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There were thirteen of us all healthy, honest, able-bodied men, chained together on three carts. A dozen of dragoons, strong, sound-looking men, were riding on horseback as sharp-shooters, in all directions, before our carts in the bush. Their horses were really splendid animals. A score of troopers of the accursed stamp we had then on Ballaarat, sword unsheathed, carbines cocked, kept so close to our carts that one of these Vandemonians was half jammed on riding by a large gum-tree; was thrown from his horse, and disabled, but not killed. We are at last in Ballan, for change of horses. Captain Thomas and a stout healthy-looking man, with a pair of the finest black whiskers I ever saw, in the garb of a digger, who gave such orders to the coachmen, as were always attended to, with the usual colonial oaths as a matter of course, were regaling themselves with bottled porter on a stump of a tree outside the public-house. The dragoons and troopers had biscuit, cheese, and ale served to them, though paid for by themselves, before our teeth.
There was no breakfast for the poor state prisoners, in chains, and lying on the bare ground. They had some trouble before they could obtain from the red-coats watching over them, and blowing heaps of smoke from stump pipes, a drop of cold water——I mean actually a drop of cold water.
Good reader, you know now WHOM I did bless, whom I did curse.
LXXV.
PETITE, SED NON ACCIPIETIS, QUIA PETISTIS.
The following document, which does honour and justice to its writer, J. Basson Humffray, to the 4500 of our fellow-miners of Ballaarat, who signed it, to the state prisoners themselves, is now here transcribed as necessary to the purpose of this book.
THE BALLAARAT DELEGATES, AND THEIR INTERVIEW WITH HIS EXCELLENCY SIR CHARLES HOTHAM, K.C.B., &c.
The public has already seen the written reply of His Excellency to the petition from Ballaarat, signed by nearly 4500 of the inhabitants of that important, but "officially" ridden place.
We deem it our duty to the public, and especially to those whose delegates we are, to state the main reasons urged by us for a general amnesty, and to make
