THE CONFUSION OF 1852, 1853, 1854 371 



A few of these, and at first it was a pathetic sight, sat on the 

 edge of the wharf with their boxes opened, trying with wistful 

 glances to tempt the hurrying passers-by with bargains wrung out 

 of their distress. Guns and pistols, suggestive of a capacity 

 for heroic deeds ; good clothes that represented loving self-denial 

 of parents and friends on the other side of the world; books 

 with affectionate parting inscriptions ; watches and trinkets that 

 had been prized as valedictory souvenirs; it was hard to have 

 carried them 16,000 miles to have to use them as a bribe to the 

 unsympathising strangers, within whose gates the owners had 

 dreamed of finding an easy share in the much-vaunted prosperity. 

 If they could but get to the diggings it might yet be theirs, and 

 moleskins and a flannel shirt were good enough for the trial. 

 Money was the one thing needed the means to pay one's way, 

 and in the meanwhile to get the daily meal. Every other con- 

 sideration must be sacrificed, and sacrificed it was. The example 

 soon found imitators, and when the three or four impoverished 

 vendors were multiplied into fifty or sixty, it was soon bruited 

 abroad that marvellous bargains could be secured in the throng of 

 mendicant pedlars, whose gathering-place in front of the Customs 

 House was ironically called " Eag Fair ". Then the pathos died 

 out of it. The sharpest of the small shopkeepers found it a con- 

 venient place for renewing their stocks at prices which left them 

 ten times the profit of a more regular trade. It became a veritable 

 al fresco bazaar, with noisy squabbling and wheedling disputation. 

 The passion for cheapness, so dominant in the British housewife, 

 supplied such a stream of customers that at last the shopkeepers 

 revolted, and appealed to the Corporation to suppress this unfair 

 competition with those who paid such oppressive rentals. It was 

 alleged, and probably with truth, that when the impedimenta of 

 the real immigrant began to give out, some low-class brokers and 

 ingenious swindlers promptly supplied the market with stolen 

 goods, and even hired some of the greenest of the new-comers to 

 pose as the distressed owners. So when the police had made one 

 or two charges of this character, the civil power prohibited any 

 further sales in the street, and " Bag Fair " like Canvas Town 



passed into the stage of tradition. 



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