It was impossible to feel jolly, and I could see that Philip was discontented.  He had never been accustomed to manual labour; he did not like being exposed to the cold winds, to the frost or rain, with no shelter except that afforded by our small tent.  While at work we were always dirty, and often wet; and after we had passed a miserable night, daylight found us shivering, until warmth came with hard work.  One morning Philip lost his temper; his only hat was soaked with rain, and his trousers, shirt, and boots were stiff with clay.  He put a woollen comforter on his head in lieu of the hat.  The comforter was of gaudy colours, and soon attracted public attention.  A man down the gully said: 

“I obsarved yesterday we had young Ireland puddling up here, and I persave this morning we have an Italian bandit or a Sallee rover at work among us.”

Every digger looked at Philip, and he fell into a sudden fury; you might have heard him at the first White Hill.

“Yesterday I heard a donkey braying down the gully, and this morning he is braying again.”

“Oh!  I see,” replied the Donkey.  “We are in a bad temper this morning.”

Father Backhaus was often seen walking with long strides among the holes and hillocks on Bendigo Flat or up and down the gullies, on a visit to some dying digger, for Death would not wait until we had all made our pile.  His messengers were going around all the time; dysentery, scurvy, or fever; and the priest hurried after them.  Sometimes he was too late; Death had entered the tent before him.

He celebrated Mass every Sunday in a tent made of drugget, and covered with a calico fly.  His presbytery, sacristy, confessional, and school were all of similar materials, and of small dimensions.  There was not room in the church for more than thirty or forty persons; there were no pews, benches, or chairs.  Part of the congregation consisted of soldiers from the camp, who had come up from Melbourne to shoot us if occasion required.  Six days of the week we hated them and called “Joey” after them, but on the seventh day we merely glared at them, and let them pass in silence.  They were sleek and clean, and we were gaunt as wolves, with scarcely a clean shirt among us.  Philip, especially hated them as enemies of his country, and the more so because they were his countrymen, all but one, who was a black man.

The people in and around the church were not all Catholics.  I saw a man kneeling near me reading the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England; there was also a strict Presbyterian, to whom I spoke after Mass.  He said the priest did not preach with as much energy as the ministers in Scotland.  And yet I thought Father Backhaus’ sermon had that day been “powerful,” as the Yankees would say.  He preached from the top of a packing case in front of the tent.  The audience was very numerous, standing in close order to the distance of twenty-five or thirty yards under a large gum tree.