1883.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
579 
CHRISTMAS ON THE AMAZON. 
Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
square, and so many sheep on it that the man who 
owned them offered to give us a hundred for my 
old ‘ Robinson Crusoe ’ I took along to read. He 
said he hadn’t seen a book except the Bible and a 
seasons, tbe load of debt upon it, and a brave, san¬ 
guine sailor brother setting out for the land of gold 
with only his health and strength, and his stout 
heart to make his fortune with.—Poor Uncle Jack 
Canvassers Wanted 
to solicit Subscriptions every where for the Amer¬ 
ican Agriculturist, English or German. Profitable 
work for men, women, and children. For full par¬ 
ticulars address the Publishers, 751 Broadway.N. Y. 
give you a boat-load of fresh or smoked fish for a 
shirt that ’ma would cut up for rag carpets. Uncle 
Jack always saves up his old clothes to trade for 
provisions when he goes that way; don’t you, 
Uncle Jack ?”—“ They come in handy, down there, 
I must allow,” answered the captain.—“ Why, the 
chap at the little banana farm gave us a cabin full, 
don’t you remember, for your old high hat. How 
is this for a Christmas dinner? Baked dolphin, 
that I caught myself that morning ; a parrot pot- 
pie that the banana man had shot the paiTots for; 
and fresh bananas. You can’t get up a Christmas 
dinner like that hereabouts, I’ll warrant!”—“We 
can get turkeys here, though,” said Tommy, “and 
mince pie.”—“And we don’t have to kill any poor 
Polly’s,” added Mattie, in whose bedroom some¬ 
thing which looked very much like a parrot in a 
cage, was waiting to be discovered as a Christmas 
reminder of her wandering brother. “If I only 
had a Polly now, I’d like to see any one eat him.” 
“So you had your first Christmas dinner on the 
Amazon, Ned,” interrupted mamma. 
“Yes, ma’am; and next day we got to Para, 
where we left our cargo, and took another on board 
for London. From London we went to the Cape 
of Good Hope, and from there to Australia, where 
we had our second Christmas. Only think of it, 
two Christmases without a flake of snow, and the 
sun so hot that we ate in our shirt sleeves.”— 
“ What did you eat in Australia ?” queried Tommy, 
who had put a couple of apples in the ashes, and 
was watching them sputter.—“Mutton stew!”— 
“Don’t they have anything but mutton to eat in 
Australia, on Christmas?”—“ Where we were, we 
were lucky to get that. I was with the mate, and 
going up the Murray river in a farmer’s boat, who 
had sold Uncle Jack a lot of wool and was going to 
fetch another load down.” 
By this time Tommy’s apples were done, and he 
was too busy with them to ask any questions. 
Dick, however, said : “Australia is a great country, 
isn’t it, Ned?”—“ From what I saw of it, it must 
be. Only think of a sheep farm twenty miles 
last year’s almanac for six months, out in the back 
country of Australia where he lived.” 
" But how about the gold mine ?” interposed Tom¬ 
my, before commencing his second apple.—“ Oh ! 
that’s Uncle Jack’s story,” said Ned, laughing. 
had not made a fortune, but he had saved the home, 
whose hospitable hearth sent its warm Christmas 
welcome out to him to-night, as if to thank him 
for his unselfishness and love. “ Well,” the captain 
went on, knocking the ashes from his pipe against 
CHRISTMAS-BAY IN AUSTRALIA. 
Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
Everyone looked at Uncle Jack, of course. 
“I reckon I’d be a heap better off if it wasn’t my 
story,” he began. “ You remember very well 
when I went to California, don’t you, Martha?” 
Mamma said she did, and the memory that came 
with the reply sent a soft light into her eyes. She 
6aw in the leaping flames the poor old farm, the bad 
his toe, “after I sent that money on to father, to 
lift the mortgage with, I went back to the mines 
again, and there I worked with my partner, Harry 
Wilkins, month in and month out, for a bare living. 
It seemed to us, that all the gold in the earth had 
been dug out, when a little, aguish Frenchman, 
that had been digging up among the mountains a 
year or more, came to me one day and told me he 
had struck it at last. He showed me a lot of quartz 
from the place he had been working, and there was 
gold in it, sure enough. But ‘ he wanted money to 
get to San Francisco and have it assayed, and he 
hadn’t any,’ so he offered us a fair half of his mine, 
to help him out. We had a few hundreds of dol¬ 
lars saved up, and we gave them to him. He went 
off with his quartz, and we moved to his mine. 
That was the last we ever saw of him, and all the 
gold we ever found in the mine, was in a few more 
pieces of quartz like what he had shown us.”— 
“How was that?” asked mamma.—“ Well,” replied 
Uncle Jack, rubbing his chin softly and looking 
into the fire, “ the fellow had ' salted ’ the claim. 
He had bought some good quartz from another 
mine, and sold us on the strength of it. We dug 
until we began to starve, and then I went to sea 
again. Wilkins stayed there, and being in San 
Francisco this time last year, Ned and I went up 
through the great mountains, to see him.” 
“ And was he mining yet ? ” asked mamma. 
“Well,” answered Uncle Jack, slowly, “yes; 
but he had stopped digging for gold, and taken to 
digging for crops, and he’s got the finest farm in 
that section of California. He gets water out of 
the pit we dug for gold, and it’s the best he ever 
tasted. It ought to be, considering what it cost us.” 
■x- * «• -x- * * 
“I say, Ned,” called Tommy, in the darkness of 
the big room under the roof, where the boys slept— 
“Say away,” responded Ned sleepily, from his cot. 
—“What did you get for dinner that Christmas 
you heard the wolves howl, up in California?”— 
Ned’s only answer to this question was a snore. 
