"'Heu mihi! pingui quam macer est mihi taurus in arvo!' and it must be acknowledged that it would have been paying an honest and educated man a better compliment if my neighbours on the Eureka had found less edification in witnessing my nice snug tent converted into a gambling house by day, and a brothel by night. A sad reflection! however merry some scoundrels may have made in getting drunk with my private brandy in the tent.
"Never mind! the diggers have now a legion of friends. So I prevailed on myself to tell, half-a-dozen times over to most of the 'well-disposed and independent' yabber-yabber leaders on Ballaarat, how I had been robbed at the Camp, how for my sorrows every mortal thing had been stolen from my tent, and concluded with the remark, 'that in each case the thieves were neither Vandemonians nor Chinese.'
"I met with grand sympathy in 'words,' superlatively impotent even to move for the restitution of my watertight boots!
"Hurrah! glorious things will be told of thee, Victoria!
"These waterhole skippers, who afford buzzing and bamboozling when the rainbow dazzles their dull eyes, bask in their 'well-affected' brains, the flaring presumption that 'shortly' there will be a demand for sheeps' heads! (Great works!) and pointing at several of us, it is given unto them to behold with glory 'the end of men whose word is their bond!'
"(Great works!)
"Let us sing with Horace—
TUNE—Old Style.
Quando prosperus et jucundus,
Amicorum es fecundus,
Si fortuna perit,
Nullus amicus erit.
Chorus—Cives! Cives!
Querenda pecunia primum,
Post nummos virtus.
"Which in English may mean this—