Tell us the road to fortune."
The agent Lohe, who for each able-bodied Chinaman whom he secured,
received a hundred sapecks, agreed to tell Lihoa the road for the
reason that he was "his cousin and was glad to do him a little
service". He pictured to him a land, bearing the barbaric name
Australia, which the "devils from the West" had discovered many days'
journey away beyond the islands to the south, where the gold lay in the
fields like the stones on the island of Hongkong, and where great
nuggets, as large as a man's head, were to be had. This Goldland "the
devils from the West" wanted for themselves, but the priest of the God,
in whose cell he had just been, said that this gold could be taken away
only by the sons of the Celestial Kingdom, that the treasures of this
land belonged to the Chinese, and not to the barbarians of the West.
The sly discoverers of the Goldland had come to get the Chinese to
bring these lumps of gold to their ships, where the men from the West
and the sons of the Celestial Kingdom would divide the spoils. The
rich Natse was out in search of three hundred men to bring this gold
from the distant land to the south.
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