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 Using
Massive
Digital
Libraries
ALA TechSource purchases fund advocacy,
awareness, and accreditation programs
for library professionals worldwide.
 Using
Massive
Digital
Libraries
A LITA Guide

Andrew Weiss

An imprint of the American Library Association

Chicago  2014
Andrew Weiss is the digital services librarian at the Oviatt Library, California
State University, Northridge. His professional areas of expertise include scholarly
communication, digital repository development, and open access advocacy. His
past research has focused on digital libraries, digitization, and open access publish-
ing. He also has great interest in the culture, literature, and history of librarianship
in Japan. He earned his master’s degree in library science from the University of
Hawaii at Manoa.

Ryan James lives in Honolulu and works for the University of Hawai’i at Manoa
Libraries. He is pursuing a PhD in Communications and Information Science.

© 2014 by the American Library Association.

Printed in the United States of America

18 17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1

Extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of the information in this book;
however, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein.

ISBNs: 978-0-8389-1235-5 (paper); 978-0-8389-1973-6 (PDF); 978-0-8389-1974-3

(ePub); 978-0-8389-9624-9 (Kindle). For more information on digital formats, visit the
ALA Store at alastore.ala.org and select eEditions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weiss, Andrew, 1971-
Using massive digital libraries : a LITA guide / Andrew Weiss. — First edition.
pages cm. — (LITA guides)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8389-1235-5 (alk. paper)
1. Digital libraries. 2. Libraries—Special collections—Computer network resources.
3. Libraries—Electronic information sources. 4. Scholarly electronic publishing. 5. Scholarly
web sites. 6. Digital libraries—Collection development. 7. Google Library Project—Case
studies. I. Library and Information Technology Association (U.S.). II. Title.
Z4080W43 2014
025.042—dc23 2014009541
Book design in Berkeley and Avenir. Cover image © Zeed/Shutterstok, Inc.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
To Akiko and Mia
 Contents

Preface ix

n Part 1 n
Background

1 A Brief History of Digital Libraries—or, How Did

We Get Here? 3

2 Massive Digital Libraries—or, Where Are We? 15

3 Major Players and Their Characteristics—or, Who’s

at the Party? 33

4 Impact on Librarianship—or, How Do I Deal with This? 51

n Part 2 n
The Philosophical Issues

5 The Copyright Conundrum—or, How Is This Allowed? 69

6 Collection Development—or, How Did I Get This? 87

7 Collection Diversity—or, Why Is This Missing? 95

8 Access—or, Why Can’t I Get This? 105

  vii
 Contents

n Part 3 n
Practical Applications

9 Using MDLs in Libraries—or, To What End? 125

10 Four MDL Studies 139

Index 159

  viii
 Preface

T his book is a study of provocation and reactionism, futurism and its shifting
paradigms, foretellings and forebodings, and above all else an examination of
new worlds. In the past ten to fifteen years modern societies have undergone major
shifts in how they accumulate, produce, and distribute information. Increasingly,
the Internet is the primary source of our information, entertainment, news, gossip,
and social interaction. What one might call “legacy” media (e.g., print newspapers,
television, radio, telephony, and even aging digital formats like Zip drives, MO
discs, DVDs, and the like) have endured some of the more visible challenges to their
methods of creating and distributing information, and to the business models of
the companies that distribute them. Other institutions have been equally affected,
but in ways that are less visible or tangential to their core missions.
This book is an attempt to explore what libraries—one of the many institutions
affected by these changes—will look like as the twenty-first century progresses. It
is impossible to address all the pertinent issues in one volume, and no scholar of
librarianship would claim to fully understand all the changes happening. Yet the
pillars that support the library as one of civilization’s “big ideas” are weaker now
than they have ever been, having been eroded from external and internal forces
that are economic, ideological, and legal in nature.
It is left to us to look to the far boundaries of current traditional library mod-
els and choose a newly developing area of library and information science that
shows the promise of change, for good and for ill, in the field. It is hoped that the

Ryan James contributed to this preface.

  ix
 Preface

exploration of one such narrow area will help provide insight into the possible
wider changes that are likely to come in future decades.
This book examines what Ryan James and I in previous studies have together
defined as massive digital libraries (MDLs). This term is still unsettled, having
been coined only recently. However, the need for new terminology hinges upon
the desire to describe what we believe to be a new class of digital libraries, which,
though we admit are rooted in past models, are flourishing and will only grow
larger and more influential.
A massive digital library is a collection of organized information large enough
to rival the size of the world’s largest bricks-and-mortar libraries in terms of book
collections. The examples examined in this book range from hundreds of thou-
sands of books to tens of millions. This basic definition of an MDL, however, is in
some ways insufficient. It describes what an MDL is in some ways but says nothing
about how it is similar and dissimilar from more traditional libraries. What we can
use it for, then, is as a starting point for discussion. As the book progresses this
  x definition is refined further to make it more usable and relevant. This book will
introduce more characteristics of MDLs and examine how they affect the current
traditional library.
The creation of MDLs has led to what might be called an existential crisis in
librarianship. Some might say that MDLs will eventually lead to the end of tradi-
tional libraries. While this author agrees with this in part, I do not necessarily share
the doom and gloom of some commenters.
There are very few traditional bricks-and-mortar libraries that can be lumped
together into a single group with just one set of uniform characteristics identifying
what the library should be. The library is instead a concept—the “big idea”—that
has been implemented in many different ways for thousands of years. The new-
ness of MDLs gives us a chance to critically examine these new entities to see how
they fit within traditional librarianship while also allowing us to reexamine what
a library is now and how it might change in the future.
MDLs are here to stay. They are part of the future. They are provocative on mul-
tiple fronts, challenging hidebound assumptions about the library’s centrality as a
space for study and the housing of physical books and volumes. If the concept of
the library and its intellectual underpinnings are to persist in the foreseeable future,
they will need to be adapted to the reality of current conditions to avoid diminish-
ment. For those who believe such changes spell doom to the library as we know it,
we can only suggest—with but the tiniest tip of the tongue in our cheek—that the
proverbial canary may just as easily become the canard in the coal mine.
 Preface

Some readers may disagree with the ideas and frameworks presented in this
book. That is a good thing. We would prefer to provoke a spirited discussion of
the topic in the hopes that MDLs gain both greater respect for their positive aspects
and astute criticism for their missteps and overreaches.
We hope that readers will find that the need for the term MDL is here, as well as
become more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of MDLs as digital information
tools. Once librarians are able to understand what they are, how they function, and
how they are created and aggregated, they can better assess them for multiple pur-
poses. It is hoped also that those reading the book are perhaps inspired to develop
new ways of researching MDLs. We hope a new generation of librarians will foster
a new approach to these tools and consider developing their own.
We neither despair about the future nor approach it with naive enchantment.
Our approach is based in curiosity. We wish to examine where we are, how we got
here, and where we might be going. The goal is to explore the history of MDLs,
what they currently are, and issues their creation raises for library science today.
As for the future of libraries as a whole, we leave the writing of speculative fiction   xi
to others more imaginative than ourselves.
I would like to acknowledge the following people who made sections of this
book possible: Akiko Gonoue Weiss, for her assistance with some Japanese transla-
tion; Elizabeth Altman and Eric Willis, for their help with the Google Books display
web widget of the integrated library system (ILS) of California State University,
Northridge; the staff and librarians at the Keio University–Mita Campus Libraries,
for their hospitality and cooperation during the interview process; and Annaliese
Taylor, Edward Fox, Paul Marchionini, and Paul Heald, for allowing the use and
adaptation of their images.

Special Acknowledgment: Developing

the Concept of the Massive Digital Library

I would like to acknowledge my debt to Ryan James, who has cowritten several
chapters as well as this preface. Ryan has been central to the development and
shaping of the book as well as its central concept. The idea of the massive digital
library as outlined in this book is the result of numerous discussions between us
over the course of several years. This book could not have been written without
his valuable input, insight, and above all, friendship.
 1
PART 1

Background
 Chapter One

A Brief History of Libraries—

or, How Did We Get Here?

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books   3

there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

—Ecclesiastes 12:12

On the Binding Properties of Libraries—

Keeping the Forces of Entropy
and Disorder at Bay

The ancient Greeks had an “app for that,” or at least a story. From Pandora to
Prometheus the heroes in their myths have trouble with powerful inventions—by
misusing them, stealing them from peevish gods, or failing to grasp their future
ramifications. Theseus, for example, trapped in the Minotaur’s maze, escaped only
by following a length string that Ariadne had secretly given him. That slender string
kept Theseus linked to the outside world as he penetrated deeper into Daedalus’s
labyrinth and into the Minotaur’s lair. Even though Theseus was eventually forced
to abandon Ariadne on the island of Naxos and inadvertently drove his father to
suicide, he was the lucky one. Everyone else who took on the maze and the Mino-
taur died in the process. We all know what happened to Daedalus’s son, too, when
the father-son duo fled the half-crazed kingdom of Minos on wings made of wax
and feathers (Nowadays some precocious programmer might call this “i-carus,”
the app that guarantees digital filial obedience.)
 PART 1: Background

In some ways the myth of Theseus mirrors the contemporary Internet user
experience. The myth suggests that any system—be it physical, psychological, or
informational—that confounds its users becomes a dangerous one. Losing the con-
nection with the real world in the twists and turns of life is an experience akin to
death. What is at stake in the current incarnation of the web is the basis of knowl-
edgeable existence itself. When one can no longer draw the thread between pieces
of verifiable information, meaning gets lost, and that loss of meaning contributes to
the death of knowledge and the ultimate decline of a culture. Think “digital Dark
Ages,” but not as a loss of access to information—as an undifferentiated glut of
bits and bytes jumbled together and reconstituted at will by unseen and unknown
forces whose motives are not discernible.
Libraries have made the attempt for centuries to ensure that the strings bind-
ing information together remain intact. In the past, this was easier, as the amount
of published and archival work was much lower and therefore more manageable.
Binding books; creating physical spaces as safe repositories; and hand copying
  4 or printing multiple, high-quality versions were all effective ways of preserving
knowledge and ensuring that it remained bound to its culture and rooted in truth.
Of course, the calamities of history—including the burning and ransacking of
libraries; cultural revolutions; and even moths, roaches, and book beetles—have
taken their toll on the strings binding traditions together. The lost works of Aristo-
tle and the meager fragments of Sappho are but two examples of the Fate-severed
strings of Western culture. The ancient library of Alexandria, which in its prime
supposedly held five hundred thousand volumes within its walls, stands as the
great example of a lost culture (Knuth 2003).
Yet even in antiquity people despaired at information overload and the lack
of facile resource management. In her 2011 book Too Much to Know: Managing
Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age Blair suggests that every age has had to
deal with information overload.1 Ecclesiastes 12:12 tells readers to be cautious of
too many books.2 Hippocrates in 400 BC tells us, “Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio
praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile,” which can be translated
as “Technique long, life short, opportunity fleeting, experience perilous, and deci-
sion difficult.” Contrary to the oversimplified translation “Art lasts, life [is] short,”
Hippocrates instead may have been suggesting that because the acquisition of a skill
or a body of knowledge takes a long time, human life is too short in comparison,
and the mind is too limited to wield all this learning to perfection.
By the thirteenth century learned people were trying to cope with ever more
information. The Dominican Vincent of Beauvais laments on “the multitude of
 Chapter 1:
5: A Brief History of Libraries—or, How Did We Get Here?

books, the shortness of time and the slipperiness of memory.” The printing press
was still two hundred years away, yet people felt dismay at the growth of informa-
tion. The problem has only grown exponentially since then, even as new technolo-
gies have been developed to better meet the problems of information overload.

Enter the Digital Dragon

Jumping ahead to contemporary times, we see that digital technology, no less world
altering than Gutenberg’s printing press, has transformed information culture even
more. Libraries have in turn made the necessary transition from the physical world
to the virtual world, but this technological shift brings practical and philosophical
changes. Where the past model for libraries was based on scarcity, new models
are based on abundance. Dempsey describes current libraries as moving from an
“outside-in” model, in which resources are collected in situ, to an “inside-out”
model, in which access points may be available within a library but the actual   5
resources exist outside its walls.3
In the past, libraries struggled to provide as many informational sources as
they could with the resources they had. Now, with online resources—some open,
but most proprietary in nature—dominating the information landscape, libraries
have had to cope with the proverbial water hose turned on at full blast. On the
one hand, the amount of information available has increased beyond anyone’s
imagination. Services such as Wikipedia, Google Books, and Internet Archive, as
well as the open access movement, with its gold open access journals and green
open access repositories have each removed many of the barriers to information,
especially location and cost. On the other hand, access to information without the
ability to distinguish quality, relevancy, and overall comprehensiveness diminishes
its impact.

The Digital Library—Early Visions

The discussion thus far has been limited primarily to resource access and the prob-
lems of information management in traditional bricks-and-mortar libraries, with
a brief nod toward digital models. However, this doesn’t address where the idea
for a virtual library began. Certain technologies, economies of scale, and societal
advancements needed to exist before the dream of a digital library (DL) could be
 PART 1: Background

realized. As in all historical events that seem inevitable, we will see that a large
number of developments had to occur simultaneously before the final product
could be realized.
The digital library wouldn’t exist without the modern fundamental concept and
philosophy of the term digital. While this is a word that appears even in Middle
English—referring mostly to counting numbers less than ten fingers—according
to the online version of Oxford English Dictionary (www.oed.com), the first men-
tion of the modern concept of digital is in the US Patent 2,207,537 from 1940,
which defined the idea as “the transmission of direct current digital impulses over
a long line the characteristics of the line tend to mutilate the wave shape.” From
this patent, essentially redefining the word as a series of on-off, zero-one switches,
the modern digital era was born.
The idea for the first digital library, however, is a little more difficult to pin
down. The first mention, and likely most influential inspiration for modern com-
puting, is the Memex from Vannevar Bush’s well-known 1945 article “As We May
  6 Think.” Bush described his invention:

[It is] a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and
communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted
with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supple-
ment to his memory.
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated
from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works.
On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be
projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of but-
tons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.4

He provides an astonishingly clear approximation of what the desktop personal

computer eventually became in the 1980s and 1990s. However, this vision and its
reality took some time to meet in the middle.
By the 1950s and 1960s visions of an electronic or digital library—much clearer
than Vannevar Bush’s vision—start to come into focus. Looking at Licklider’s Librar-
ies of the Future from 1965, one can start to see the engineer-centric philosophy
of stripping away the book and print materials as an information delivery system
from the core of library services. Licklider shows an apt prescience for the main
issues of contemporary information science:
 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Libraries—or, How Did We Get Here?

We delimited the scope of the study, almost at the outset, to functions,

classes of information, and domains of knowledge in which the items
of basic interest are not the print or paper, and not the words and sentences
themselves—but the facts, concepts, principles, and ideas that lie behind the
visible and tangible aspects of documents. (Licklider 1965, my emphasis)

Working in an era of limited computing capacity as well as minimal digital

imaging, Licklider and his colleagues were concerned with the transmission of the
essential components of the document, be it literature, scholarship, or even a basic
list. In other words, they focused on the book’s data and metadata, its context, and
its information, establishing the way that most digital projects would later handle
texts, by stripping them of the extraneous physical properties that interfere with
the so-called purity of the information conveyed. It also points toward document
descriptions and other text markup strategies, such as XML, HTML, and XHTML,
that later become standards in the field.
Licklider is especially prescient in his suggestion that libraries of the future   7
should not focus as much on physical methods of information delivery—on the
“freight and storage” as Douglas Englebart called it in 1963—such as the book and
the physical bookshelf, which are, in his mind, incredibly inefficient on a mass
scale. Instead, libraries should reject these physical trappings in favor of better
methods of information and information processing. The future was promising for
what he called “precognitive systems,” which later became the basis of information
retrieval (Licklider 1965; Sapp 2002).
He also writes, somewhat reminiscent of Bush in 1945, that engineers “need to
substitute for the book a device that will make it easy to transmit information with-
out transporting material, and that will not only present information to people but
also process it for them” (Licklider 1965, 6). Here he anticipates what eventually
became machine-readable text schemas, but it took at least a generation, beginning
in the 1960s with the invention of ASCII code, and running through the 1970s and
1980s, to fully incorporate the digital into this new “text cycle.” Project Gutenberg,
one of the original digital libraries to focus on print books, is a great example of
the types of digital library stemming from this period.5
The 1970s and 1980s were essential in the development of the tools that would
help with the generation of digital texts. As Hillesund and Noring (2006, para.
9) write, “By the 1970s, keyboards and computer screens became the interface
between man and computer. Beginning in the 1980s, powerful word processors
 PART 1: Background

and desktop publishing applications were developed. The writing and production
phases of the text cycle were thus digitized, but the applications were primarily
designed to facilitate print production.”
Information retrieval systems began at this time as well with the appearance of
Lexis for legal information, Dialog, Orbit, and BRS/Search systems (Lesk 2012).
Even though the Library of Congress had pioneered electronic book indexing with
the MARC record in 1969, it wasn’t until the 1980s that the online catalog became
widespread (Lesk 2012). By the early 1990s the field of information retrieval and
its dream of the digital library were on their way to full realization.

Digital Libraries—The Vision

Becomes a (Virtual) Reality

When Edward Fox in 1993 looked back on his early days at Massachusetts Institute
  8 of Technology (MIT) under Licklider, he was able to say with great certainty that
“technological advances in computing and communication now make digital
libraries feasible; economic and political motivation make them inevitable” (79). He
had good reason to be optimistic in his assessment. By this point in time ARPAnet
had been around for twenty-four years, the Internet had been born, hypertext
developed as a force in the 1980s under such projects as Ted Nelson’s Xanadu,
Brown University’s IRIS Project, and Apple’s HyperCard (Fox 1993). The 1990s
also saw the development of the HTML protocol, which then gave way to XML and
its strong, yet interoperable, framework (Fox 1993). Along with the philosophical
framework and software development in the 1980s and 1990s, there was also
developing a solid information infrastructure and network from such schemes
as Ethernet, asynchronous transfer modes that pushed data transfer speeds from
thousands of bits per second to billions (Fox 1993).
By the early to mid-1990s many publishers, libraries, and universities were able
to try their hand at creating their own digital collections. Oxford began the Oxford
Text Archive, the Library of Congress developed its American Memory Project, and
even the French government had planned to digitally scan one million books in
the French National Library (Fox 1993).
At this time, multiple visions of what a digital library might entail were
also beginning to take form. A digital library was at this point “a broad term
encompassing scholarly archives, text collections, cultural heritage, and educational
resource sites” (Hillesund and Noring 2006, para. 1). There was little consensus
 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Libraries—or, How Did We Get Here?

on a specific application and definition. Yet many of the common signposts on

the current library digital landscape were in their infancy by this time, and each
provided a distinct and important model for a DL. For example, a proto–subject
repository for computer science departments to share, archive, and provide
search functions for technical reports was developed as a joint project between
Virginia Tech, Old Dominion, and SUNY Buffalo. The University of Michigan was
pioneering electronic theses and dissertations, and Carnegie Mellon, a full eleven
years before Google’s book digitization announcement, was already looking into
“distributed digital libraries” with its Plexus Project, with the goal of “developing
large-scale digital libraries using hypermedia technology” (Akscyn and McCracken
1993, 11).

Digital Libraries—Uneven Growth,

Web 2.0, and Expanding Definitions
  9
By the late 1990s, however, the landscape had grown by leaps and bounds. Google
had entered the fray with its revolutionary search engine algorithm, the Internet
had exploded on the scene and into most homes, MIT had developed its first
DSpace institutional repository system, and e-books were in their infancy.
In examining the landscape of the digital library (which most practitioners
now called “DL”) as it was in 1999, Marchionini and Fox (1999) noted that digital
libraries had entered a second phase, though they had also begun to see some
lags in the development of digital libraries. They posited four specific dimensions
in the progress of digital libraries: community, technology, services, and content.
As figure 1.1 demonstrates, in their estimation, “progress along these [four]
dimensions is uneven, mainly driven by work in technology and content with
research and development related to services and especially community lagging”
(Marchionini and Fox 1999, 219).
It has turned out that a viable “community,” the element most lagging in this
depiction, was really just around the corner. Web 2.0, or social media, was the
missing ingredient in the development of digital libraries and their applicability to
particular communities. Digital projects would wind up better serving communities
by utilizing such technologies as RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, and the other
multiple “social” web applications.
The definition of the digital library had expanded by the early 2000s to include a
large number of online initiatives and digitization projects that included things such
 PART 1: Background

Community Technology

Services Content

  10 Figure 1.1

The four dimensions of digital library progress.
Image redrawn with permission by authors after Marchionini and Fox (1999).

as archival collections, cultural sites, educational resources, and even institutional

repositories.
Scholarly archives included digital collections of scanned materials, such as
a digital archive, collections of published and unpublished materials, as well as
finding aids and other digital text initiatives. Open educational resource sites
such as MERLOT and the California Digital Library began to gather learning
objects, university scholarship, and other class-related materials. Institutional
repositories, which had begun in the late 1990s, burgeoned once an open-source
software solution, DSpace, became widely available and supported by various
initiatives. Many institutional repository’s collections contain university theses
and dissertations (both digitized and born digital), as well as digitized books and
book chapters, in addition to the usual peer-reviewed faculty journal articles. These
disparate collections of material constitute digital libraries in the sense that they
are gathering digital images and OCR text together and indexing them for complex
searching (Lesk 2012).
A typical example of the digital library emerging during this phase of development
was the International Children’s Digital Library (http://en.childrenslibrary.org). This
project initially began with about 1,000 digitized children’s books. It expanded
 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Libraries—or, How Did We Get Here?

from that time to more than 4,600 books. Its organization has taken care to
curate a small but diverse collection of children’s books. It also devised uniquely
child-centric methods of searching, including employing a bright, cartoonish user
interface and developing a search to identify books by the color of their covers

Digital Libraries—E-Books, MDLs, and Dustbins

Once social media began to affect online accessibility and change how users
approached online content, digital libraries reached a critical mass. Around 2005
the aggregation of content from various sources—crowdsourcing, in a sense—
began to have an impact on content development. This, as we will see in the next
chapter, was spurred in large part by Google and its ambitious announcement that
it would digitize every book in the world (Jeanneney 2007).
However, along with the current aggregation of digitized content, born-digital
books have also begun to drive content development. At the present date, e-books   11
and their content-delivery hardware devices are starting to finally take off as viable
alternatives to print books. In one study released in 2012, the number of Americans
using e-books increased from 16 percent to 23 percent in one year.6 It may be that
the third phase of the digital library will also see the simultaneous development
of mobile devices providing access to the traditional bound long-form narrative.
Already books of many types—including directories, textbooks, trade publications,
and travel guides—are born digital. This lack of physical form will have a profound
impact on the way that people use and process “linear, narrative book-length
treatments” (Hahn 2008, 20). Certainly new technologies are adopted and adapted
in ways that their original creators never intended. It remains to be seen how and
in what manner these technologies will be implemented most effectively.
To end this section, it is important to remember that cautionary tales exist
even in the digital library world, despite its relatively recent appearance. One
of the largest digitization projects during the late 1990s and early 2000s was
Carnegie Mellon’s Million Books Project. By 2007, it had finished its mission
of digitizing and placing online a full collection of books in various languages.
Unfortunately, much like the ICDL and its small-scale collection, the Million
Books Project has been superseded by the next generation of massive digital
libraries. Currently the software and servers for the Million Books Project—now
known as the Universal Digital Library (www.ulib.org)—are not well maintained.
Sustainability, so eloquently defined and described on the Universal Digital Library’s
 PART 1: Background

informational pages, is proving to be much less possible than anticipated. The

unclear fate of this project—it’s still available online but has neither been updated
nor improved upon—provides us a glimpse into the likely future of many current
digital projects. They become more examples of technology relegated to Trotsky’s
“dustbin of history,” now providing more of a precariously unstable web history
lesson than a useful service.

References
Akscyn, Robert, and Donald McCracken. “PLEXUS: A Hypermedia Architecture
for Large-Scale Digital Libraries.” In SIGDOC ’93: Proceedings of the 11th Annual
International Conference on Systems Documentation, 11–20. New York: Association for
Computing Machinery, 1993. doi: 10.1145/166025.166028.
Englebart, Douglas. 1963. “A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man’s
Intellect.” In Vistas in Information Handling, edited by P. Howerton and D. Weeks,
1:1–29. Washington, DC: Spartan Books.

  12
Fox, Edward. 1993. “Digital Libraries.” IEEE Computer 26, no. 11: 79–81.
Hahn, Trudi Bellardo. 2008. “Mass Digitization: Implications for Preserving the Scholarly
Record.” Library Resources and Technical Services 52, no. 1: 18–26.
Hillesund, Terje, and Jon E. Noring. 2006. “Digital Libraries and the Need for a Universal
Digital Publication Format.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 9, no. 2.
Jeanneney, Jean-Noël. 2007. Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from
Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. First published in French in 2005.
Knuth, Rebecca. 2003. Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in
the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Lesk, Michael. 2012. “A Personal History of Digital Libraries.” Library Hi Tech 30, no. 4:
592–603.
Licklider, J. C. R. 1965. Libraries of the Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Marchionini, Gary, and Edward A. Fox. 1999. “Progress toward Digital Libraries:
Augmentation through Integration.” Information Processing and Management 35, no. 3:
219–225.
Sapp, Gregg. 2002. A Brief History of the Future of Libraries: An Annotated Bibliography.
Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

NOTES
1. See Jacob Soll, “Note This,” review of Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly
Information before the Modern Age, by Ann M. Blair, New Republic, August 24, 2011,
www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/94175/ann-blair-managing
-scholarly-information.
 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Libraries—or, How Did We Get Here?

2. Ann Blair, “Information Overload’s 2,300-Year-Old History,” HBR Blog Network (blog),
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/information_overloads_2300-yea.html.
3. Lorcan Dempsey, “‘The Inside Out Library: Scale, Learning, Engagement’: Slides
Explain How Today’s Libraries Can More Effectively Respond to Change,” OCLC
Research, February 5, 2013, www.oclc.org/research/news/2013/02-05.html.
4. Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1945, www.theatlantic.
com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/.
5. Michael Hart, “The History and Philosophy of Project Gutenberg,” Project Gutenberg,
August 1992, www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_History_and_Philosophy
_of_Project_Gutenberg_by_Michael_Hart.
6. Lee Rainie and Maeve Duggan, “E-Book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading
Declines,” Pew Internet and American Life Project, December 27, 2012, http://
libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/12/27/e-book-reading-jumps-print-book-reading
-declines/.

  13
 Chapter Two

Massive Digital Libraries—

or, Where Are We?

Me, poor man, my library / Was dukedom large enough.   15

—William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Defining the Massive Digital Library

This chapter examines the intellectual and theoretical assumptions about digital
libraries to explain the need for establishing the massive digital library (MDL) as a
differentiating concept. In previous publications, authors introduced this term to
describe the digital libraries they analyzed in their work, including Google Books,
HathiTrust, Internet Archive, and the Open Content Alliance (Weiss and James
2013a, 2013b). This term has proved to be useful in distinguishing the subjects
from digital libraries in general, but further elucidation is warranted.
This brings us to the question, how does one define a massive digital library?
To answer this question in depth, we must first look at the development of the
digital library from the twenty-first century onward through multiple perspectives:
collection sizes, methods of acquisition and collection development, collection
content, collection diversity, content accessibility, metadata, and means of digital
preservation.
There are fundamental questions to be explored, as well, such as the following:
What is a library? How is an MDL different from the libraries of the twentieth
century? Libraries are created to serve particular communities often limited by

Ryan James contributed to this chapter.

 PART 1: Background

geography or intellectual discipline, but MDLs offer the promise of transcending

these boundaries. Does size mater? If an MDL has some twenty million books but
lacks the specific book a reader wants, of what worth is it? More broadly, if an MDL
does not have significant coverage of a topic or subject, is it really better than a
collection that focuses more narrowly?
These questions are not easy to answer.

Foundations of the MDL

A Resounding Announcement
In late 2004 Google made its well-documented “resounding announcement,” as
Jean-Noël Jeanneney described it in his 2005 book Google and the Myth of Universal
Knowledge (published originally in French, and then in 2007 translated to English),
to digitize millions of the world’s books—including works still in copyright—and
  16
to place them online. Jeanneney and others took the Google announcement as a
wake-up call for European countries to catch up to the US company, whose motives
were seen as not entirely trustworthy.
Nearly ten years on, however, it is hard to imagine as we ride the full wave of
Web 2.0 dominated by Google and Facebook that their desire to create an online
digital library should have come as such a shock. It is not as if Google altered or
reinterpreted the fundamental concepts of the digital library or electronic document
delivery. In looking at the development of the digital library, most of its ambitions,
as well as the procedures to do so, had been either explicitly stated or hinted at in
the various “library of the future” ventures that had begun as early as the 1950s
and 1960s (Licklider 1965). Yet the shock and awe of Google’s announcement
caused significant hand-wringing and soul-searching at the time (Jeanneney 2007;
Venkatraman 2009).
It is more likely that Jeanneney and others reacted to being caught flat footed
and falling behind in terms of organization and ambition. The pushback was partly
one of conservatism—not in the US political sense of the word, but in the urge to
preserve current cultural values—and a distrust of the ways in which US-centric
capitalism creates huge shifts in society and leaves many, especially those in other
countries, in the lurch. There was also a quite justifiable realization that the social
construct of the library itself, and the social contract upon which it has been built,
could be endangered by such destabilizing projects.
Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Gully of
Bluemansdyke, and Other stories
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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Title: The Gully of Bluemansdyke, and Other stories

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Release date: September 23, 2012 [eBook #40848]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Jen Haines, Suzanne Shell and the Online

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GULLY OF

BLUEMANSDYKE, AND OTHER STORIES ***
 THE GULLY OF BLUEMANSDYKE,
AND OTHER STORIES.

A small Edition of this Book was

published in 1889, under the Title of
“Mysteries and Adventures.”

THE GULLY OF

BLUEMANSDYKE,

AND OTHER STORIES.

 By A. CONAN DOYLE,
Author of "Micah Clarke," "The White Company," "The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," &c.

LONDON:
WALTER SCOTT, LTD., 24 WARWICK LANE,
PATERNOSTER ROW

CONTENTS.

PAGE
THE GULLY OF BLUEMANSDYKE 7
THE PARSON OF JACKMAN'S GULCH 50
MY FRIEND THE MURDERER 79
THE SILVER HATCHET 114
THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL 144
THAT LITTLE SQUARE BOX 188
A NIGHT AMONG THE NIHILISTS 226
 THE GULLY OF BLUEMANSDYKE.
A TRUE COLONIAL STORY.
Broadhurst's store was closed, but the little back room looked very
comfortable that night. The fire cast a ruddy glow on ceiling and
walls, reflecting itself cheerily on the polished flasks and shot-guns
which adorned them. Yet a gloom rested on the two men who sat at
either side of the hearth, which neither the fire nor the black bottle
upon the table could alleviate.
"Twelve o'clock," said old Tom, the storeman glancing up at the
wooden timepiece which had come out with him in '42. "It's a queer
thing, George, they haven't come."
"It's a dirty night," said his companion, reaching out his arm for a
plug of tobacco. "The Wawirra's in flood, maybe; or maybe their
horses is broke down; or they've put it off, perhaps. Great Lord, how
it thunders! Pass us over a coal, Tom."
He spoke in a tone which was meant to appear easy, but with a
painful thrill in it which was not lost upon his mate. He glanced
uneasily at him from under his grizzled eyebrows.
"You think it's all right, George?" he said, after a pause.
"Think what's all right?"
 "Why, that the lads are safe."
"Safe! Of course they're safe. What the devil is to harm them?"
"Oh, nothing; nothing, to be sure," said old Tom. "You see,
George, since the old woman died, Maurice has been all to me; and
it makes me kinder anxious. It's a week since they started from the
mine, and you'd ha' thought they'd be here now. But it's nothing
unusual, I s'pose; nothing at all. Just my darned folly."
"What's to harm them?" repeated George Hutton again, arguing to
convince himself rather than his comrade. "It's a straight road from
the diggin's to Rathurst, and then through the hills past
Bluemansdyke, and over the Wawirra by the ford, and so down to
Trafalgar by the bush track. There's nothin' deadly in all that, is
there? My son Allan's as dear to me as Maurice can be to you,
mate," he continued; "but they know the ford well, and there's no
other bad place. They'll be here to-morrow night, certain."
"Please God they may!" said Broadhurst; and the two men lapsed
into silence for some time, moodily staring into the glow of the fire,
and pulling at their short clays.
It was indeed, as Hutton had said, a dirty night. The wind was
howling down through the gorges of the western mountains, and
whirling and eddying among the streets of Trafalgar; whistling
through the chinks in the rough wood cabins, and tearing away the
frail shingles which formed the roofs. The streets were deserted,
save for one or two stragglers from the drinking shanties, who
wrapped their cloaks around them and staggered home through the
wind and rain towards their own cabins.
The silence was broken by Broadhurst, who was evidently still ill at
ease.
"Say, George," he said, "what's become of Josiah Mapleton?"
"Went to the diggin's."
 "Ay; but he sent word he was coming back."
"But he never came."
"An' what's become of Jos Humphrey?" he resumed, after a
pause.
"He went diggin', too."
"Well, did he come back?"
"Drop it, Broadhurst; drop it, I say," said Hutton, springing to his
feet and pacing up and down the narrow room. "You're trying to
make a coward of me! You know the men must have gone up
country prospectin' or farmin', maybe. What is it to us where they
went? You don't think I have a register of every man in the colony,
as Inspector Burton has of the lags."
"Sit down, George, and listen," said old Tom. "There's something
queer about that road; something I don't understand, and don't like.
Maybe you remember how Maloney, the one-eyed scoundrel, made
his money in the early mining days. He'd a half-way drinking shanty
on the main road up on a kind of bluff, where the Lena comes down
from the hills. You've heard, George, how they found a sort of
wooden slide from his little back room down to the river; an' how it
came out that man after man had had his drink doctored, and been
shot down that into eternity, like a bale of goods. No one will ever
know how many were done away with there. They were all
supposed to be farmin' and prospectin', and the like, till their bodies
were picked out of the rapids. It's no use mincing matters, George;
we'll have the troopers along to the diggin's if those lads don't turn
up by to-morrow night."
"As you like, Tom," said Hutton.
"By the way, talking of Maloney—it's a strange thing," said
Broadhurst, "that Jack Haldane swears he saw a man as like
Maloney with ten years added to him as could be. It was in the bush
on Monday morning. Chance, I suppose; but you'd hardly think there
could be two pair of shoulders in the world carrying such villainous
mugs on the top of them."
"Jack Haldane's a fool," growled Hutton, throwing open the door
and peering anxiously out into the darkness, while the wind played
with his long grizzled beard, and sent a train of glowing sparks from
his pipe down the street.
"A terrible night!" he said, as he turned back towards the fire.
Yes, a wild, tempestuous night; a night for birds of darkness and
for beasts of prey. A strange night for seven men to lie out in the
gully at Bluemansdyke, with revolvers in their hands, and the devil in
their hearts.

The sun was rising after the storm. A thick, heavy steam reeked
up from the saturated ground, and hung like a pall over the
flourishing little town of Trafalgar. A bluish mist lay in wreaths over
the wide track of bushland around, out of which the western
mountains loomed like great islands in a sea of vapour.
Something was wrong in the town. The most casual glance would
have detected that. There was a shouting and a hurrying of feet.
Doors were slammed and rude windows thrown open. A trooper of
police came clattering down with his carbine unslung. It was past
the time for Joe Buchan's saw-mill to commence work, but the great
wheel was motionless, for the hands had not appeared.
There was a surging, pushing crowd in the main street before old
Tom Broadhurst's house, and a mighty clattering of tongues. "What
was it?" demanded the new-comers, panting and breathless.
"Broadhurst has shot his mate." "He has cut his own throat." "He
has struck gold in the clay floor of his kitchen." "No; it was his son
Maurice who had come home rich." "Who had not come back at all."
"Whose horse had come back without him." At last the truth had
come out; and there was the old sorrel horse in question whinnying
and rubbing his neck against the familiar door of the stable, as if
entreating entrance; while two haggard, grey-haired men held him
by either bridle, and gazed blankly at his reeking sides.
"God help me," said old Tom Broadhurst; "it is as I feared!"
"Cheer up, mate," said Hutton, drawing his rough straw hat down
over his brow. "There's hope yet."
A sympathetic and encouraging murmur ran through the crowd.
"Horse ran away, likely."
"Or been stolen."
"Or he's swum the Wawirra an' been washed off," suggested one
Job's comforter.
"He ain't got no marks of bruising," said another, more hopeful.
"Rider fallen off drunk, maybe," said a bluff old sheep-farmer. "I
kin remember," he continued, "coming into town 'bout this hour
myself, with my head in my holster, an' thinking I was a six-
chambered revolver—mighty drunk I was."
"Maurice had a good seat; he'd never be washed off."
"Not he."
"The horse has a weal on its off fore-quarter," remarked another,
more observant than the rest.
"A blow from a whip, maybe."
"It would be a darned hard one."
"Where's Chicago Bill?" said someone; "he'll know."
Thus invoked, a strange, gaunt figure stepped out in front of the
crowd. He was an extremely tall and powerful man, with the red
shirt and high boots of a miner. The shirt was thrown open, showing
the sinewy throat and massive chest. His face was seamed and
scarred with many a conflict, both with Nature and his brother man;
yet beneath his ruffianly exterior there lay something of the quiet
dignity of the gentleman. This man was a veteran gold-hunter; a real
old Californian 'forty-niner, who had left the fields in disgust when
private enterprise began to dwindle before the formation of huge
incorporated companies with their ponderous machinery. But the red
clay with the little shining points had become to him as the very
breath of his nostrils, and he had come half-way round the world to
seek it once again.
"Here's Chicago Bill," he said; "what is it?"
Bill was naturally regarded as an oracle, in virtue of his prowess
and varied experience. Every eye was turned on him as Braxton, the
young Irish trooper of constabulary, said, "What do you make of the
horse, Bill?"
The Yankee was in no hurry to commit himself. He surveyed the
animal for some time with his shrewd little grey eye. He bent and
examined the girths; then he felt the mane carefully. He stooped
once more and examined the hoofs and then the quarters. His eye
rested on the blue wheal already mentioned. This seemed to put him
on a scent, for he gave a long, low whistle, and proceeded at once
to examine the hair on either side of the saddle. He saw something
conclusive apparently, for, with a sidelong glance under his shaggy
eyebrows at the two old men beside him, he turned and fell back
among the crowd.
"Well, what d'ye think?" cried a dozen voices.
"A job for you," said Bill, looking up at the young Irish trooper.
"Why, what is it? What's become of young Broadhurst?"
"He's done what better men has done afore. He has sunk a shaft
for gold and panned out a coffin."
 "Speak out, man! what have you seen?" cried a husky voice.
"I've seen the graze of a bushranger's bullet on the horse's
quarter, an' I've seen a drop of the rider's blood on the edge of the
saddle—Here, hold the old man up, boys; don't let him drop. Give
him a swig of brandy an' lead him inside. Say," he continued, in a
whisper, gripping the trooper by the wrist, "mind, I'm in it. You an' I
play this hand together. I'm dead on sich varmin. We'll do as they do
in Nevada, strike while the iron is hot. Get any men you can
together. I s'pose you're game to come yourself?"
"Yes, I'll come," said young Braxton, with a quiet smile.
The American looked at him approvingly. He had learned in his
wanderings that an Irishman who grows quieter when deeply stirred
is a very dangerous specimen of the genus homo.
"Good lad!" he muttered; and the two went down the street
together towards the station-house, followed by half-a-dozen of the
more resolute of the crowd.

One word before we proceed with our story, or our chronicle

rather, as every word of it is based upon fact. The colonial trooper of
fifteen or twenty years ago was a very different man from his
representative of to-day. Not that I would imply any slur upon the
courage of the latter; but for reckless dare-devilry and knight-
errantry the old constabulary has never been equalled. The reason is
a simple one. Men of gentle blood, younger sons and wild rakes who
had outrun the constable, were sent off to Australia with some wild
idea of making their fortunes. On arriving they found Melbourne by
no means the El Dorado they expected; they were unfit for any
employment, their money was soon dissipated, and they unerringly
gravitated into the mounted police. Thus a sort of colonial "Maison
Rouge" became formed, where the lowest private had as much pride
of birth and education as his officers. They were men who might
have swayed the fate of empires, yet who squandered away their
lives in many a lone wild fight with native and bushranger, where
nothing but a mouldering blue-ragged skeleton was left to tell the
tale.

It was a glorious sunset. The whole western sky was a blaze of

flame, throwing a purple tint upon the mountains, and gilding the
sombre edges of the great forest which spreads between Trafalgar
and the river Wawirra. It stretched out, a primeval, unbroken
wilderness, save at the one point where a rough track had been
formed by the miners and their numerous camp-followers. This
wound amid the great trunks in a zigzag direction, occasionally
making a long detour to avoid some marshy hollow or especially
dense clump of vegetation. Often it could be hardly discerned from
the ground around save by the scattered hoof-marks and an
occasional rut.
About fifteen miles from Trafalgar there stands a little knoll, well
sheltered and overlooking the road. On this knoll a man was lying as
the sun went down that Friday evening. He appeared to shun
observation, for he had chosen that part in which the foliage was
thickest; yet he seemed decidedly at his ease, as he lolled upon his
back with his pipe between his teeth, and a broad hat down over his
face. It was a face that it was well to cover in the presence of so
peaceful a scene—a face pitted with the scars of an immaterial
smallpox. The forehead was broad and low; one eye had apparently
been gouged out, leaving a ghastly cavity; the other was deep-set,
cunning, and vindictive. The mouth was hard and cruel; a rough
beard covered the chin. It was the cut of face which, seen in a lonely
street, would instinctively make one shift the grasp of one's stick
from the knob end to the ferrule—the face of a bold and
unscrupulous man.
 Some unpleasing thought seemed to occur to him, for he rose
with a curse and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "A darned fine
thing," he muttered, "that I should have to lie out like this! It was
Barrett's fault the job wasn't a clean one, an' now he picks me out to
get the swamp-fever. If he'd shot the horse as I did the man, we
wouldn't need a watch on this side of the Wawirra. He always was a
poor white-livered cuss. Well," he continued, picking up a gun which
lay in the grass behind him, "there's no use my waiting longer; they
wouldn't start during the night. Maybe the horse never got home,
maybe they gave them up as drowned; anyhow it's another man's
turn to-morrow, so I'll just give them five minutes and then make
tracks." He sat down on the stump of a tree as he spoke and
hummed the verse of a song. A sudden thought seemed to strike
him, for he plunged his hand into his pocket, and after some
searching extracted a pack of playing cards wrapped in a piece of
dirty brown paper. He gazed earnestly at their greasy faces for some
time. Then he took a pin from his sleeve and pricked a small hole in
the corner of each ace and knave. He chuckled as he shuffled them
up, and replaced them in his pocket. "I'll have my share of the
swag," he growled. "They're sharp, but they'll not spot that when
the liquor is in them. By the Lord, here they are!"
He had sprung to his feet and was bending to the ground, holding
his breath as he listened. To the unpractised ear all was as still as
before—the hum of a passing insect, the chirp of a bird, the rustle of
the leaves; but the bushranger rose with the air of a man who has
satisfied himself. "Good-bye to Bluemansdyke," said he; "I reckon it
will be too hot to hold us for a time. That thundering idiot! he's
spoilt as nice a lay as ever was, an' risked our necks into the
bargain. I'll see their number an' who they are, though," he
continued; and, choosing a point where a rough thicket formed an
effectual screen, he coiled himself up, and lay like some venomous
snake, occasionally raising his head and peering between the trunks
at the reddish streak which marked the Trafalgar Road.
 There could be no question now as to the approach of a body of
horsemen. By the time our friend was fairly ensconced in his hiding-
place the sound of voices and the clatter of hoofs was distinctly
audible, and in another moment a troop of mounted men came
sweeping round the curve of the road. They were eleven all told,
armed to the teeth, and evidently well on the alert. Two rode in front
with rifles unslung, leisurely scanning every bush which might
shelter an enemy. The main body kept about fifty yards behind
them, while a solitary horseman brought up the rear. The ranger
scanned them narrowly as they passed. He seemed to recognise
most of them. Some were his natural enemies the troopers; the
majority were miners who had volunteered to get rid of an evil
which affected their interests so closely. They were a fine bronzed
set of men, with a deliberate air about them, as if they had come for
a purpose and meant to attain it. As the last rider passed before his
hiding-place the solitary watcher started and growled a curse in his
beard. "I know his darned face," he said; "it's Bill Hanker, the man
who got the drop on Long Nat Smeaton in Silver City in '53; what
the thunder brought him here? I must be off by the back track,
though, an' let the boys know." So saying, he picked up his gun, and
with a scowl after the distant party, he crouched down and passed
rapidly and silently out of sight into the very thickest part of the
bush.

The expedition had started from Trafalgar on the afternoon of the

same day that Maurice Broadhurst's horse, foam-flecked and
frightened, had galloped up to the old stable-door. Burton, the
inspector of constabulary, an energetic and able man, as all who
knew him can testify, was in command. He had detached Braxton,
the young Irishman, and Thompson, another trooper, as a vanguard.
He himself rode with the main body, grey-whiskered and lean, but as
straight in the back as when he and I built a shanty in '39 in what is
now Burke Street, Melbourne. With him were McGillivray, Foley, and
Anson of the Trafalgar force, Hartley the sheep-farmer, Murdoch and
Summerville, who had made their pile at the mines, and Dan
Murphy, who was cleaned out when the clay of the "Orient" turned
to gravel, and had been yearning for a solid square fight ever since.
Chicago Bill formed the rear-guard, and the whole party presented
an appearance which, though far from military, was decidedly
warlike.
They camped out that night seventeen miles from Trafalgar, and
next day pushed on as far as where the Stirling Road runs across.
The third morning brought them to the northern bank of the
Wawirra, which they forded. Here a council of war was held, for they
were entering what they regarded as enemy's country. The bush
track, though wild, was occasionally traversed both by shepherds
and sportsmen. It would hardly be the home of a gang of desperate
bushrangers. But beyond the Wawirra the great rugged range of the
Tápu mountains towered up to the clouds, and across a wild spur of
these the mining track passed up to Bluemansdyke. It was here they
decided at the council that the scene of the late drama lay. The
question now was what means were to be taken to attack the
murderers; for that murder had been done no man doubted.
All were of one mind as to what the main line of action should be.
To go for them straight, shoot as many as possible on sight, and
hang the balance in Trafalgar: that was plain sailing. But how to get
at them was the subject of much debate. The troopers were for
pushing on at once, and trusting to Fortune to put the rangers in
their way. The miners proposed rather to gain some neighbouring
peak, from which a good view of the country could be obtained, and
some idea gained of their whereabouts. Chicago Bill took rather a
gloomy view of things. "Nary one will we see," said he; "they've
dusted out of the district 'fore this. They'd know the horse would go
home, and likely as not they've had a watch on the road to warn
them. I guess, boys, we'd best move on an' do our best." There was
some discussion, but Chicago's opinion carried the day, and the
expedition pushed on in a body.
 After passing the second upland station the scenery becomes
more and more grand and rugged. Great peaks two and three
thousand feet high rose sheer up at each side of the narrow track.
The heavy wind and rain of the storm had brought down much
débris, and the road was almost impassable in places. They were
frequently compelled to dismount and to lead the horses. "We
haven't far now, boys," said the inspector cheerily, as they struggled
on; and he pointed to a great dark cleft which yawned in front of
them between two almost perpendicular cliffs. "They are there," he
said, "or nowhere." A little higher the road became better and their
progress was more rapid. A halt was called, guns were unslung, and
their pistols loosened in their belts, for the great gully of
Bluemansdyke—the wildest part of the whole Tápu range—was
gaping before them. But not a thing was to be seen; all was as still
as the grave. The horses were picketed in a quiet little ravine, and
the whole party crept on on foot. The Southern sun glared down hot
and clear on the yellow bracken and banks of fern which lined the
narrow winding track. Still not a sign of life. Then came a clear low
whistle from the two advanced troopers, announcing that something
had been discovered, and the main body hurried up. It was a spot
for deeds of blood. On one side of the road there lowered a black
gnarled precipice, on the other was the sullen mouth of the rugged
gully. The road took a sharp turn at this spot. Just at the angle
several large boulders were scattered, lining and overlooking the
track. It was at this angle that a little bed of mud and trampled red
clay betokened a recent struggle. There could be no question that
they were at the scene of the murder of the two young miners. The
outline of a horse could still be seen in the soft ground, and the
prints of its hoofs as it kicked out in its death-agony were plainly
marked. Behind one of the rocks were the tracks of several feet, and
some pistol wadding was found in a tuft of ferns. The whole tragedy
lay unclosed before them. Two men, careless in the pride of their
youth and their strength, had swept round that fatal curve. Then a
crash, a groan, a brutal laugh, the galloping of a frightened horse,
and all was over.
 What was to be done now? The rocks around were explored, but
nothing fresh discovered. Some six days had elapsed, and the birds
were apparently flown. The party separated and hunted about
among the boulders. Then the American, who could follow a trail like
a bloodhound, found tracks leading towards a rugged pile of rocks
on the north side of the gully. In a crevice here the remains of three
horses were found. Close to them the rim of an old straw hat
projected through the loose loam. Hartley, the sheep-farmer, sprang
over to pick it up; he started back in the act of stooping, and said in
an awe-struck whisper to his friend Murphy, "There's a head under
it, Dan!" A few strokes of a spade disclosed a face familiar to most of
the group—that of a poor travelling photographer well known in the
colony by the sobriquet of "Stooping Johnny," who had disappeared
some time before. It was now in an advanced stage of putrefaction.
Close to him another body was discovered, and another beside that.
In all, thirteen victims of these English Thugs were lying under the
shadow of the great north wall of the Bluemansdyke gully. It was
there, standing in silent awe round the remains of these poor
fellows, hurried into eternity and buried like dogs, that the search-
party registered a vow to sacrifice all interests and comforts for the
space of one month to the single consideration of revenge. The
inspector uncovered his grizzled head as he solemnly swore it, and
his comrades followed his example. The bodies were then, with a
brief prayer, consigned to a deeper grave, a rough cairn was erected
over them, and the eleven men set forth upon their mission of stern
justice.

Three weeks had passed—three weeks and two days. The sun
was sinking over the great waste of bushland, unexplored and
unknown, which stretches away from the eastern slope of the Tápu
mountains. Save some eccentric sportsman or bold prospector, no
colonist had ever ventured into that desolate land; yet on this
autumn evening two men were standing in a little glade in the very
heart of it. They were engaged tying up their horses, and apparently
making preparations for camping out for the night. Though haggard,
unkempt, and worn, one still might recognise two of our former
acquaintances—the young Irish trooper and the American Chicago
Bill.
This was the last effort of the avenging party. They had traversed
the mountain gorges, they had explored every gully and ravine, and
now they had split into several small bands, and, having named a
trysting-place, they were scouring the country in the hope of hitting
upon some trace of the murderers. Foley and Anson had remained
among the hills, Murdoch and Dan Murphy were exploring towards
Rathurst, Summerville and the inspector had ascended along the
Wawirra, while the others in three parties were wandering through
the eastern bushland.
Both the trooper and the miner seemed dejected and weary. The
one had set out with visions of glory, and hopes of a short cut to the
coveted stripes which would put him above his fellows; the other
had obeyed a rough wild sense of justice; and each was alike
disappointed. The horses were picketed, and the men threw
themselves heavily upon the ground. There was no need to light a
fire; a few dampers and some rusty bacon were their whole
provisions. Braxton produced them, and handed his share to his
comrade. They ate their rough meal without a word. Braxton was
the first to break the silence.
"We're playing our last card," he said.
"And a darned poor one at that," replied his comrade.
"Why, mate," he continued, "if we did knock up agin these all-fired
varmin, ye don't suppose you and I would go for them? I guess I'd
up an' shove for Trafalgar first."
Braxton smiled. Chicago's reckless courage was too well known in
the colony for any words of his to throw a doubt upon it. Miners still
tell how, during the first great rush in '52, a blustering ruffian,
relying upon some similar remark of the pioneer's, had tried to
establish a reputation by an unprovoked assault upon him; and the
narrators then glide imperceptibly into an account of Bill's handsome
conduct towards the widow—how he had given her his week's clean-
up to start her in a drinking shanty. Braxton thought of this as he
smiled at Chicago's remarks, and glanced at the massive limbs and
weather-beaten face.
"We'd best see where we are before it grows darker," he said; and
rising, he stacked his gun against the trunk of a blue gum-tree, and
seizing some of the creepers which hung down from it, began
rapidly and silently to ascend it.
"His soul's too big for his body," growled the American, as he
watched the dark lithe figure standing out against the pale-blue
evening sky.
"What d'ye see, Jack?" he shouted; for the trooper had reached
the topmost branch by this time, and was taking a survey of the
country.
"Bush, bush; nothing but bush," said the voice among the leaves.
"Wait a bit, though; there's a kind of hill about three miles off away
to the nor'-east. I see it above the trees right over there. Not much
good to us, though," he continued, after a pause, "for it seems a
barren, stony sort of place."
Chicago paced about at the bottom of the tree.
"He seems an almighty long time prospectin' it," he muttered,
after ten minutes had elapsed. "Ah, here he is!" and the trooper
came swinging down and landed panting just in front of him.
"Why, what's come over him? What's the matter, Jack?"
Something was the matter. That was very evident. There was a
light in Braxton's blue eyes, and a flush on the pale cheek.
 "Bill," he said, putting his hand on his comrade's shoulder, "it's
about time you made tracks for the settlements."
"What d'ye mean?" said Chicago.
"Why, I mean that the murderers are within a league of us, and
that I intend going for them. There, don't be huffed, old man," he
added; "of course I knew you were only joking. But they are there,
Bill; I saw smoke on the top of that hill, and it wasn't good, honest
smoke, mind you; it was dry-wood smoke, and meant to be hid. I
thought it was mist at first; but no, it was smoke. I'll swear it. It
could only be them: who else would camp on the summit of a
desolate hill? We've got them, Bill; we have them as sure as Fate."
"Or they've got us," growled the American. "But here, lad, here's
my glass; run up and have a look at them."
"It's too dark now," said Braxton; "we'll camp out to-night. No fear
of them stirring. They're lying by there until the whole thing blows
over, depend upon it; so we'll make sure of them in the morning."
The miner looked plaintively up at the tree, and then down at his
fourteen stone of solid muscle.
"I guess I must take your word for it," he grumbled; "but you are
bushman enough to tell smoke from mist, and a dry-wood fire from
an open one. We can't do anything to-night till we feel our way, so I
allow we'd best water the horses an' have a good night's rest."
Braxton seemed to be of the same mind; so after a few minutes'
preparation the two men wrapped themselves in their cloaks, and
lay, two little dark spots, on the great green carpet of the primeval
bush.
With the first grey light of dawn Chicago sat up and roused his
comrade. A heavy mist bung over the bushland. They could hardly
see the loom of the trees across the little glade. Their clothes
glistened with the little shining beads of moisture. They brushed
each other down, and squatted in bush fashion over their rough
breakfast. The haze seemed to be lifting a little now; they could see
fifty yards in every direction. The miner paced up and down in
silence, ruminating over a plug of "Barrett's twist." Braxton sat on a
fallen tree sponging and oiling his revolver. Suddenly a single beam
of sunshine played over the great blue gum. It widened and spread,
and then in a moment the mist melted away, and the yellow leaves
glowed like flakes of copper in the glare of the morning sun. Braxton
cheerily snapped the lock of the pistol, loaded it, and replaced it in
his belt. Chicago began to whistle, and stopped in the middle of his
walk.
"Now, young un," he said, "here's the glass."
Braxton slung it round his neck, and ascended the tree as he had
done the night before. It was child's-play to the trooper—a splendid
climber, as I can testify; for I saw him two years later swarming up
the topmost backstay of the Hector frigate in a gale of wind for a bet
of a bottle of wine. He soon reached the summit, and shuffling along
a naked branch two hundred feet from the ground, he gained a
point where no leaves could obstruct his view. Here he sat straddle-
legged; and, unslinging the glass, he proceeded to examine the hill,
bush by bush and stone by stone.
An hour passed without his moving. Another had almost elapsed
before he descended. His face was grave and thoughtful.
"Are they there?" was the eager query.
"Yes; they are there."
"How many?"
"I've only seen five; but there may be more. Wait till I think it out,
Bill."
The miner gazed at him with all the reverence matter has towards
mind. Thinking things out was not his strong point.
 "Blamed if I can help you," he said apologetically. "It kinder don't
come nat'ral to me to be plottin' and plannin'. Want o' eddication,
likely. My father was allowed to be the hardest-headed man in the
States. Judge Jeffers let on as how the old man wanted to hand in
his checks; so he down an' put his head on the line when the first
engine as ran from Vermont was comin' up. They fined him a
hundred dollars for upsettin' that 'ere locomotive; an' the old man
got the cussedest headache as ever was."
Braxton hardly seemed to hear this family anecdote; he was deep
in thought.
"Look here, old man," said he; "sit down by me on the trunk and
listen to what I say. Remember that you are here as a volunteer, Bill
—you've no call to come; now, I am here in the course of duty. Your
name is known through the settlement; you were a marked man
when I was in the nursery. Now, Bill, it's a big thing I am going to
ask you. If you and I go in and take these men, it will be another
feather in your cap, and in yours only. What do men know of Jack
Braxton, the private of police? He'd hardly be mentioned in the
matter. Now, I want to make my name this day. We'll have to secure
these men by a surprise after dusk, and it will be as easy for one
resolute man to do it as for two; perhaps easier, for there is less
chance of detection. Bill, I want you to stay with the horses, and let
me go alone."
Chicago sprang to his feet with a snarl of indignation, and paced
up and down in front of the fallen trees. Then he seemed to master
himself, for he sat down again.
"They'd chaw you up, lad," he said, putting his hand on Braxton's
shoulder. "It wouldn't wash."
"Not they," said the trooper. "I'd take your pistol as well as my
own, and I'd need a deal of chawing."
"My character would be ruined," said Bill.
 "It's beyond the reach of calumny. You can afford to give me one
fair chance."
Bill buried his face in his hands, and thought a little.
"Well, lad," he said, looking up, "I'll look after the horses."
Braxton wrung him by the hand. "There are few men would have
done it, Bill; you are a friend worth having. Now, we'll spend our day
as best we can, old man, and lie close till evening; for I won't start
till an hour after dusk; so we have plenty of time on our hands."
The day passed slowly. The trooper lay among the mosses below
the great blue gum in earnest thought. Once or twice he imagined
he heard the subterranean chuckle and slap of the thigh which
usually denoted amusement on the part of the miner; but on
glancing up at that individual, the expression of his face was so
solemn, not to say funereal, that it was evidently an illusion. They
partook of their scanty dinner and supper cheerfully and with hearty
appetites. The former listlessness had given place to briskness and
activity, now that their object was in view. Chicago blossomed out
into many strange experiences and racy reminiscences of Western
life. The hours passed rapidly and cheerily. The trooper produced a
venerable pack of cards from his holster and proposed euchre; but
their gregariousness, and the general difficulty of distinguishing the
king of clubs from the ace of hearts, exercised a depressing
influence upon the players. Gradually the sun went down on the
great wilderness. The shadow fell on the little glade, while the
distant hill was still tipped with gold; then that too became purplish,
a star twinkled over the Tápu range, and night crept over the scene.
"Good-bye, old man," said Braxton. "I won't take my carbine; it
would only be in the way. I can't thank you enough for letting me
have this chance. If they wipe me out, Bill, you'll not lose sight of
them, I know; and you'll say I died like a man. I've got no friends
and no message, and nothing in the world but this pack of cards.
Keep them, Bill; they were a fine pack in '51. If you see a smoke on
the hill in the morning you'll know all's well, and you'll bring up the
horses at once. If you don't, you'll ride to Fallen Pine, where we
were to meet,—ride day and night, Bill,—tell Inspector Burton that
you know where the rangers are, that Private Braxton is dead, and
that he said he was to bring up his men, else he'd come back from
the grave and lead them up himself. Do that, Bill. Good-bye."
A great quiet rested over the heart of that desolate woodland. The
croak of a frog, the gurgle of a little streamlet half hidden in the long
grass—no other sound. Then a wakeful jay gave a shrill chatter,
another joined, and another; a bluefinch screamed; a wombat
rushed past to gain its burrow. Something had disturbed them; yet
all was apparently as peaceful as before. Had you been by the jay's
nest, however, and peered downwards, you would have seen
something gliding like a serpent through the brushwood, and caught
a glimpse, perhaps, of a pale, resolute face, and the glint of a
pocket-compass pointing north-by-east.

It was a long and weary night for Trooper Braxton. Any moment
he might come on an outpost of the rangers, so every step had to
be taken slowly and with care. But he was an experienced
woodman, and hardly a twig snapped as he crawled along. A morass
barred his progress, and he was compelled to make a long detour.
Then he found himself in thick brushwood, and once more had to go
out of his way. It was very dark here in the depth of the forest.
There was a heavy smell, and a dense steam laden with miasma
rose from the ground. In the dim light he saw strange creeping
things around him. A bushmaster writhed across the path in front of
him, a cold, dank lizard crawled over his hand as he crouched down;
but the trooper thought only of the human reptiles in front, and
made steadily for his goal. Once he seemed to be pursued by some
animal; he heard a creaking behind him, but it ceased when he
stopped and listened, so he continued his way.
 It was when he reached the base of the hill which he had seen
from the distance that the real difficulty of his undertaking began. It
was almost conical in shape, and very steep. The sides were covered
with loose stones and an occasional large boulder. One false step
here would send a shower of these tell-tale fragments clattering
down the hill. The trooper stripped off his high leather boots and
turned up his trousers; then he began cautiously to climb, cowering
down behind every boulder.
There was a little patch of light far away on the horizon, a very
little grey patch, but it caused the figure of a man who was moving
upon the crest of the hill to loom out dim and large. He was a sentry
apparently, for he carried a gun under his arm. The top of the hill
was formed by a little plateau about a hundred yards in
circumference. Along the edge of this the man was pacing,
occasionally stopping to peer down into the great dusky sea beneath
him. From this raised edge the plateau curved down from every side,
so as to form a crater-like depression. In the centre of this hollow
stood a large white tent. Several horses were picketed around it, and
the ground was littered with bundles of dried grass and harness. You
could see these details now from the edge of the plateau, for the
grey patch in the east had become white, and was getting longer
and wider. You could see the sentry's face, too, as he paced round
and round. A handsome, weak-minded face, with more of the fool
than the devil impressed on it. He seemed cheerful, for the birds
were beginning to sing, and their thousand voices rose from the
bush below. He forgot the forged note, I think, and the dreary
voyage, and the wild escape, and the dark gully away beyond the
Tápu range; for his eye glistened, and he hummed a quaint little
Yorkshire country air. He was back again in the West Riding village,
and the rough boulder in front shaped itself into the hill behind
which Nelly lived before he broke her heart, and he saw the ivied
church that crowned it. He would have seen something else had he
looked again—something which was not in his picture: a white
passionless face which glared at him over the boulder, as he turned
upon his heel, still singing, and unconscious that the bloodhounds of
justice were close at his heels.
The trooper's time for action had come. He had reached the last
boulder; nothing lay between the plateau and himself but a few
loose stones. He could hear the song of the sentry dying away in the
distance; he drew his regulation sword, and, with his Adams in his
left, he rose and sprang like a tiger over the ridge and down into the
hollow.
The sentry was startled from his dream of the past by a clatter
and a rattling of stones. He sprang round and cocked his gun. No
wonder that he gasped, and that a change passed over his bronzed
face. A painter would need a dash of ultramarine in his flesh-tints to
represent it now. No wonder, I say; for that dark active figure with
the bare feet and the brass buttons meant disgrace and the gallows
to him. He saw him spring across to the tent; he saw the gleam of a
sword, and heard a crash as the tent-pole was severed, and the
canvas came down with a run upon the heads of the sleepers. And
then above oaths and shouts he heard a mellow Irish voice—"I've
twelve shots in my hands. I have ye, every mother's son. Up with
your arms! up, I say, before there is blood upon my soul. One move,
and ye stand before the throne." Braxton had stooped and parted
the doorway of the fallen tent, and was now standing over six
ruffians who occupied it. They lay as they had wakened, but with
their hands above their heads, for there was no resisting that quiet
voice, backed up by the two black muzzles. They imagined they
were surrounded and hopelessly outmatched. Not one of them
dreamed that the whole attacking force stood before them. It was
the sentry who first began to realise the true state of the case.
There was no sound or sign of any reinforcement. He looked to see
that the cap was pressed well down on the nipple, and crept towards
the tent. He was a good shot, as many a keeper on Braidagarth and
the Yorkshire fells could testify. He raised his gun to his shoulder.
Braxton heard the click, but dared not remove his eye or his weapon
from his six prisoners. The sentry looked along the sights. He knew
his life depended upon that shot. There was more of the devil than
the fool in his face now. He paused a moment to make sure of his
aim, and then came a crash and the thud of a falling body. Braxton
was still standing over the prisoners, but the sentry's gun was
unfired, and he himself was writhing on the ground with a bullet
through his lungs. "Ye see," said Chicago, as he rose from behind a
rock with his gun still smoking in his hand, "it seemed a powerful
mean thing to leave you, Jack; so I thought as I'd kinder drop
around promiscus, and wade in if needed, which I was, as you can't
deny. No, ye don't," he added, as the sentry stretched out his hand
to grasp his fallen gun; "leave the wepin alone, young man; it ain't
in your way as it lies there."
"I'm a dead man!" groaned the ranger.
"Then lie quiet like a respectable corpse," said the miner, "an'
don't go a-squirmin' towards yer gun. That's ornary uneddicated
conduct."
"Come here, Bill," cried Braxton, "and bring the ropes those
horses are picketed with. Now," he continued, as the American,
having abstracted the sentry's gun, appeared with an armful of
ropes, "you tie these fellows up, and I'll kill any man who moves."
"A pleasant division of labour, eh, old Blatherskite," said Chicago,
playfully tapping the one-eyed villain Maloney on the head. "Come
on; the ugliest first!" So saying, he began upon him and fastened
him securely.
One after another the rangers were tied up; all except the
wounded man, who was too helpless to need securing. Then
Chicago went down and brought up the horses, while Braxton
remained on guard; and by mid-day the cavalcade was in full march
through the forest en route for Fallen Pine, the rendezvous of the
search-party. The wounded man was tied on to a horse in front, the
other rangers followed on foot for safety, while the trooper and
Chicago brought up the rear.
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