CHAPTER IX. MAJORCA. Majorca founded in a Rush.-Description of a Rush.-Diggers camping out.-Gold-mining at Majorca.-Majorca High Street.-The People. -The Inns.--The Churches.--The Bank. --The Chinamen.-Australia the Paradise of Working-men.--"Shouting" for Drinks.--Absence of Beggars.-No Coppers up-country. In my school-days Majorca was associated in my mind with "Minorca and Ivica," and I little thought to encounter a place of that name in Australia. It seems that the town was originally so called because of its vicinity to a rocky point called Gibraltar, where gold had been found some time before. Like many other towns upcountry, the founding of Majorca was the result of a rush. In the early days of gold-digging, when men were flocking into the colony to hunt for treasure, so soon as the news got abroad of a great nugget being found by some lucky adventurers, or of some rich gold-bearing strata being struck, there was a sudden rush from all quarters to the favored spot. Such a rush occurred at Majorca in the year 1863. Let me try to describe the scene in those early days of the township as it has been related to me by those who witnessed it. Fancy from fourteen to fifteen thousand diggers suddenly drawn together in one locality, and camped out in the bush within a radius of a mile and a half. A great rush is a scene of much bustle and excitement. Long lines of white tents overtop the heaps of pipe-clay, which grow higher from day to day. The men are hard at work on these hills of "mullock," plying the windlasses by which the stuff is brought up from below, or puddling and washing off "the dirt." Up come the buckets from the shafts, down which the diggers are working, and the dirty yellow water is poured down hill, to find its way to the creek as it best may. Unmade roads, or rather tracks, run in and out among the claims, knee-deep in mud, the ground being kept in a state of constant sloppiness by the perpetual washing for the gold. Perhaps there is a fight going on over the boundary-pegs of a claim which have been squashed by a heavy dray passing along, laden with stores from Castlemaine. The miners are attended by all manner of straggling followers, like the sutlers following a camp. The life is a very rough one: hard work and hard beds, heavy eating and heavy drinking. The diggers mostly live in tents, for they are at first too much engrossed by their search for gold to run up huts; but many of them sleep in the open air or under the shelter of the trees. A pilotcoat or a pea-jacket is protection enough for those who do not enjoy the luxury of a tent; but the dryness and geniality of the climate are such that injury is very rarely experienced from the night exposure. There are very few women at the first opening of new diggings, the life is too rough and rude; and some of those who do come rock the cradle-but not the household one-with the men. The diggers, however genteel the life they may have led before, soon acquire a dirty, rough, unshaven look. Their coarse clothes are all of a color, being that of the clay and gravel in which they work, and the mud with which they become covered when digging. There is a crowd of men at an open bar drinking. Bar, indeed! It is but a plank supported on two barrels, and across this improvised counter the brandy bottle and glasses are eagerly plied. A couple of old boxes in front serve for seats, while a piece of canvas, rigged on two poles, shades off the fierce sun. Many a large fortune has been made at a rude bar of this sort; for too many of the diggers, though they work like horses, spend like asses. Here, again, in the long main street of tents, where the shafts are often uncomfortably close to the road, the tradesmen are doing a roaring business. Stalwart men with stout appetites are laying in their stores of grocery, buying pounds of flour, sugar, and butter— meat and bread in great quantities. The digger thrusts his parcels indiscriminately into the breast of his dirty jumper, a thick shirt; and away he goes, stuffed with groceries, and perhaps a leg of mutton over his shoulder. In the evening some four thousand camp-fires in the valleys, along the gulleys, and up the sides of the hills, cast a lurid light over a scene which, once witnessed, can never be forgotten. There were, of course, the usual rowdies at Majorca as at other rushes. But very soon a rough discipline was set up and held them in check; then a local government was formed, and eventually order was established. Although the neighboring towns look down on "little Majorca" say it is the last place made- and tell of the riotous doings at its first settlement, Majorca is quoted by Brough Smyth, whose book on the Goldfields is the best authority on the subject, as having been a compara tively orderly place, even in the earliest days of the rush. He says, "Shortly after the workings were opened it presented a scene of busy industry, where there was more of order, decency, and good behavior than could probably be found in any mining locality in England, or on the Continent of Europe."* The contrast, however, must be very great between the Majorca of to-day and the Majorca of seven years since, when it was a great gold-diggers' camp. It had its first burst, like all other celebrated places in the goldfields. As the shallower and richer ground became worked out, the diggers moved off to some new diggings, and the first glories of the Majorca rush gradually passed away. Still, the place continued prosperous. The mining was carried down into deeper strata. But after a few years the yield fell off, and the engines were gradually withdrawn. Some few claims are doing well in *The following is from Mr. Brough Smyth's book: "I need only now speak of Majorca. Here a prospecting shaft was bottomed in the beginning of March, 1863, in the middle of a very extensive plain, known as M'Cullum's Creek Plain. The depth of the shaft was 85 feet, through thick clay, gravel, and cement. The wash-dirt was white gravel, intermixed with heavy boulders, on a soft pipe-clay bottom, its thickness being from 2 to 3 feet. It averaged in some places 3 oz. to the load. Finally a rush set in, and before three months had elapsed there were more then 15,000 miners on the ground. The sinking became deeper as the work went on, and was so wet that whims had to be erected; and at one time, in 1865, over 170 might have been seen at work, both night and day. Subsequently steam machinery was procured, and now no less than ten engines, varying from 15- to 20-horse power, are constantly employed in pumping, winding, and puddling. The lead in its lower part is 160 feet in depth, and is evidently extending toward the Carisbrooke, Moolart, and Charlotte Plains, where so much is expected by all scientific men."--Mr. E. O'Farrell, formerly Chairman of the Mining Board of the Maryborough District.-Brough Smyth, p. 98, 99. new offshoots of the lead, and the miners are vigorously following it up. Two engine companies are pushing ahead and hoping for better things. Over at the other side of the creek, in among the ranges, there is still plenty of fair yielding quartz, which is being got out of mother earth, and the miners consider that they have very fair prospects before them.* Indeed, Majorca has subsided into a comparatively quiet country place, containing about eight hundred inhabitants. It is supported in a great measure by the adjoining farming population; and I observed, during my stay at the place, that the more prudent of the miners, when they had saved a few hundred pounds—and some saved much more--usually retired from active digging and took to farming. The town consists, for the most part, of one long street, situated on a rising ground. There are not many buildings of importance in it. The houses are mostly of wood, one-storied, and roofed with corrugated iron. There is only one brick shop-front in the street, which so overtops the others that malicious, perhaps envious neighbors, say it is sure to topple down some day on to the footway. The shops are of the usual description, grocers, bakers, butchers, and drapers; and the most frequent style of shop is a store containing every thing from a pickaxe and tin dish (for gold washing) to Perry Davis's patent Pain-killer. We have, of course, our inns-the Imperial, where the manager of * Since my return home, letters from Majorca inform me that things have recently taken a turn for the better. Several of the alluvial mining companies are getting gold in increased quantities. New shafts have been bottomed on rich ground, and the remittances of gold are gradually on the increase. |