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ducks,
swelled the chorus of chatter and laughing and singing and badinage,
that smothered, at times, the brisk calls of the auctioneers and the
offers of the diggers and the hotel and shop keepers.1
In
the afternoons special sales of tents, miners' tools, guns, and general
merchandise were frequently made by auction, and large stocks were
sometimes sold off completely in this way. Often in the flurry of
competition these goods brought absurdly high prices, when the market
was overstocked with like articles
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in
the stores. It was observed as a curious fact that scarcely a bid could
be got for revolvers, which many adventurers had supposed to be an
indispensable part of their outfit. There were very few outbreaks of
ruffianism in the camps, where the great body of miners was disposed to
be orderly, and occasional sprees were the chief disturbances. The
swaggering bullies, and cheating gamblers, and lurking garroters, who
infested the seething camps of Nevada and Colorado, rarely drifted as
far as these isolated Diamond Fields, and the few who came in were held
in check.
1 "The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Payton, 1872.
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