Told by Mitchell's Mate.



We were coming back from West Australia, steerage -- Mitchell, the Oracle,
and I. I had gone over saloon, with a few pounds in my pocket.
Mitchell said this was a great mistake -- I should have gone over steerage
with nothing but the clothes I stood upright in, and come back saloon
with a pile. He said it was a very common mistake that men made,
but, as far as his experience went, there always seemed to be
a deep-rooted popular prejudice in favour of going away from home
with a few pounds in one's pocket and coming back stumped;
at least amongst rovers and vagabonds like ourselves -- it wasn't
so generally popular or admired at home, or in the places we came back to,
as it was in the places we went to. Anyway it went, there wasn't
the slightest doubt that our nearest and dearest friends were, as a rule,
in favour of our taking away as little as we could possibly manage with,
and coming back with a pile, whether we came back saloon or not;
and that ought to settle the matter as far as any chap that had
the slightest consideration for his friends or family was concerned.

There was a good deal of misery, underneath, coming home in that steerage.
One man had had his hand crushed and amputated out Coolgardie way,
and the stump had mortified, and he was being sent to Melbourne by his mates.
Some had lost their money, some a couple of years of their life,
some their souls; but none seemed to have lost the heart
to call up the quiet grin that southern rovers, vagabonds,
travellers for "graft" or fortune, and professional wanderers wear
in front of it all. Except one man -- an elderly eastern digger --