Part 4 (1/2)

CHAPTER III

_Effect Of Discoveries_

”Like stragglers from an army, orderless, The adventurers toward their haven press; Their ardent ine future ”lobs” of which they share

Through their hot brains what splendid visions speed Of golden _claie to sail With hawsers 'd the landscape since the paleface canise it as the sarave-like holes may everywhere be seen; The forest fell'd to cook the miners' food, The sadden'd Natives scatter'd and subdu'd”

_The New Rush_--J RODGERS

The wonderful effect of the valuable discoveriessoon beca to the rapid departure for the diggings of great numbers of the townsfolks, who abandoned their ordinary vocations in order to get a share of the profuse rewards there meted out by Mother Earth to the industrious or the lucky

The Victorian population at this time was only 77,000, of which 30,000 were concentrated in the two principal towns Nearly all these people becaold The whole of the colony was stirred to its inmost depths, and underwent a total revolution in all its social relations

Ale was shown in the sudden appearance of an iold-fields Thousands of , sturdy and weak--were enticed frohts of the domestic hearth, and from the conveniences and alittering prizes which Da out to the pioneer prospectors, and which seele before the expectant eyes of everyone What a strange and entertaining sight the thickly-thronged roads must have presented to the observant student of hu on back; bands of s to assist in transporting the heavy necessaries; parties with light hand-carts and wheel-barrows energetically pushi+ng and pulling their pri carts; doctors and lawyers in first-class gigs and buggies

The whole of these, froar to barrister, fro dusty roads and journeying through hitherto untrodden forest, all iold-fields, where, perchance, they olden harvest without the laborious years of working and the weariso, which are the usual checks to success in other pursuits

[Illustration: THE RUSH TO THE DIGGINGS]

Ere these fortune-hunters reached the Eldorado of their wishes, hness of the road, the yielding nature of the bush tracks, and general unevenness of the ground, occasioned many a poor horse to knock under and leave his ht Their felloayfarers seeing such a predica hand; and it was not unco a dray up so on their backs portions of a heavy load

A number of the travellers were free and independent These, carrying all their property with them, usually made a day's journey of about twenty miles; then, after an _al-fresco_ meal, they lay down in the open-air, with their blankets wrapped like martial cloaks around them, and were lulled to sleep by the breezy norant of the obstacles they had to encounter, rushed away from town insufficiently supplied with provisions, and the few public-houses on the way became quickly packed to confusion by these half-fa food and drink

Many of the first arrivals on the fields soon found out that the life of a digger was not all honey, and, after a few bitter experiences, either went back to their old employments in the town, or adapted thes by supplying the diggers'

caenerally quite as lucrative as that of the average digger Meanwhile, the fahout the adjacent colonies

Very soon the tide of eration was turned from the Turon mines, and flowed in the direction of Ballarat and its vicinity It poured into the auriferous creeks in the shape of an i with expectation, and bent on ferreting out and appropriating soolden lodestone

The bush surrounding the diggings was quickly thinned of its tiood fuel for the culinary fire of the digger Even the tallest and iants of the forest were not spared, and soon the scene was completely shorn of its pristine sylvan beauty Verdant hillocks and grassyand grazing grounds of the kangaroo and its species, and the happy hunting grounds of their scarcely hued into yellow-coloured upheavals, which from a distance presented to the interested spectator the lively appearance of great ant-hills war with busy workers, who now dropped into pits cut in the slopes, and anon reappeared bearing heavy loads, hich they iully

On the diggings everyone was subjected to the sway of the golden metal, and the effect of the spell on the different te as they were varied In sos of life's action seeed; the demon of avarice held coetful of the commonest offices of humanity But over others the spell was not so potent, or its sordid effect sofroe civilities, or to do a friendly action, betokening that a desire for the a the rough hairy diggers in their most cupiditative pursuit

A year later the faold-fields had astonished the whole world, and quickly attracted nurants froreat influx set in about September 1852, and doubled the population before the end of the year During 1852 and 1853 Victoria became the most populous of the colonies by the arrival of nearly 200,000 persons, the arrivals in Hobson's Bay averaging about 1800 weekly

Many of the reatly concerned in o-ahead or hopefully-inclined trusted that the great successive waves of fresh inhabitants from the thickly-populated portions of the old world would be theof the colony The influx was certainly an immediate boon to the sheep-farmers of the period The state of the colony in the early days ell described by London _Punch_ in the lines--

”The land of the South that lies under our feet, Deficient in mouths, over-burdened with s was reversed, and, owing to the ever-increasing number of mouths to be fed, the prices of all articles of consumption went up enormously

CANVAS TOWN