The Parson of Jackman´s Gulch E-Book

Arthur Conan Doyle

• Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 27

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In isolated Jackman´s Gulch, amid the Australian gold rush, the arrival of an enigmatic preacher transforms the turbulent daily lives of the prospectors. Amid taverns, gambling, and violent disputes, his presence awakens order, curiosity, and suspicion in a community marked by excess and constant danger.

Leseprobe

The Parson of Jackman´s Gulch

Arthur Conan Doyle

SYNOPSIS

In isolated Jackman´s Gulch, amid the Australian gold rush, the arrival of an enigmatic preacher transforms the turbulent daily lives of the prospectors. Amid taverns, gambling, and violent disputes, his presence awakens order, curiosity, and suspicion in a community marked by excess and constant danger.

Keywords

Gold mining, Disguise, Deception

NOTICE

This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.

Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.

The Parson of Jackman´s Gulch

He was known in the Gulch as the Reverend Elias B. Hopkins, but it was generally understood that the title was an honorary one, extorted by his many eminent qualities, and not borne out by any legal claim which he could adduce. "The Parson" was another of his sobriquets, which was sufficiently distinctive in a land where the flock was scattered and the shepherds few. To do him justice, he never pretended to have received any preliminary training for the ministry, or any orthodox qualification to practice it. "We're all working in the claim of the Lord," he remarked one day, "and it don't matter a cent whether we're hired for the job or whether we waltzes in on our own account," a piece of rough imagery which appealed directly to the instincts of Jackman's Gulch. It is quite certain that during the first few months his presence had a marked effect in diminishing the excessive use both of strong drinks and of stronger adjectives which had been characteristic of the little mining settlement. Under his tuition, men began to understand that the resources of their native language were less limited than they had supposed, and that it was possible to convey their impressions with accuracy without the aid of a gaudy halo of profanity.

We were certainly in need of a regenerator at Jackman's Gulch about the beginning of '53. Times were flush then over the whole colony, but nowhere flusher than there. Our material prosperity had had a bad effect upon our morals. The camp was a small one, lying rather better than a hundred and twenty miles to the north of Ballarat, at a spot where a mountain torrent finds its way down a rugged ravine on its way to join the Arrowsmith River. History does not relate who the original Jackman may have been, but at the time I speak of the camp it contained a hundred or so adults, many of whom were men who had sought an asylum there after making more civilized mining centers too hot to hold them. They were a rough, murderous crew, hardly leavened by the few respectable members of society who were scattered among them.