Through the trees we spy a clearing, lying open and sunlit on the steep mountain-side. A clearing, hardly to be so designated, for it is merely a space of some few acres where fallen, half-burnt trees lie prostrate, jumbled in inextricable confusion with boulders, rocks, jutting crags, and broken mounds of fresh-turned soil and stone. A handkerchief upon a post, some newly-split and whitened stakes set here and there around the _débris_, the babble and vociferation of men, those who have got before us, around and about, all sufficiently proclaims that our race is at an end, and that this before us is the prospectors' claim.
There is no time to be lost, for many behind us are coming on, and will be upon the ground a few minutes later. And more and more are coming, pressing onward from the rear with feverish ardour. We spring from our now useless steeds and hasten to select our ground. Above, and on each side, nay, even immediately below the prospectors' claim, those lucky first ones are already pegging out their lawful areas. Depending on certain indications that a hasty glance reveals, and on advice that Dandy Jack has previously received in mysterious confidence from one of the prospectors, we pass below the ground already seized, and there, a little to the right, we proceed to set up the stakes and clear the ground that we claim as ours.
As we proceed to make the dispositions which secure to us that which we have already named "O'Gaygun's Claim," the row and racket around rings fiercer over the mountain side. Parties of men are arriving every moment on the ground, and proceeding at once to map out rock and bush into squares and parallelograms, and to peg out their several claims. With the prospectors' claim for centre and nucleus, the area of the occupied ground momentarily increases. Above, around, below, we are hemmed in by earth-hungry gold-seekers, who each and all are greedy as starved tigers for their prey.
Not without many disputes is the work accomplished. Oath and remonstrance, angry quarrelling and bandying of words soon transform that peaceful fastness of nature into a pandemonium of humanity; and words give place to blows, as boundaries are fixed, and claims measured off. Fierce fights are waged over many an inch and yard of ground. The heated blood of the gold-seeker brooks little opposition, and I fear that even revolvers and knives are shown, if not used, between rival claimants.