"There's a bonny wee spot in the mountains I love,
Where the pine trees are waving o'erhead far above,
Where the miners are happy, kindhearted, and free;
And many come here from way over the sea.
There's gold in the mountain, there's gold in each glen,
The good time is coming, have patience, brave men;
Hold on to your ledges, and soon you will see
Both money and mills coming over the sea."
C. CRAWFORD.
Jago Smith was an "old timer," as, in Colonial parlance, men with his past were called. A Londoner by birth, he was initiated when but a child into the arts and artifices of that profession which flourishes by the application of sleight-of-hand tricks to the pockets and purses of an unsuspecting public. In short, this London arab was a thief, belonging to just such a school as Dickens has portrayed in Oliver Twist.
His career as a collector of "wipes" was brought to a summary end through being caught full-handed in a theatre crush. A "Children's Court," or a "First Offender's Act," was unknown in the early days of the nineteenth century; consequently young Jago Smith was had up before the magistrate, committed to the Assizes, convicted to the hulks, and ultimately transported to Botany Bay to serve a term of penal servitude.
At a theatrical effort made by certain prisoners of histrionic talent at Sydney, at the tail-end of the eighteenth century, to which first Governor Philip and his wife were "graciously" invited, the following lines form part of the prologue composed for the occasion—
"From distant climes, o'er wide-spread seas, we come,
But not with much éclat or beat of drum.
True patriots all; for be it understood,
We left our country for our country's good.
No private views disgraced our generous zeal,
What urged our travels was our country's weal,
And none can doubt, but that our emigration
Has proved most useful to the British nation."
Fourteen years' penal servitude for the theft of a few pocket-handkerchiefs! Such a sentence to-day would be regarded as a monstrous iniquity; it passed without comment in those days.
But transportation was not an unmixed evil to Jago Smith. As early as 1793 schools were started at the penal settlement, under the impression that they would be the most likely means of effecting a reformation in the morals of youthful prisoners.
Jago, with the consent of the master to whom he was assigned on landing, attended a night school, and gained some insight into the three R's.
"'We've struck it rich, I do believe,' cried the stockman."—See p. [295].