tion. Hundreds swore to follow and obey him. Drilling was immediately commenced. Lalor was said to have recommended pikes to those who had no firearms. The words attributed to him were that the pikes would "pierce the tyrants' hearts." He set himself systematically to requisition horses, arms, food, and drink, designating himself in the receipts he gave as Commander-in-Chief of the Diggers under arms."

After the 30th there was no more digging for a time on any gold-field in the vicinity of Ballarat. A reinforcement of soldiers for Thomas was reported on the way from Melbourne, and patriots were sent into the roads to notify its approach so that it might be intercepted. Arms and ammunition were taken wherever found, and a thousand armed men paraded Ballarat in full sight of the camp, robbing stores, forcibly enrolling recruits, and seizing arms. It was reported that the camp— the enclosure in which were quartered the authorities, the soldiers, and the police-was to be assailed in force, and on the night of 1st December dropping shots were actually fired into it. Captain Thomas forbade reprisals. Like Brer Rabbit he "lay low." The world wondered why the Thiers Government in Versailles delayed so long to give the word to the troops to go at the Communards in Paris. The delay was at the suggestion of Bismarck. "Keep the trap open," he said in effect, "till all the anarchical ruffianhood of Europe shall have

gathered inside it; the time to close it is when the influx of scoundrels ceases. Once in we have them to a man; nobody can get out-the German cordon prevents that." Captain Thomas, in a small way, reasoned on the Bismarckian lines. He refrained from attacking while as yet the miners were straggling all over the place, and waited calmly, spite of provocation and appeals to do otherwise, until they should have concentrated themselves into a mass.

Lalor, however, was not drifting around Ballarat ; he was seriously attending to his duty as rebel "Commander-in-Chief." The summit of Eureka Hill, about a mile and a half from the town, was rather a commanding position, and there he was engaged in the construction of a hasty fortification with entrenchments and other obstacles, such as ropes, slabs, stakes, and overturned carts. This construction is known in the history of the Colony as the "Eureka Stockade." Captain Thomas did not allow the rebel chief much time in which to elaborate his defences. He kept his own counsel rigorously until after midnight of 2d December; at half-past two on the morning of the 3d he led out to the assault of the "Eureka Stockade" a force consisting of 100 mounted men, part soldiers, part police, 152 infantry soldiers of the line, and 24 foot police; all told, 276 men exclusive of officers. Approaching the stockade he sent the horsemen round to threaten the rebel position in

infantry moved on the The defenders were on distance a sharp fire,

flank and rear, while his front of the entrenchment. the alert. At 150 yards without previous challenge, rattled among the soldiers. Thomas ordered his bugler to sound "Commence firing," sent the skirmishers forward rapidly, caught them up with the supports, and rushed the defences with the words "Come on, Fortieth!" The entrenchment was carried with wild hurrahs," and a body of men with pikes was immolated under the eye of the commander before the bugle to cease firing recalled the soldiers from the work to which they had been provoked. The rebel flag was hauled down with cheers, all found within the entrenchment were captured, and some of the many fugitives were intercepted by the

cavalry."

The insurrection was at an end. About thirty diggers had been killed on the spot, several subsequently died of wounds, and 125 were taken prisoners. Of the attacking force an officer and a soldier were killed, and thirteen men were wounded, some mortally. The military were promptly reinforced from Melbourne, and martial law was proclaimed, but resistance had been quite stamped out with the fall of the "Stockade." A commission of inquiry was sent to the gold-fields without delay, and its report recommended a general amnesty (to include the prisoners awaiting trial) and the modified abolition of the license fee.

Nevertheless some of the Eureka

X

"insurgents" were arraigned on the charge of high treason, but in every case the Melbourne juries brought in a verdict of acquittal, and therefore no steps were taken to apprehend their comrades who had escaped and were in hiding. The amnesty was complete, although never formally proclaimed. Peter Lalor, for whose apprehension a reward of £200 had been offered, affably emerged from the concealment into which he had been so fortunate as to escape from the stockade. While lying perdu, one of his arms, which had been smashed by a bullet in the brief action, had been skilfully amputated, and Peter had made a satisfactory recovery. During his retirement he wrote a defence of his conduct, and claimed that, as hour after hour of the eventful night passed without an attack, the greater number of the 1500 defenders who were in the stockade until midnight had gone away to bed, so that when the attack was made there actually remained in the enclosure only about 120 men. He expressed the frankest regret that " we were unable to inflict on the real authors of the outbreak the punishment they so richly deserved." A year after he emerged from hiding, the one-armed ex-rebel was returned to Parliament by a mining constituency. Thus he ranged himself, and five-and-twenty years later was sitting in a court dress in the chair of the Legislative Assembly of the Colony.

MY CAMPAIGN IN PALL MALL

FOR better or for worse, the war correspondent, as regards a British army in the field, has been stamped out. The journalist who now accompanies an army is a war reporter. He dances in the fetters of the censorship, whose power over him is absolute it may not only detain or withhold his work, but at discretion may alter it so that he may be made to say the direct reverse of what he wrote. If the position has its humiliations, it also has its compensations. The censorship which makes a slave of the war reporter, ipso facto relieves him of all the responsibility for the words he writes. His waking hours are unclouded by forebodings of aspersions on his veracity, emanating from officials chafing under inconvenient interpellations. His slumbers are disturbed by no dream-vision of a bad quarter of an hour with the chief of staff, when the paper containing that outspoken telegram of his arrives in camp. The authorities in Pall Mall, by the institution of the rules and the censorship, have indeed scotched the war journalist, but have not succeeded in killing him. Lord Wolseley in the early editions of the Soldier's Pocket-book described the war corre