Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1892 — Recluses in Australia’s Mines. [ARTICLE]

Recluses in Australia’s Mines.

In parts of Australia one comes across a characteristic class in the shupe of old miners whp haunt the deserted diggins, or the banks of gravolly-bottomed streams which hold some traces of the shining treasure in their beds—relics of tho old days of the mining craze, anoient hulks stranded whore tho reflux of the great wave of excitement and speculation has left them. One comes aoross their huts now and then iu the thick scrub along the watercourse, and finds in each a bronzed and bearded he: mit who greets the visitor with a quie! “Good-day, friend,” ns he looks at him with lustreless eyes. The old fire of expectation and hope has gone out of these orbs; thoy show nothing but the settled and patient acceptance of disappointed hopes, which in i he case of many weuker men, has caused madness or solf-dietruc-tion. The history of many of these recluses weuid furnish material for absorbing romances; of wild, ungovernable youth when homo and friendß were left on the other side of the world in the eager onset upon fortuue in the Australian gold diggings; of manhood spent, iu dark shafts or under the blazing sun in rocky gullies amid the hopes und disappointments of an army of men who thirsted and gambled for gold; of an old age which had nothing but memories to live upon, when life was supported by the few grains of gold which daily labor csuld still extract from tho banks of the improvised stream. The men who have experienced these vicissitudesare not, us a rule'druwn into pompanionshlp thereby; they prefer to live alone, nor from week's end to week’s end do they see or desire tho presence of any other human being. Lost in the remoto wilds of the bush, they have acquired something of tho shyness and love cf solitude which characterizes the furred and feathered creatures about them —as silent ns the songless birds, living lives as destitute of fragrance as the scentless flowers.