AUSTRALIAN PACTS AND PROSPECTS. * GOLD was discovered in Australia in
1851; the full tide of immi- gration set into Hobson's Bay in 1852, and in September of that year the author of Orion arnved on its shores. He may therefore be considered an old colonist, for the pastoral age now counts for little in the history of Victoria ; time, as he justly observes, is reckoned differently there from the reckoning in any other part of the globe, and his experience in the colony covers nearly the whole of the period to which that remark applies. It is extensive also in kind as well as in duration, for he has been constantly engaged in official duties, which have obliged him to see a great deal of the country and its inhabitants, and make himself gene- rally conversant with its business and its interests. The opinions of a man of hie known intelligence, who has had such opportu- nities for acquiring a thorough knowledge of his subject, are worthy of attention, and the more so as he does not write under the false bias which either extreme of fortune might have given to his judgment. He has neither been soured by failure nor bewil- dered by sudden and extraordinary prosperity. A moderate degree of success has rewarded his energy, and he remains in the colony contentedly awaiting the time when the seed he has sown will yield him a profitable harvest. One thing he is especially desirous of impressing on his readers' at home, namely, that for no atom of his success in Australia has he been indebted to his literary reputation or powers. He owes it mainly to his horse-, manship in the bush. A large portion of his little book is occu- pied in strenuously refuting that of Mr. Frank Fowler, whose• alluring accounts of the literary activity of Melbourne, and of the prizes of 1000/. a year it has ready to bestow in unlimited num- bers on all clever writers from the old country, have been received with utter astonishment and derision in the colony. Journalism is the only literary occupation known there, and it is one in which no immigrant could earn his salt until he had served a long ap- prenticeship to local politics. The places, too, are all filled, and should a vacancy occur, a new corner's chance of succeeding to it would be poor indeed.
" Victoria," says Mr. Horne, " is at this period overstocked with all re- quirements excepting those of small capitalists and certain descriptions of labour. Frankly admitting, as peculiar cases, the probable success, before long, of special energies applied to the talents which are desiderated, it must still be asserted and reasserted by those who dwell in the thick of the facts and knowledge, that small capitalists and small farmers, together with the hewers of wood and the drawers of water' (meaning experienced navvies), stonemasons, bricklayers, and some other mechanics, are the classes now most needed in Victoria ; and not men of superior education, men of science, scholars, artists, or any of the clerical class, or intermediates. The small capitalist (we have many of the larger class), small farmer or producer, the navvie, and the stonemason, are the chief additional influx that will be wanted for some years to come; unless—and here it must be remembered that what has occurred in the bush may, in the most material circumstance, occur again—a new Bendigo, or Ballaarat, or several very rich coal-fields, should be discovered. Without sharing in the apprehension of an earth- quake of the kind which some geologists and others prognosticate, it must yet be said that we live here, as it were, behind a spangled veil—a sort of dark curtain, with rents in it, through which the glancing lights of sub- terranean pantomimes are fitfully seen, and which may at any moment be withdrawn. Not only might another and far richer gold-field be discovered, but the miners might come down upon long quartzose ridges, the very matrix of the gold. No rational person would speculate upon such an event; but such an event, though improbable, is more than possible. With regard • Australian Facts and Prospects ; to which is prefixed the Author's Australian Autobiography. By It. H. Horne, Author of " Orion," Sic. Published by Smith, Elder, and Co.
to coal-fields, the recent discoveries at Cape Patterson have placed that question beyond doubt."
It was not to work with his pen but with a pickaxe and a shovel that Mr. Horne went to Australia ; and so far was he from intending to continue the practice of literature as a profession that he does not appear to have even thought of writing a book for the home market, as most men in his position would have done. From the day of his arrival in the colony he never made a single note of any kind with such a view, and when he sat down to write the very interesting sketch of his Australian autobiography, which is prefixed to the volume before us, he found that he had quite for- gotten the month, and was not certain as to the year, of his land- ing, and had to work back to these dates by the help of collateral events. And the sketch after all is but a fragment, coming down only to the year 1853, and there breaking off with this apologetic note—" Having left this sketch to the last, as of least moment, the closing of the mail compels me to drop the pen." Let him by all means take it up again as soon as possible, for if the bulk corresponds to the sample, we believe he has never written any- thing in prose more likely to be deservedly popular than the sin- gular narrative which he so strangely undervalues. He arrived in Melbourne without capital, but with a complete and choice as- sortment of miner's implements, intending to dig for gold ; but this purpose he at once abandoned after a conference with Major Chisholm, the first person he visited on the day be stepped ashore. " I was not at all daunted," he says, " by the assurance of the worthy Major that 'it was not the sort of work for a gentleman '; but the uncertainty of the work, after all its labours, hardships, and ruinous expenses, staggered my plans and calculations." "Having made up my mind not to dig for gold till I could see my way' and find suitable companions, I disposed at once of my mining implements. Picks, shovels, cradles, carpenter's and other tools, all disappeared in a trice, at fifty and a hundred per cent profit on the cost price, and one of the tools (a screw-wrench) at three hundred per cent. My cross-cut saw had been stolen, or that would have brought me something handsome. My cart, which cost 141. in Londoe, had a paper stuck upon the side one morn- ing, To be sold, price 601.' In the course of a few hours a working man, apparently not a miner, came and walked round it—saw that it was not brought out 'to sell,' but a strong, well-made concern—out came his leather-bag, and from it the amount specified. No base haggling, de- precating, cheapening, and pretending to go away ; the price was paid without a word, and the man, placing the shaft-chain over his shoulders, bent forward to his work, and drew it after him in a 'right lwrsely ' style, as Chaucer would say. A sheet-iron pump, however, was my greatest per- formance in this my first appearance in life as a salesman. It cost me 6l. in London, and it was sold for 251. Being hollow, and not heavy, the freight and other expenses had not exceeded 2/. This was the only article sold concerning which I made a memorandum ; but the one I had most calcu- lated upon did not 'go off' as many persons expected. This was my port- able forge. I had been led to anticipate that by letting it out I should ob- tain at the rate of 61. a week ; and, if on the gold-fields, very likely 400/. a year. But I preferred to sell outright, and not to 'let,' having a salutary fear that the lease might be indefinitely extended, and the lessee not easy to find on quarter-day."
After many months, this precious forge was sold for the ig, nominions price of 41., just what it had cost in London. The episode is not without instruction for intending emigrants ; for when we oall to mind what wonderful things were told seven years ago, in every English newspaper, of the fortunes made by mending picks and shovels at the diggings, it must be owned that most people at home would have thought Mr. Home had made a capital speculation in the purchase of his portable forge. Fortu- nately before he had spent the money realized by the sale of his other implements, he was advised by Major Chisholm to see the Chairman of the Directors of the Private Gold Escort, who had been making inquiries about him. They wanted a chief officer to command their troop, and knowing that Mr. Horne had been educated at the Royal Military College, and had seen actual ser- vice in South America, they readily gave him the appointment. The service upon which he now entered. was as rough and harassing as it could well be, and great were its perils and re- sponsibilities. Now there are good macadamised roads to the diggings, but in those days there was nothing but a track beset with impediments of all kinds, and with swampy places through which it was sometimes a day's work to advance a mile with a cart. "I shall give no description of the struggles of these early journeys to the diggings, as theave often been narrated, and are now considered almost fabulous. Mnr. William Hewitt, whose account was as accurate as it was graphic, has often been accused of exaggerations, and even here the new chum' smiles in the conceit of his own understanding when be reads that gentleman's story of the bullock that sank down out of sight in the highway or main street through Kilmer°, and a horseman passing soon after, had his horse staked upon the horns of the bullock. It is perfectly true, and occurred opposite the post-office. Kilmore did not lie in our pre- sent route, but as I subsequently passed through with the M'Ivor escort, I will take the opportunity of adding that the main street' was, in fact, a huge canal of mud, with boulder-stones at the bottom, varying (to judge by the slips, and plunges, and instinctive apprehension and precautions of the horse) from the size of a boy's head to that of the smooth skull of a
young elephant. This highway through Kilmer°, including the slough on either side of the bridge, certain portions of the Black Forest, Pretty
Sally's Hill, and Gleeson's alias Beveridge's swamp, leave indelible impres- sions on the memory of all who have ever had a taste of their quality,' and deserve to be chronicled in the archives of the Government which, having attracted myriads of immigrants by an official report on the discoveries of gold-fields, made no effort to give them roads, and refused to sell them land, with the gold in their extended hands."
On his first journey Mr. Horne met with several mishaps, in- cluding a mutiny of his whole troop, but he brought home his two tons of gold in good time without the loss of an ounce, and continued to enjoy his employers' favour, until the death of the chairman threw the affairs of the company into disorder, when he sent in his resignation. He then pitched two tents for himself in Canvass Town, and continued for some months to make part of its
strange population of 5000 persons, making meanwhile many ineffectual efforts to obtain employment. At last he was ap- pointed a Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Gold-fields, a piece of good luck which he owed to the fact that a distant relation of his, who was the first Attorney-General of Tasmania, had been killed and eaten by the Port Philip blacks. A letter arrived from the Colonial Office, inquiring as to the fate of the surviving kinsman, and two days afterwards he received his appointment. That proved eventually to be a good first step in public employ- ment; but that it did not lead to his being murdered by the miners, who were excited to rebellion by the mismanaged affair of the licences, was a happiness for which he owes no thanks to the blundering Government which then ruled in Melbourne. Soon after his escape from this imminent danger, we find him buying river frontages and other choice allotments, some of them at the extravagant price of 70/. per acre for land in a wilderness a hun- dred and twenty-five miles from Melbourne. His purchases com- prise about a fourth part of the site of the nascent town of Mur- chison, and are to make him a rich man when some care is be- stowed on improving the navigation of the great river Victoria, and its waters are spanned by a bridge which has existed on paper ever since the day of the sale. Meanwhile " two hotels, a punt, a police-station, a pound, stores and huts, have rapidly risen; but the enthusiast in river frontages and other town lots has never yet received a shilling of rent for his outlay. Neither does he regret the outlay."
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