Battling for Gold, Or, Stirring Incidents of Goldfields Life in West Australia (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903. Excerpt: ... "SHOOT AT HIM, OR I'LL KILL YOU " A few weeks previous to the following incident taking place, Western Australia rang with the news of an extraordinarily rich gold mine having been discovered at Mount Catherine, which was described as " a mountain of gold." The miners were wonderfully stirred by the news, especially when it became known that some of the prospectors who had made the discovery had been taken into custody, on the information of one of their mates, on a charge of murdering a number of blacks who were supposed to have looted their camp. The accused had been brought into Coolgardie and tried on the capital charge, but they were ultimately acquitted. At the time our narrative begins, Sergeant Stokes was out in charge of a party trying to obtain evidence to support the testimony, or, at any rate, to find out the truth about the reported wholesale massacres. In the then state of the public mind, it was felt by the prospectors that to attempt to use firearms against the natives, for mere pilfering, was dangerous in the extreme, and it was only when brought face to face with the possibility of being killed that men, in selfdefence, would kill the natives. Thomas Black and Richard Farrell had set out from Coolgardie on a prospecting tour, but they had little luck when the news arrived that Mount Catherine had been discovered, and they immediately made for that neighbourhood, and were fortunate enough to discover a rich reef between Mount Catherine and Yirilla. The natives had frequently annoyed them, but nothing serious had taken place up to the time of which I write. The prospectors, however, knew that if they were deprived of their provisions by the aboriginals, there would not be the slightest hope of getting anmore, and they would, in all probabi...