come on Jack no you won't my fine coves replied the captain you will go back to Hobbiton and join your ship if you have one which I don't believe you are a pair of runaway convicts and I will give you in charge of such here constables put the derbies on them and take them back to Hobbiton two men who had been awaiting orders outside the door now entered armed with carbines produced each a pair of handcuffs and came towards us but Jonathan drew back a step or two clenched his big fists and said no you don't if this is your little game captain all I have to say is you are the damnedest double faced old cuss on this side of the petition you can shoot me if you like but neither you or the four best men in Van Diemen's land can put their minds on me I am a free citizen of the great United States and I free man I'll be or die I'll walk back to Hobbiton if you like with these men for I guess that greasy old wailer has gone to sea again by this time and we'll get another ship there as well as lawn system captain Massey did not like to venture on shooting us offhand so at last he told the constables to put up their handcuffs and start with us for Hobbiton after we had travelled a while Jonathan cooled down and began to talk to the constables he asked them how they liked the island how long they had been on it if it was good country for farming how they were getting along and what pay they got for being constables one of them said the island is pretty good in parts but it's too mountainous we ain't getting along at all which chance to do any good till our time is out what an aft do you mean by saying until your time is out aren't your time your own no indeed I see you don't understand we are government men we ain't done our time we were sent out from England oh you were sent out were you now I see that means you are penitentiary men and ought to be in jail Jack look here this kind of thing will never do you and me are two honest citizens of the United States and here we are piloted through Van Demon's land by two convicts and Britishers of that this team has got to be changed right away he seized both carbines and handed them to me then he handcuffed the constables who were so taken aback they never said a word then Jonathan said this is training day now March the constables worked in front of me and Jonathan behind shouldering the guns in this way we marched until we sighted Herbeton but the two convicts were terribly afraid to enter the city as prisoners they said they were sure to be punished would be most likely sent into a chain gank and will soon be strangled in the barracks at night for having been policemen we could see they were really afraid so we took off the handcuffs and gave them back the carbines before entering the city we found that the whaler had left the harbour and felt sure we would not be tamed long as nothing can be proved against us when we were brought before the beat Jonathan told our story and showed several letters he had received from Boston so he was discharged but I had nothing to show they knew I was an Irishman and the police asked for a roman to prove that I was a runaway convict I was kept three weeks in jail and every time I was brought to court Jonathan was there he said he would not go away without me the police could find nothing against me so at last they let me go we went aboard the first vessel bound for Melbourne and when the sail was made I went up the cross trees and cursed Van Diemen's land as long as I could see it Jonathan took ship for the states but I went shepherding and grew so lazy that if my stick dropped to the ground I wouldn't bend my back to pick it up but when I heard of the diggings I woke up, humped my swag and ran away I was always man enough for that and I don't intend to ship it again End of section 11