The people with whom I was traveling did not go beyond Lydenburg, so from there I had to tramp to Pilgrim's Rest, my destination, a distance of about forty miles. I tied my worldly possessions into a "swag" a process in which I was skillfully assisted by an old miner, with whom I casually foregathered. Then I set forth with three companions, likewise casual acquaintances. We all belonged to that despised class known as "new chums" that is, men who were without practical experience in the art of goldmining.
We started early in the afternoon. Our pilgrimage was a painful one; my swag was heavy, and the straps galled my unaccustomed shoulders. After walking about fifteen miles we camped in a small grove of trees. Here we shivered through an apparently interminable night around an inadequate fire. None of us were experienced bushmen, and we had neglected to gather sufficient fuel. The wind was cold, and I had not then acquired that toughness of fiber and insensibility to extremes of heat and cold which long wanderings and many hardships afterwards gave me.
Two only of my companions are worth recalling. One was an ex-larrikin from Melbourne, who went by the name of "Artful Joe"; his real name I never learnt. Joe had been the victim of a horrible accident in the Kimberley mine about a year previously. He had fallen from one of the "roads" sixty feet sheer on to a sorting table at the bottom of the claim. Both his legs had been broken in several places. I was not present when the accident occurred, but I witnessed the tedious and terrible process of hoisting the injured man out of the pit and conveying him to the hospital. With the exception of a slight lameness, and of being more or less bandy-legged, Joe had not suffered much permanent injury.
He sang many comic songs to cheer us up during that night of dolor, filling the intervals between the ditties with anathemas against his South African luck and realistic stories of his Australian experiences. He had lived, he told us, for several years by earning pennies in the Melbourne streets. Outside the sculleries of the large hotels, or where banquets had been held, barrels of 'feast fragments used to be set. In these barrels the street-public were allowed to "dab" with a fork, at the rate of a penny a time, for discarded fragments of food. Occasionally a rich reward would fall to the enterprising "dabber." Joe's most dazzling stroke of luck happened once when he dabbed out a whole fowl (feaoul, he called it). This must have been rendered possible through some extraordinary lapse of culinary carefulness. The description was so appetizing that I am sure the wraith of that long-digested bird hovered over our meager banquet.
The second pilgrim was a Jew named L.
He was extremely short of stature, but wore the biggest boots I have ever seen; literally, they covered him to the waist. L, never having previously roughed it, was the greatest sufferer; his misery was so great that he wept bitterly, refusing to be comforted. He sickened us through his utter want of grit. When, towards morning, he slept, I took his boots and hid them behind a bush some distance away. His lamentations on missing them were long and loud.
The third of my companions was a mere tramp, sodden with drink a man utterly without significance, except as an example of what to avoid.
Some months afterwards, at Pilgrim's Rest, L attempted to commit suicide by hanging himself. He was cut down before life was extinct, and on recovery was prosecuted for felo-de-se. At the time Major Macdonald, the Gold Commissioner, happened to be away, his place being temporarily filled by Mr. Mansfield, the postmaster. The terms used by the latter in sentencing L caused great amusement.
They were as follows:
"As you have been guilty of an attempt only, I will fine you 5, but if you had succeeded I should have felt bound to pass a much more severe sentence."