I should like to give it in all its detail, and in old Frick's words, but I cannot, and I must restrict myself to giving you the main points in his story.
Bartholomew Frick had left Norway and run away to sea in 1830; his desire for adventure and his dislike for the schoolroom had driven him to this.
For many years he roamed about in the great East, in India, South Africa, and Australia, sometimes as a sailor, and sometimes as a hunter and adventurer on shore.
Then, at the end of the forties, he found himself in Australia when the gold fever was just beginning to rage. Soon after, a party of three people started for Melbourne to proceed to the gold districts. One was Frick, who was the eldest of them, and two Englishmen, Howell and Davis.
The acquaintanceship of these three men—they were adventurers, but all of good family—was not of long standing; but it developed, in the course of the following year, into strong friendship and most faithful comradeship.
They led the usual life of gold diggers for many years, and sometimes, when they were lucky, they would go off to Melbourne and spend their money in a few days' time.
Having gone through many ups and downs in the course of seven years, they at last came across a rich find of gold, and realized a fortune in a couple of months.
The partnership was then dissolved. Howell, who was the quietest and most level-headed of them, bought a large piece of land and took to sheep farming. In this way he was able to preserve his fortune and even to add to it, although he had not been one of the most fortunate.
On the other hand, Frick and Davis did not think they had enough. The money they had made enabled them to carry out a plan which Frick had thought of, and which for a long time they had been anxious to carry out.
In the middle of the thirties Frick, when quite a young man, had been in South Africa. He then followed the settlers who trekked to the north across the Orange River, and who had joined in raids across the river Vaal, and still farther to the north.