“Very good. We’ll arrange then all that needs arranging.”
So they parted.
Bush, as Harry saw, was rather rough in his manners, but he seemed kindly. He felt fortunate in meeting him, for his advice would be valuable, especially as he had been successful. Besides, as he began to understand, the undertaking upon which he was about to enter was one of difficulty and perhaps danger, especially for one so young, and he would be the better for a friend like Bush. He saw him again, as promised, on Saturday, and got a list of things which the miner informed him would be necessary.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE VICTORIA GOLD MINES.
Four weeks had passed. The scene has changed for Harry. He is no longer living in a first-class city hotel on the fat of the land, but is “roughing it” at the Victoria mines, seventy miles north-west of Melbourne.
These diggings were of limited extent, occupying not above a square mile; but this square mile was a scene of extraordinary animation and activity. Scattered over it were hundreds of miners, rough-bearded, and clothed with little regard to taste or elegance. They represented many countries, differing widely except in being all occupied by one engrossing passion, the love of gold. Some, rough as they now look, had been gentlemen at home, fastidious in their dress and personal appearance, but not to be recognized now, so much were they changed. Others had always been roughs, and this life which they were now leading was little adapted to improve them. But it is not necessary to speak of the mines in general. Our interest is confined to two, and these two are of course Harry and his adviser and friend John Bush.
At the moment of my introducing them once more to the reader, Bush was seated upon the ground smoking a pipe, while Harry was carefully inspecting the back of a shovel, from which he had just been washing some earth, in search of particles of gold.
“Do you find anything, boy?” asked Bush, taking his pipe from his mouth.