Another goldfields feature was of the most pleasing and inspiring
character. In no goldfield we had then visited did we ever meet with so
much as one drunken person. With most laudable prescience, our
authorities had prohibited the ingress of and the dealing in any
intoxicating drink on all proclaimed goldfields. The good order in
consequence was quite marvellous, and we seemed as if in some earthly
paradise, where mankind had, as with one consent, dropped the worst of
human vices and passions. But this was only so far as drink and
drunkenness were concerned; for rude circumstances made rude men, to say
no more of the pervading convict element. Nor were the goldfields free
from "sly grog selling," as it is called. Still, the difficulties put in
the way kept them thus sober. Of course, outside the goldfields' limits
there was drunken riot enough, intensified, no doubt, by the enforced
sobriety within. Troops of diggers, or their employees, with their
pockets full of gold, would start for town, or for the nearest "public,"
there to run up a score till the whole "pile" had vanished. We were told
of one country hotel called "The Porcupine," whose keeper was making
40,000 pounds a year of net profit.
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