The Palmer.

Thames Star, Volume IIII, Issue 1724, 13 July 1874, Page 2

The Palmer.

LATEST NEWS FKOM THE DIGGINGS.

•(To,the Editor o;: tjio Evening Star.) 1 The following is the substance of a letter just received from,my son: it give 3 .such a picture of the g|eat Queensland Palmer rush, that will, I think, malec people reflect before they leave a well settled country like New Zealand for the purpose of seek.•ingi a pile by 'scampering : qyet unknown regions in their hunt for gold.;..and proves beyond doubt "that steady perseverance in a settled country is far more remunerative, in the long run, than any "ofjliose exciting and dangerous rambles, li.6we.ver profitable they may be sometimes to a kw. 1 can vouch for the picture being thoroughly reliable.—-William Wood. .:■■ Boatswain's Gully, '*■'..... a, ; May.l 7, 1874. Dear Parents, —I shall now write you a few lines, or you will think I have forgotten you. I am very anxious to hear from home, but cannot get my letters up from the lower township; neither do I know at present how I am going to get this posted, as the lower township is 35 miles down the river. Foul of us left Codktown for the Palmer on the 25th of April, and we arrived at Butcher's Point (upper camp) on Tuesday morniug, after a hard journey of 13G miles, It took 10 days to accomplish the task, for we had each 501b. swags in addition to the two hundredweight the mare carried. Some part of the road is rery rough and steep, but, taken as a whole, it is not so bad a road as we expected. We passed through Hell's Gate on Sunday morning, 3rd May. It is a strange looking spot. The track goes up a very, steep spur, iv zig-zag fashion, and then goes winding between some very high walls of rock, leaving just room enough for a loaded horse to get through. : . As you go in through the gate you have " Hell" in large letters staring you in the face. The old gentleman, aa luck would have it, happened not to be at home* so we got through without any -trouble. We did hot want .'or company ou the road up, largo camp* at night; while large numbers were returning giving . very bad accounts of the field, several of 'these, our old'shipmates, whose faces had become very long and thin since we last saw them. We saw no natives either going up, or on the diggings, bub we came upon a poor fellow who bad been badly speared in. four places, only a few days previously; he lay under an old blanket, close to the spot where he was wounded. No one looked after him but the passors by. •! He looked very bad; he had, one spear driven into his breast, another into his thigh, one had scratched his side, and another his neck, while a fifth had gone right through his swag; so you may judge he had a narrow escape with life ; nearly all who go that way leave him some tucker, and this is cooked by any who may be camping near the spot. The Government, may remove him. The black troopers are always out after these savages—we met one party of them. For miles round, every gully has been worked over aud over again, and there are tracks' and camps in every direction and away several miles from the edge of the river; and yet I hear of a man being speared and killed not far from Butcher's Point. Coming up we passed six chaps who were draging a truck with six cwt. in it. One of these men had a wooden leg. Poor fellows ! a hard time they had of it, draging that thing over such a country as this ; in many places they had to make a road before they;could proceed at all. They left, Cooktbwn some days before us, and we passed them within 20 miles of the diggings. We also overtook a man parrying a cradle, he was naked, save, an old pair of pants; his skin looked as if it had been scalded. The ! weather is clear and beautiful in the day; but rather cold with heavy dews at night. There is very much sickness up here, but what is the cause of it I cannot say; the weather can have little to do with it, as I can see, I never saw it more lovely in any place I have visited, yet there must'be something wrong about the climate, or the water —or both, for the old Queenslanders look like a lot of dried up sticks ; perhaps hard drinking has something to do with it, for they nearly all indulge in that. Tho drink goes down here at a shilling a nobler, although few are getting much gold. Great numbers of graves appear all the way up, and in eyeiy direction on the diggings. We camped near poor old Boatswain's grave, the prospector of this gully, One young fellow was buried by us last week, and there are several sick in the camp nowone taken ill ;n the tent next ours last night 5 tho doctor ?avr him this morning. Qur party, thank God, are. all in good health, and-we have sufficient good tucker to last us for some weeks; and the meat they are selling is very good, but rather fat; Up here provisions sell as follows : —Flour per pouad Is 6d ; sugar 2s ; salt 2s; beef (no bone) Is ; rice 2s ; oatmeal 2s ; blucher boots 15s to 20s per pair. The oply people making money are the packers and tradespeople; the butphers must be coining it, for every day in the week, the beasts are killed close by the shanty, brought in as killed, and immediately cut,tip into jxmks of from 2 to 40lb§ eaph, and thus sold; one person taking "all the pipnpy, or gold, p,nd this goes on all day. long ;/but oil 'Sundays business is greatly increased, the diggers' corning jn from all parts to get their week's supply. The prowd on Sundays, is such, that it is often impossible tp get, near the shanty; 'the meat when we giet j!: is often quivering with life. Numbers r'-{';!s<* W-i In'-ofr diggers, are living like j ueiiiiuiiK'u till their means are gone, then j ihey will go; others with less mean's-aro j trying to rake a few dwts together to buy

tucker for the road down, when they mo off again; others again, principally old Queenslanders, or Banana men as they are termed, from their corn'•stalk appearance, are- satisfied to poke about the gullies for the price of a bit of tucker ; which, with the beef bones they get for. nothing, they make soup, and so live cheaply. They look for nothing more, and will get nothing more at the, Palmer. A few—and very few— are making a little with the cradle ; and there are claims here and there making I • a little over wages—but few and far between are these. The creek and gullies hare all been turned over and over again, and now the water is done and the poor gully rakers will have to carry their wash dirt to the river, a long distance sometimes, in order to see how many specks it contains. Every now and then a fresh flood comes down tho main stream and drives away all who were getting anything worth working for ; there is no rain here, but there must be plenty higher up, in a word the Palmer is the very poorest of alluvial goldfields; there can be no mistake about it. I have met many persons whom I have known in other.places—several from the Thames. Walter Henderson and another Thames man have not long been up, but in that short time they have lost their horses. Our maro is very little trouble to us, for she keeps always near the camp. Now for ourselves; we gave the place nearly three weeks' hard trial in various places, me and Charley Lawson working like niggers from daylight till dark ; but although we got one or two fair prospects, we made nothing worth stopping for in such a place. Our beef alone cost.us per week 17s, and we do not clear that, leave alone other necessaries ; so came to the conclusion that it was useless stopping up here, not earning tucker, and with the risk of being laid up, so determined fo seek another district where our wants at any rate could be more cheaply supplied. So we sold out what tucker we did not repuired, for the down tramp, and got nearly what we had given for all we brought up and then turned our backs on the out-of-the-way never-to-be-for-gotten hole. At present we have not decided where <o go, I would go to Otago but cant stand'the cold of their winters. Of course we are a little disheartened, but never mind : " nothing venture nothing !iave;" " such is life, dear boys !" Our other two mates did a little better than us, but nothing worth staying for. Cooktown, June 2nd. Here we are again after another ten days' tramp, waiting for a vessel to take us away to more favored regions. Just before we started for Cooktown there was a'rush to Kennedy's Kiver, which being on our road down we started for it, but found it no good—like all the rest. The prospectors of a small: creek got a few ounces, but that was the most, so they were all clearing out for Cooktown, and we' did the same, and overtook lots of fellows returning, but saw none going up except packers and a lot of Chinamen; the Palmer may suit the latter, and they will soon be there in mobs. There were a few women going, one poor thing walking behind a horse the whole way. It brought tears into my eyes as I watched her pass us, as she seemed to be a decent woman, and rather in years; the others were oh horseback. The speared man remained in the same place .as we left him when going up ; he was fast recovering from his wounds. We came also upon a man who had just had four of his horses speared close by a shanty at Sandy Creek; two died, the others will recover. This man was very unlucky, he lost several horses on the water passage. The black troopers are here and have just shot seven of the savages down like wild beasts, and there let them rot where they fell. Some day this will be a fine reefing district. I saw some from eight to fifteen inches through, plenty of gold in them, and we would have set m at them could we have made moro than tucker at; Palmer prices, but it could not be done with present appliances. Those at work at them were just making tucker, and barely that. They crushed the. stone with a wooden stamper suspended to a , sapling—same way as at the Thames in its early days. I have seen some beautiful specimens picked up on the field at different places. Men with plenty of capital, or large conipanies, are wanted here: it is no poor mdn's diggings* Those who have a little now, if they stop here will soon become poor enough. Cooktown is dull enough, and the harbor, which was full of shipping when I left, is now empty ; while the town, instead of. being a muddy swamp, is one of the most dust/, dirty holes I ever saw. The wind Mows a hurricane, with clouds of sand, like at Cape Town, S.A. Some Welshmen accompanied our party going up, as far as Sandy Flat, and there lout their horses, and one of them pot lost himself for nearly a week in searching for them he was five days without food, and had just given himself up for dead when he got into tho right track, and there dropped; but a packer found T him. He nearly fell into the hands of a party of, savages. He looks t yery bad upon it. These sav-ges have just attacked a store, and have torn everything to pieces ; the inmates, however, happily escaped unhurt. The s.s. teichardt pamein on, the 6th June, with six mails. I got letters from home at last,, and one from brother Tom at Dunedin. T much want the latest news from the Thames, as I see that New Zealand seems to bo very brisk just. vlqw. Mflsj; likely I-shaJl shape my course for the Thames' again as soon as I reach. Sydney, but I want to see Melbourne first, '■■-■■ Brisbane, June 17th. f Gnoe more in this very pretty town. I arrived in the Loichardfc safe and sound, .alter a loiu^ passnrre o! :7^ dajs.' I had wretched tiitios on boni'd, as there were upwards of 500 of us, and only 50 bunks to^sleepj yvo had also 361 horses on board.

I managed to get a bunk by getting on bqard by the first boat; bnt you may guess how wretched we must havo been, ./or tlie weather was very cold, and we had a narrow escape of all cooing to the bottom. The vessel got among the rocks on Sunday morning, and actually struck one or two of the sunken enemies, grazing her sides as she passed, and such g, scramble among the diggers followed as I never witnessed before, or wish to see again. The skipper just stopped the engines in time, or we should haye 1 been right on to some of them and all must have perished : it was a narrow escape. I think I shall stop at Brirbane a bit; as there is plenty of work to be got just now. If I was more up in general carpentering I could get work at once at that, at first rate wages. ■ Write quickly to Brisbane and let me'know the state ofl things and rate of wages at the Thames, and then I shall know better what course to take. Me and Charley Lawson parted company at Bowen, he having made up his mind to go ashore there and try the diggings near that village. The tucker on board the Leiphardt was execrable, rotten spuds, salt junk, and hard biscuit, and that we had to rush for, or go without— a fight for every meal; several times the galley was rushed and the cook bad,to clear out. I have another Cbnrley now for a mate, Charley Garland, one of our old Thames singing chaps—he used to be at the Cash Palace; he lias been in the Cooktown Hospital and near death with with fever and ague; he i 8 not yet quite over it, and was very weak when he left Coolctown. He has friends at the Thames ; if wo get work wo shall get on very well together. Thus I have given you a faithful account of the great Palmer, rush, and some of its accompanying horrors and inconveniences; but not one half of its dangers and trials.