The Swampers

I have to thank the following gentlemen for the prompt and hearty
assistance which they have given me in books, maps, and personal
information about West Australia and its Goldfields at the present hour.
having taken full advantage of such valuable information, I trust that
the reader will find this romance correct in its local colouring and
statistics. To Mr. Albert F. Calvert, M.E., F.R.G.S., &c., &c., Author
of "The Exploration of Australia"; "Western Australia and its
Goldfields"; Editor and Proprietor of The West Australian Review, for
his magnificent and exhaustive works and maps. Also to those other
friends, Messrs. Critchill; Ernest H. Gough; Graham Hill; Philip
Mennell, F.R.G.S., &c., Author of "The Coming Colony," "Dictionary of
Australian Biography," &c., &c., and Editor and Proprietor of The
British Australasian; also to Mr. John Wilson, first Mayor of
Kalgourlie. To all these gentlemen and others who have supplied me with
information I beg to offer my most grateful thanks.

I must appeal to the good sense of my West Australian readers, and trust
that they will not try to see real personages in my fictitious
creations. Kalgourlie is as yet a small, if it is a rapidly-growing
town, and each resident is known to his fellow-townsmen. The
peculiarities of mankind are so mixed and generalized that it is not at
all difficult for a reader to fix an original for my fancy study in any
spot where men and women congregate. This habit, so unfair and crippling
to an author's liberty of action, I must particularly warn you against
indulging in. I built the "Chester Hotel" entirely at my own expense,
and as my own speculation. The material was not Hessian, but a finer web
of stuff which I spun from my own brain. Sarah Hall, Rosa Chester,
Anthony Vandyke Jenkins, Bob Wallace, and my other characters, all came
from the same source, and are as Mercutio says:

"The children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy."

Therefore you must take them as such, and not localize or incarnate one
of them. On this privileged ground I strictly take my stand.

Regarding any mild criticism that I may have written throughout these
pages concerning the fair City of Sydney, I have no apology to make
other than that perhaps my various visits may have been timed
unfortunately when the inhabitants were suffering from some insensate
epidemic. Perhaps they have lucid intervals between these public and
social epidemics of folly and unreason, and that during these intervals
they act like their neighbours, Victoria, Queensland, and South
Australia, but if so, I have not had the good fortune to land amongst
them at such happy intervals; therefore I can only speak as I find
people, and the natives of Sydney have not impressed me so favourably as
their neighbour colonials of Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide have
done, either for their probity, generosity, or common sense. As for that
worm "Puffadder," with his blasphemous, brutal, and poisonous organ, I
do not think any self-respecting colonial will care how much a reptile
like this is criticised or censured. He may spit out his venom, but he
would do that under any circumstances, particularly when his victim's
back is turned upon him. His unsexed contributors may also snarl and
yelp, while his senile admirers, who have debauched the little brains
which originally they may have possessed, with his absinthe doses,
doubtless will gnash their gums and cry for gore, but as "Walker,
London," remarks: "That is noth ink."

My story is before you, sympathetic or hostile readers, and I trust it
may interest you with all its faults. The characters are purely
imaginative, but some of the incidents are drawn from facts, and in the
descriptions I have done my utmost to be exact and realistic.