Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work

by Vernon L. Kellogg

in the harbor with the thermometer never registering below three figures, even at night.

And then he came to the Australian mine fields themselves in a desert where the temperature can keep above one hundred degrees day and night for three weeks together. Also there is wind, scorching wind carrying scorching dust. And surface water discoverable only every fifty or sixty miles. Of course one expects a desert to be hot and dry—that's why it is a desert—but the West Australian desert rather overemphasizes the necessities of the case. It is a deadly monotonous country although not wholly bare; there is much low brush just high enough to hide you from others only half a mile away; a place easy to get lost in, and hard to get found in when once lost.

All of this desert was being prospected by thousands of men of a dozen nationalities, all seeking and suffering, for gold. The railroad had got in only as far as Coolgardie, but the prospectors were far beyond the rail head. They carried their water bags with enough in them to keep themselves and their horses alive between water holes. In the real "back blocks"

they could not carry enough for horses, so they used camels with jangling bells and gaudy trappings of gay greens, orange, scarlet, and vivid blues, making strange contrasts with the blue-gray bush. Along the few main roads moved dusty stages, light, low, almost spring-less three-seated vehicles, with thin sun-tops overhead and boxes and bags in front, behind and underneath, and all swarmed about by pestilential flies, millions of flies, sprung from nowhere to harass the thirsty, weary travelers.

But only the agents and engineers rode in the stages; it cost too much for the little prospectors, the "dry-washers," who carried their few provisions and scanty outfit in packs on their backs, and tramped the trails, stopping here and there to toss the dry soil into the air and watch for the gold flakes to fall into the pan while the lighter earth blew off in the wind.

In the camp were gathered a motley crew, mostly hard, reckless men, who drank and bet their gold dust away as fast as they found it. But everywhere they were finding gold, and all the time came new reports and rumors of more farther on. The headquarters of Hoov

er's employers were in Coolgardie when he arrived, but were soon moved on to Kalgoorlie, following the railroad. The offices were in one of the three or four stone, two-story buildings, which lifted themselves proudly above the ruck of sweltering little toy-like houses of corrugated iron. Forty thousand people were supposed to be living in this "camp" at one time, buying water at two shillings six pence the gallon, which was cheap—they were paying seven shillings in some other camps. At first it was all brought by rail from the coastal plains four hundred miles away, but when the mines began to get down they struck water at a few hundred feet. But it was salt, and expensive condensing plants had to be set up, which kept the price still high. Coolgardie once boasted of having the "biggest condensing plant in the world," with rows on rows of enormous cylindrical corrugated iron tanks lying on their sides, over acres of ground, with all the pumps and boilers and steam pipes to keep these tanks supplied. Water was cheap there, only twelve or fifteen shillings the hundred gallons.

But out in the prospects and on the trails there was no such aqueous luxury. There was no water for washing and little to drink. And that little was mostly drunk as a terrible black tea, like lye, heated and re-heated, with now a little more water added, now another handful of leaves. I have a well-vouched-for story of an Australian girl who went into this gold-paradise with her husband who was manager, at a large salary, of one of the first mines. She used to take a cupful of water and carefully wash the baby and afterward the little girl, and then herself. After that it was saved for the husband to rinse the worst off when he came home from the mine. But he could have an additional half cup to finish with because he was so dirty. And they tried not to use soap with it so that finally, after letting it settle, it could be added to the horses' drinking water. It was not that the family could not afford to pay for water, but there was simply no water to buy.

Into this cheerful hell came the young Quaker engineer, from the heaven of California and the "city" offices of London where