“sleepe after toyle,
port after stormie seas,
ease after warre,
death after life,
doth greatly please.”
spenser’s “fa?rie queene.”
"i
t was there he fell, boss. he struck right on top of them gibbers (stones). i caught at him, and fell too,—there’s the mark where i struck the mud by the broken stem of that cooliebar there.”
it is billy who is speaking, as, with tears in his eyes, and his affectionate heart overflowing with genuine 339 grief, he looks up at the rugged cliffs and points out to claude and williams the place where dyesart met with his fatal fall.
on the ninth day out from murdaro the expedition has reached the long blue line of gum-trees, towards which it has been toiling since daybreak across the desert plain. and here, at no great distance from the little water-hole, near which the horses are now being unsaddled by the rest of the party, claude pays a first visit to the lonely mound where, beneath a protecting cairn of stones and tree-stems, his explorer-uncle has begun his long, well-earned rest. as the young man stands there in the scanty shade of she-oaks and box-trees, a thousand solemn thoughts gather around him. what strange power is it that has seemed to guard and guide his footsteps so far in the fulfilment of his appointed task? will it pilot him to the end? and what is to be the climax of this journey? by claude’s side is don, who has filled out wonderfully since our hero found him a little waif upon the sydney streets. the boy, not having been enlightened as to his parentage, still bears his old name, and angland making more of a companion of him since billy’s discovery, has noticed with delight that the youth, who by a strange procession of circumstances seems likely to become his brother-in-law some day, is developing a kindly disposition and an engaging manner.
billy now arrives and unearths a small tin box, the contents of which claude feels much tempted to investigate forthwith; but, acting on williams’s advice, he postpones the operation, and determines to make the most of what remains of the day in searching for the supposed mine at the “golden cliffs,”—which our 340 readers will remember as being set down upon the secret map discovered by angland on the back of his uncle’s posthumous communication. about two miles from the grave there rises, white and weird against the violet sky, a barren, isolated mountain, or rather a collection of rugged peaks. and thither, across the red, rock-strewn plain,—bounded by a phantom sea of desert mirage,—the white men and billy proceed, and, having traversed the gentle slope that rises from the dried-up course of the river to the hill, they now stand beneath the shadow of the rocks.
“and you carried my uncle all the way to the water, over those gibbers, without once putting him down!” claude exclaims, as he stands wiping the moisture from his forehead at the summit of the boulder-strewn glacis that surrounds the mount, and hears once more the story of the accident. “why, you were hurt yourself!”
“when i carry the doctor i pikaued (anglicé, carried) all i cared about in the world. ’spose that made it easy,” billy replies simply, and leaning his head upon his arms against a rock, he allows his exuberance of emotion caused by the painful remembrance to wash itself away in tears.
as angland regards the weeping black he cannot but feel half ashamed of his own want of feeling. “surely this is rather incongruous,” he thinks, “that billy, who after all is only an aboriginal servant of the dead man, should thus appropriate the position of chief mourner, whilst i can look on with only a strange, solemn feeling in my heart, and certainly with dry eyes. but it seems all like a dream to me. of course, however, with billy it’s very different.”
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williams calls at this instant and disturbs the young man’s meditations.
“look here, mr. angland!” the old miner’s short, thick thumb points to a copy of the secret map which he holds in his toil-worn hands.
“here’s where we’ve got to go; follow the dotted line. right up the gully there.” the old man points to a narrow opening in the side of the hill, not far from where they are standing.
“yes, but we must find out where this place marked by the cross is, williams,—the point of departure, you know.”
“it’s here, lad. the doctor knew the boy’d lead us to where the accident happened; and see, there’s the gully. a storm creek running from some hollow in the hill i take it to be.”
billy meanwhile observes what is going on with some considerable surprise, for this is the first inkling he has received of the existence of a map of the hill—so carefully had dyesart apparently guarded the secret that he wished only to reach his sister’s child.
the men now move on again, williams leading, and enter a dark, gloomy defile, the walls of which, rising to a height of some eighty feet, are composed of rain-furrowed masses of hard, grey mud. enormous flakes and slabs of transparent gypsum protrude from the sun-dried mass in places, and some of these, catching the rays of the afternoon sun, blaze and scintillate like gems of priceless value. the gorge is, in fact, just what williams has termed it, a storm creek, and the dark cliffs of hardened clay on either hand are formed of débris which has washed down from an open basin or depression in the centre of the mount.
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after following the watercourse upwards for two or three hundred yards, claude and his companions find themselves in a great, crater-like valley, about three hundred yards across, grey and blasted, a picture of desolation. on all sides rise the sun-scarred domes of mud-springs of various sizes, some of which are twenty feet in height, but all appear non-active; in consequence, no doubt, of the long drought. around the valley, across which williams proceeds to lead the way, stopping here and there to consult his map or examine a stone, is an encircling, battlemented array of strangely weird and broken cliffs, some three hundred feet in height, of a hard, flinty rock, varying in colour from light red to pure white. at intervals along the scarped and tortured summit of the precipices strange, turret-headed peaks rise like giant sentries posted upon the heights to guard its sacred loneliness, and these, as the sun lowers in the heavens, cast protracted shadows over the silent, ghastly valley below. in many places heaps of honey-combed boulders of a kind of quartzite, which have fallen from the overhanging cliffs, form slopes that reach halfway up the walls of this wild-looking amphitheatre, and here and there the explorers have to turn to avoid the mysterious openings of vast, ancient fumaroles, whose orifices and walls are grandly blotched with black, purple, and indian-red incrustations.
at last williams comes to a halt where numerous nodules of ironstone-clay litter the ground, and, turning towards claude, places his hand upon the young man’s shoulder, and whispers in a mysterious and impressive manner “that them’s the ‘golden cliffs.’”
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stretching across the valley, and apparently barring further progress in that direction, is a dark mass of brown and purple rock, which claude can see differs in many respects from the material of which the other cliffs already passed are composed.
but why “golden”? there seems nothing, as far as he can judge, to make the sombre pile—which appears to be some kind of ironstone deposit—worthy of the auriferous title bestowed upon it on the map. claude’s heart sinks within him. he knows what a gold-bearing reef is like; he has seen plenty in new zealand, and some also about cairns and mount silver, but there is no trace of a reef here. but perhaps williams has made a mistake. the map is examined and re-examined with the sole result of proving that the old miner has guided his companions correctly. then claude begins, for the first time since he started, to feel that he has been somewhat rash in going to all this trouble, risk, and expense when after all the mysterious message from his uncle may have been only the result of the feverish promptings of a brain disordered by accident, and at the same time haunted with the desire to leave something behind for that loved sister from whom he had been estranged so long.
neither can our young friend gather any comfort from either of his companions, who, although far more experienced than he is with rocks and minerals, seem also puzzled and disappointed. but happy is the man who, under adverse circumstances, can gather fresh stores of energy and strength such as now come to relieve angland from the desponding frame of mind into which the frowning, barren rocks have 344 plunged him for the moment. the memory of a loving, girlish face comes like a peaceful messenger of hope to cheer yet softly chide the heart that fails when it should be strong for her sake. and claude remembers that, however barren his journey through the desert may prove in other ways, the strange message from the dead has been the cause of his meeting glory, at any rate, and a deep feeling of thankfulness makes his heart glow with renewed determination and courage.
at the foot of the cliffs williams and billy are closely examining the rocks. the former, breaking off chips with a short-handled prospecting pick, bends now and again to observe a likely fragment with a pocket-lens; whilst close by the black boy is at work shovelling up the sandy soil from between the fallen fragments of stone with the blade of his tomahawk, winnowing the same cleverly from hand to hand for the canary-coloured particles of heavy metal, that, judging from the sulky look of the operator, have not yet come to reward his busy efforts.
“what do you make of it?” williams turns to angland at the question, and, carefully pocketing his lens, stands looking up at the cliff with his arms akimbo.
“well i’m blowed if i know, to tell you straight, mr. angland. i don’t see nary a colour. fact is, i’ve never seen anything like this before.” as the old man speaks he affectionately pats a boulder by his side. for just as an m.r.c.s. loves to meet an interesting and complicated case of human infirmity, to correctly diagnose which will redound to his credit in the scientific world, so does old williams, enthusiastic345 prospector and geologist that he is, feel quite a warm regard for this strange mass of rock whose hidden secrets it is now his business to unravel.
“it might be a big kind of gozzen out-crop,—the rock’s got a lot of iron in it, there’s no doubt about that. an old mate of mine used to say,—
“‘es thut kein gang so gut
er hat einen eisernen hut.’
he was a german, but a good miner for all that, and quite right about an ‘iron hat,’ for them’s the best reefs. but,” williams goes on as he heaves a sigh, “blest if this is a real gozzen out-crop either. and, moreover, it ain’t likely-looking to my thinking.”
“well, it can’t be helped,” says claude, watching the stalwart old miner’s face with some amusement as he stands rubbing his stubby chin, and screwing up his mouth and eyebrows, like some art-critic engaged in reviewing an enormous piece of sculpture. “i’ll carry out the instructions in the letter, and if it all turns out to be nothing,—well, i can’t help it.”
both men hear a shout at this instant, and billy, who has climbed up the cliff a little way, is seen waving excitedly to the white men, and calling to them to follow him to his elevated perch. claude is not long in scrambling up, but he has to descend again to assist williams, whose knees are getting a bit stiff with age, although the muscles of his arms and shoulders are as good as ever. arrived at billy’s post of vantage, the black proudly shows them a remarkable tunnel opening into the cliff: it has smooth, shiny walls, and is evidently not the result of human labour.
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“look!” the dark youth shouts, stooping and pointing to the floor of the cavern, upon which the winds of heaven have spread a thin covering of desert sand; “look!”
a compound exclamation of surprise and annoyance bursts from two pairs of lips, for there, stamped into the soft, yellow carpeting of silicious particles, are the marks of numerous human feet. not those that wandering natives might have made, but boot-marks, and, what is worst of all, apparently quite fresh.
“somebody been here afore us,” exclaims williams. claude simply looks downwards, and whistles a musical execration.
billy, who stands behind, grins extensively as he sees the discomfited faces of his white companions, and hesitates for the best part of a minute before he proceeds to relieve their minds. then he whispers huskily,—
“that been the doctor come along here.”
“dr. dyesart! what on earth do you mean?” exclaims claude excitedly, as the wild hope of his uncle still being alive flashes through his brain. billy, like most persons possessed of some superior instinct or talent, can hardly appreciate the fact that others may be deficient in the same, so he grins again when he finds that the white men are still unable to distinguish between an ancient and a recent footmark.
“how long since my uncle was here?” asks angland sharply. but our hero’s hopes are dashed out of sight as billy replies sadly,—
“he been dead over four months now.”
“how the dickens are these marks so recent then?”
“they very old, boss,” replies the black, and turning 347 away, he lights a match, and boldly leads the way into the black mouth of the natural tunnel, which slopes downwards at an easy incline.
all the men are smokers, therefore provided with the means of producing an impromptu illumination. claude carries his matches, after the fashion of most settlers in the new zealand bush, in a small but stout glass bottle,—the moist atmosphere of the land of ferns rendering this precaution necessary,—and as he creeps after his black guide, he examines the dark, glossy surface of the walls and roof of the cave, which are covered with ripple-like corrugations. the party has not proceeded far, when claude slips upon a long, smooth object lying across his path, and as he falls is horrified to hear billy, who is immediately in front, sing out that a snake has bitten him. in an instant the party are in darkness. williams has tripped over angland, and the black boy having leapt wildly upwards against the rock overhead—with a force that would have demolished any but an aboriginal skull—lies rubbing his head where he has rolled to, which is some yards on in advance, for the tunnel descends pretty steeply here.
to be left thus suddenly in perfect darkness, in a steep, subterranean passage, with the dread possibility of coming in contact at any moment with a furious and probably poisonous reptile, which has just bitten one’s companion, is an awkward if not an uncomfortable position to be placed in. but in addition to this our friend claude has had all his breath crushed out of him by the superincumbent williams. it is not surprising, therefore, that some seconds, which appear minutes, elapse before a match is struck and a light348 thrown upon the scene. it is then discovered, to the great relief of poor billy, and for the matter of that of all three men, that the snake-bite which the dark youth is expecting every moment to prove fatal has been occasioned by claude, who, stepping upon a dead bough, has caused it to turn over, and inflict a wound upon the black’s hairy calf with the broken end of one of its lateral branches.
a few other pieces of wood being also found lying about, torches are now manufactured; and by the extra amount of light thus procured, the travellers discover that they are following a kind of tortuous, rocky artery, from whose jetty sides numerous vein-like smaller channels open in all directions. in places the tunnel widens, and the red glare of the flames dances upon the polished surfaces of curious, twisted columns, stalactite-like roof pendants, and marvellous bunches of natural filigree-work.
“well, this is a rum kind of diggings!” exclaims williams presently. “did you ever see anything like this before in your travels, mr. angland?”
“i was just thinking that it is a sort of black edition of some of the limestone caves i’ve been in,” replies claude, adding, “but they’re as miserably wet and cold as this is hot and dry.”
the explorers have now been some fifteen minutes in the tunnel, and the white men have decided to return, and prospect the cave further upon the morrow, when billy, who is some way on ahead, shouts “daylight!”
a minute afterwards and the party stand blinking their eyes on a kind of undercliff, overhanging another valley, similar in some respects to that which they have already traversed, but smaller in size and with349 a much fairer aspect. for here and there trees and shrubs are growing amongst the fallen rocks, and these, although stunted and bleached-looking, convey a certain softening effect to the otherwise wildly barren slopes. it is as if the goddess flora had once smiled into the valley of death long ages ago, and some of the gentle radiance of her glance still remained behind to tell of her passing visit. and there, too, are a couple of wallaby, of the rare black and chestnut kind, skipping noiselessly away from the immediate vicinity of the intruders, to sit motionless upon adjacent boulders, watching with awful tameness the movements of these strange visitors who have come to disturb them in their quiet domain.
on either side of the valley, which, sloping westward, opens upon the desert plain below, rise the scarped and pinnacled buttresses of great, crumbling granite cliffs. these grey heights are crowned with a dark red stratum of rock, which claude recognizes as part of the desert sandstone formation, which has, in all probability, at one period covered the greater portion of northern central queensland.
it is now getting late in the day, so a council is held as to whether to retire campwards by the road they have come, or by proceeding down the valley to return on the outside of the hill, which they will then have passed completely through. the latter route is quickly selected, and the rosy tints of sundown are just beginning to stain the whole landscape when our friends commence clambering over the boulders towards the lower ground. the route selected lies over and amongst enormous masses of coarse-grained 350 porphyritic granite, from whose weather-worn surfaces great square crystals of feldspar project, catching the sun’s ruby rays and flashing them back amidst the glints of light off flakes of ice-like mica. and claude, looking round him, thinks of the valley of gems into which sinbad was carried by the mighty roc, and how, perhaps, dr. dyesart may have also recalled that wondrous eastern story, when he, the first and solitary explorer of the mountain, saw the jewel-like crystals blazing round him on the rocks. the descent to the valley is not by any means so facile as the bird’s-eye view taken from above seemed to promise; and a small precipice presently necessitates our friends to travel along to the left, beneath the undercliff upon which they had emerged when leaving the tunnel. a hundred yards brings them to a great black buttress, which, projecting from the cliff, threatens to bar the way. but the active billy, who declares he sees signs of the doctor having been in that direction, soon finds a narrow ledge, and by its means the rocky corner is safely rounded, after a rather risky passage. and here the men are suddenly arrested in their further progress by a most strangely beautiful sight.
a large portion of the cliff immediately before them, probably from the action of some ancient earthquake, has fallen forwards into the valley below, leaving exposed a bay or recess about three hundred feet in height and nearly as much across. the walls of this kind of alcove are formed of some dark rock, but here and there it is blotched and clouded with an almost luminous coating of iridescent colours—such as one sees on soap-bubbles and decaying glass—that 351 burns and shimmers in green, golden, and violet hues, as though a hundred rainbows were trembling on the sombre surface of the mountain steep.
around the summit of the semi-circular precipice is suspended a kind of rocky cornice composed of great icicle-like pendants, as if some mighty torrent of lava plunging over the cliff had suddenly cooled in mid-air and become converted into stone.
some of these o’erhangings appear to be tipped with burnished copper, others with silver, others again shine bright and golden against the dark, purple shadows behind. and all of them in the evening light—which bathes the whole scene with a soft crimson veil—glow and blush like molten drops of metals oozing from the edge of the wonderful rocky valance above.
some little time elapses before the men have recovered sufficiently to speak; and then it is the sun which, sinking with true tropical celerity, releases them from the enthralling beauty of the scene. and, as the glowing hues fade into cold indigo shadow, each individual member of the party experiences that curious emotion—a mixed feeling of relief and disappointment—which some of our readers may remember to have been keenly sensible of, when, as children, the green-baize curtain dropped slowly upon the limelit fairyland of their first pantomime.
then are three tongues unloosed, and three pair of legs hurry their owners toward the darkening cliffs.
claude, being gifted with a scientific and artistic mind, forgets to think about the practical value of the discovery, and exclaims characteristically, “that is beautiful! i wonder what’s the cause of those colours!”
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billy, remembering the prismatic tints of a material sulphide known to miners by the name of “peacock ore,” concludes that what lies before him is an immense deposit of the same, and shouts gleefully, “copper!” to which williams, who likes to have a good-humoured “dig” at his black companion when he advances any opinion upon mining matters, observes “grandmother!” and further explains, for claude’s benefit, “that them colours are iron oxides. couldn’t think at first where i’d seen the same kind of thing before,” he adds, as he stoops to pick up a piece of stone, “but i recollect now. it was just the same as this here on the top of mount morgan, when they first opened up the top bench, only on a much smaller scale.”
“mount morgan eh!” exclaims claude, as he hears the old authority at his side compare this discovery of theirs to the richest goldmine in australia.
“oh, don’t you jump to conclusions yet, mr. angland,” observes williams, whose lengthy experience amongst those most disappointing affairs, goldmines, has left him incapable of putting any faith in one till he has fully examined it. “many a man’s burnt his fingers with the idea that because stone resembles the mount it’s auriferous. it don’t follow in the least.”
it is late when the men reach camp, but, tired as he is, claude spends the greater part of the night in making assays of the specimens of stone brought back from the mount; and so interested are williams and billy in the experiments that they sit round the blazing logs with him, keeping up a running fire of mining anecdotes, and lending him a hand, when he requires it, at pounding pieces of stone to powder in a353 big iron mortar with a heavy pestle, called technically a “dolly.”
having angland’s diary before us as we write, we perhaps cannot do better than copy an extract therefrom which was, apparently, written on the next evening to that on which our friends discovered the now famous “golden cliffs”:—
“weather: fine, clear, hot.
“barometer: 29·250, 29·350.
“thermometer: 72, 84, 91.
“minimum last night: 52.
“spent day prospecting ‘golden cliffs.’ there is no doubt but that, like mount morgan, the formation there is the result of a vast thermal spring, and what i took to be a hollow in the cliffs is the half of the old basin, the other half having fallen into the valley. my rough assays made last night of the best specimen of stone, gave a result of about fifteen ounces to the ton.
“by grinding the stone very fine under water, in an agate mortar i have fortunately brought with me, i can obtain more than half the gold in the stone, as shown by assay. neither w. or b. can obtain a colour by means of the ordinary panning process. williams says this is what he expected, but he is one of those worldly-wise people who seldom venture an opinion till they are certain to be right.
“our myalls say the name of the mountain is pillythilcha doolkooro, which seems to mean, according to billy, the valley of glowing charcoal. there appears to be a belief amongst the blacks that the place is the abode of kootchie, or devils; also that all 354 men are unlucky who go near the hill, and those who venture into its secret valleys will surely die. billy and williams both agree, for a wonder, that there is a strong probability of this being the sacred hill, that, according to them, is believed in by the natives throughout australia as the place from which moora-moora, the native supreme being, will some day arise to protect them from the cruelties of the white settlers.
“to-morrow williams leaves for palmerville to register claim, and on his return i shall go to murdaro with don. killed a big black snake just now which had crept under my blankets.”
