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Towering over all rise the poppet-heads and bins of the mine. Goats take a siesta beneath the scrubby trees, explore the rubbish heaps, and clamber about the dump; fowls of more breeds than Joseph's coat knew colours, employ themselves in the dusty places, or keep the shade of the broken rocks. Here and there an optimist nurses a garden, and finds reward in a few drooping vegetables. Goats and fowls peer through the netting with evil in their hearts. This is Surprise Valley to the stranger eye.

Three score burnt men and a handful of shabby women here find living. They dig for the green copper hidden jealously in the bosom of the hills. From distant parts they have drifted, they stay awhile; again they drift; but the camp endures, and the wilderness is powerless to harm it. Forward and backward from the railroad, a hundred miles away, the weekly coach crawls on its journey, keeping open the track to civilization, and bringing such news and comforts as that world has leisure to send. The mail bags disgorge stale papers; the driver delivers stale news. Round and round turns the wheel of affairs. A whistle begins the day for this community: a whistle ends it. Deep in the earth the men labor with hammer and drill. Overhead the women bend at their pots and pans, and peg the weekly washings under cloudless skies. The children, untaught, unchecked, patter among the stones and tussocks, and send abroad their cries. Summer follows winter. The suns climb up; in season the rains roar down; the frost comes in its turn. But the men of Surprise Valley dig always in the bowels of the hills, and the women busy themselves about their doors.