Chapter X (1)

“He cherished his friend, and he relished a bumper,
Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper—
Then what was his failing? come, tell it, add burn ye,
He was, could he help it? a special attorney.”
Goldsmith’s Retaliation.

The female readers of these rambling chapters have already been considering—no doubt—how some kind of a plot may be divined from the foregoing hints; but this arises from a total misconception of my plan.

Blessed ladies! toward whom, as viewed in imagination, my heart warms, and live coals stir among the hoary embers, I write not a romance or even a story. These are reminiscences, memorandums, odd leaves torn from the volume of recollection. Thanks to the modern way of publishing by piece-meal, my fair critics cannot be cheated of the _agrodolce_ of the denouement by any perverse brother or nephew peeping into the last pages, and forestalling the catastrophe. No, the winding-up is not to be preposterously revealed. This were as disappointing as for a chemist to see some grand discovery which he longs for printed in the daily sheet before his investigations are half done. You remember Montaigne’s story of the ancient philosopher and the dish of figs which had been laid in honey.

Bent on learning, and not a little conceited in regard to my small and fragmentary acquisitions, I rode about the county in search of some congenial characters, and certainly I alighted on some odd ones. The straggling village around our court-house comprised a church, a school, a doctor’s house and laboratory, a store, several mechanics’ shops, and two lawyers’ offices. In one of the last mentioned lived Gideon Stowe.

Rumor says that Stowe was the son of an overseer; but he was in my day a man of wide-spread reputation at the bar. A strong savor of his plebeianism adhered to him, which he rather cherished than concealed. I see him now, a strong-built man of fifty or thereabout; large-headed, bald and glabrous on the crown, with curly gray-hair gathered around his thick neck. He wore blue broad-cloth, and a white neck-cloth, and his low shoes displayed the blue yarn stockings, which covered a sturdy leg even in summer. Of the graces he made small account. All dignity but that of sinewy argumentation he held far beneath him. I have seen him sit for hours on a court-day, on the counter of the country store, with his feet dangling, as he whittled off pecks of splinters and shavings from a bludgeon of soft pine, as he discoursed on constitutional law to the group who listened and admired. Stowe was the resort of desperate culprits, for an hundred miles around. He loved plantation-talk, was a thriving agriculturist, a wealthy man, and the father of numerous accomplished daughters. If the English of the highway was in any case stronger than the dialect of books he seized on it, as Cobbet used to do.

The collision of sturdy talk daily, for years, had so disciplined him, that his colloquies—when he found a fit antagonist—were like a game at quarter-staff: there was little breathing and there were hard knocks. Stowe was a devourer of books, not only in his own profession, but in history, politics, and theology. He knew little Greek, and no modern language but our own, but had taught himself Latin, which a prodigious memory enabled him to quote with force, though with a contempt of all quantity. He loved to crack the bones of tough places in Persius and Tacitus. His English favorites were Bentley, Warburton, Churchill, and the colloquial effusions of Johnson. The attractions to his house, even leaving five blooming girls out of the question, I found irresistible. But it was a fearful pleasure; for, until repeated floorings had taught me my place, he would bring me down with a momentum, as often as I dared to encounter him.

Anne Stowe, the third daughter, possessed the grace and gentleness of her mother—whom I never knew,—together with some decided traits of the father’s keenness and power. There are circles in which Anne would have been voted a _bas-bleu_; but singular beauty, and several accomplishments of the gayer sort attempered the severer tones of character. Her voice was an organ which subdued whole coteries into attention by its dulcet charm. She sung, she painted, she rode the great horse, she was a gipsy queen in pic-nics and aquatic adventures. Exquisitely susceptible of humorous impressions, and familiar with the purest writers of satire, Anne was never betrayed into a sarcasm; and her lofty sweetness repelled the forward trifling which is common among half-educated young lawyers. Altogether, she stood as a beautiful contrast to her Herculean parent.

When I look back over the days of my youth, I find few greener spots than the long winter evenings spent at the Maples. It was a huge, shambling, unfinished house, open to all comers, with fires worthy of a Saxon castle, and tables groaning with Homeric joints. These were not—alas! for Gideon Stowe—the times of “thin potations.” When the ladies had retired, and the host called for hot-water and the “materials,” his tongue was loosed, and he gloried in—what were to him—the “_noctes, cænaeque deorum_.”

The short, broken, insufficient visits of a city, and the thronged assemblies of fashion, afford no specimens of, what used to be called in the period of Burney and Garrick, conversation. This must be sought where journals are rare, where hospitality is primitive, and where friends—who know one another—prize the continuous flow, and take time for it.

If I may venture a judgment, where there is room for bias and prepossession, I will declare my belief that these conditions no where meet in more perfection than among the educated proprietors of the South. Animated dialogue, from the necessity of the case, takes the place of purchased evening amusements. Wit and beauty are not confined to the sons and daughters of New England; nor will we readily yield to them in that glow, frankness and impulsion, which give electric force to countenance, voice, and gesture. Many a _soirée_ have we kept up till the small hours, when a dozen horses were in the stables, and a tribe of swarthy retainers were making the joists ring in the neighboring dependencies. Here it was that in my heyday I forgot all the grammarians, from Priscian to Adam, all the classics, and all the marvels of the old world; but I was learning much of mankind in its best aspect, and not a little of myself.

_Mme._ Anne Stowe has been dead twenty years, and three of her sons have families near me. Her husband was a wealthy planter; but before he gained her hand she gave more than one refusal to an aspiring young fellow whose name I am not free to mention.

* * * * *

=LIFE’S BATTLE MARCH.=

=BY MRS. J. H. THOMAS, (L. L. M.)=

A mighty throng are they who gird
Their armor for the strife;
And, with strong hearts, go forth to win
The battle-field of Life.

The good, the firm, the true, the brave,
The beautiful, are there;
Beside the stern, dark warrior’s helm
Float woman’s tresses fair.

Rose-lips are wreathed with lofty smiles,
Pale cheeks with ardor glow;
And fragile forms from easeful halls
To death or vict’ry go.

Nor fly they from the noontide heat,
To Pleasure’s shaded bowers;
Firm fall the feet that trod, erewhile,
Among the dew-bright flowers.

To battle with Life’s ills they go—
Those hopeful hearts and strong—
Nor shrink they from the toilsome march,
To struggle fierce and long.

These lessons trite they all have conned:
The proudest hopes may fall;
And Beauty, Life, and Bloom repair
To Death’s great carnival—

Earth’s clinging loves may fade away,
Like half-forgotten dreams;
And trusting hearts grow dark and cold
As cypress-shaded streams—

The calmest brow may droop with grief—
The brightest lip may pale;
And eagle eyes grow dim with tears,
When Hate and Wrong prevail—

And yet most glorious words, I ween,
Are woven in the song,
That breathes from every heart and lip,
As sweep those ranks along.

That Wrong and Hate, though leagued with Might,
And Grief, and Pain, and Wo,
Can never crush the True and Right,
Those brave hearts joy to know.

To each calm, earnest, onward soul,
The lofty faith is given,
That every flower that fades on earth,
Far brighter blooms in Heaven.

They know that each encounter stern
With Sorrow makes them strong;
And cheerily their bold, true hearts,
Uplift the glorious song.

They joy to know that soon their tents
On Time’s dim shore will gleam;
That soon their steadfast ranks will stand
Beside Death’s sullen stream;

That soon from the Eternal Walls
Heaven’s silvery chime will sound;
And then Life’s myriad victors be
With God’s own glory crowned.

* * * * *

=THE HARVEST OF GOLD.=

Three years ago, one Mr. Smith, a gentleman engaged in iron-works in Australia, made his appearance at the Government House, Sydney, with a lump of gold. He offered, for a large sum of money, to point out where he had got it, and where more was to be found in abundance. The Government, however, thinking that this might be no more than a device, and that the lump produced might, in reality, have come from California, declined to buy a gold field in the dark, but advised Mr. Smith to unfold his tale, and leave his payment to the liberality of Government. This Mr. Smith refused to do, and there the matter ended.

On the third of April, 1851, Mr. Hargraves, who had recently returned from California, addressed the Government, stating that the result of his experience in that country had led him to expect gold in Australia; that the results of his exploring had been highly satisfactory; and that for the sum of five hundred pounds he would point out the precious districts. The same answer was returned that had disposed of Mr. Smith, but with an opposite effect; for Mr. Hargraves declaring himself “satisfied to leave the remuneration for his discovery to the liberal consideration of Government,” at once named the districts, which were Lewis Ponds, Summer-Hill Creek, and Macquarie River, in Bathurst and Wellington—the present Ophir. Mr. Hargraves was directed to place himself at once in communication with the Government Surveyor.

Meantime, the news began to be whispered about. A man who appeared in Bathurst with a lump of gold worth thirty pounds, which he had picked up, created a great sensation, and numbers hastened to see whether they could not do likewise. The Commissioner of Crown Lands became alarmed. He warned all those who had commenced their search, of the illegality of their proceedings, and made earnest application for efficient assistance, imagining that the doings in California were to be repeated in Bathurst, and that pillage and murder were to be the order of the day. The Government immediately took active measures for the maintenance of order. Troops were dispatched to the gold fields, and the Inspector-General of Police received a discretionary power to employ what force he thought proper.

Great was the excitement in Sydney upon the confirmation of all this intelligence. Hasty partings, deserted desks, and closed shops, multiplied in number. Every imaginable mode of conveyance was resorted to, and hundreds set off on foot.

On the fourteenth of May, the Government Surveyor reported that, in communication with Mr. Hargraves, he had visited the before-mentioned districts, and after three hours’ examination, “had seen quite enough”—gold was every where plentiful.

A proclamation was at once issued, forbidding any person to dig without a license, setting forth divers pains and penalties for disobedience. Licenses were to be obtained upon the spot, at the rate of thirty shillings per month, liable to future alteration. No licenses were granted to any one who could not produce a certificate of discharge from his last service, or otherwise give a satisfactory account of himself; and the descriptions of such as were refused were registered. A small body of mounted police were at the same time organized, who were paid at the somewhat curious rate of three shillings and three-pence per day, with rations, and lodgings when they could be procured. Fortunately, there was no attempt at disturbance, for the Governor in a dispatch states, “that the rush of people (most of them armed) was so great, that had they been disposed to resist, the whole of the troops and police would have been unable to cope with them.” The licenses, too, were all cheerfully paid for, either in coin or gold.

On the third of June, Mr. Hargraves (who, in the meantime, had received a responsible appointment) underwent an examination before the Legislative Council, when he stated that he was led to search in the neighborhood of Bathurst, by observing the similarity of the country to California. He found gold as soon as he dismounted. He found it everywhere; rode from the head of the Turon river to its confluence with the Macquarie, about one hundred miles; found gold over the whole extent; afterward found it all along the Macquarie. “Bathurst,” observed Mr. Hargraves, “is the most extraordinary place I ever saw. Gold is actually found lying on the ground, close to the surface.” And Mr. Commissioner Green, two days afterward, reported that “gold was found in every pan of earth taken up.”

But the most important event connected with these discoveries, and which is without parallel in the world’s history, remains to be told.

On the sixteenth of July, The Bathurst Free Press, commenced a leader with the following passage:—

“Bathurst is mad again! The delirium of golden fever has returned with increased intensity. Men meet together, stare stupidly at one another, and wonder what will happen next. Everybody has a hundred times seen a hundred weight of flour. A hundred weight of sugar is an everyday fact; but a hundred weight of gold is a phrase scarcely known in the English language. It is beyond the range of our ordinary ideas; a sort of physical incomprehensibility; but that it is a material existence, our own eyes bore witness.” Now for the facts.

On Sunday, eleventh July, it was whispered about in Sydney, that a Dr. Kerr had found a hundred weight of gold! Few believed it. It was thought a capital joke. Monday arrived, and all doubts were dispelled; for at mid-day a tandem, drawn by two grays, drew up in front of the Free Press Office. Two immense lumps of virgin gold were displayed in the body of the vehicle; and being freely handed round to a quickly assembled crowd, created feelings of wonder, incredulity, and admiration, which were increased, when a large tin box was pointed to as containing the remainder of the hundred weight of gold. The whole was at once lodged at the Union Bank of Australia, where the process of weighing took place in the presence of a party of gentlemen, including the lucky owner and the manager of the bank. The entire mass weighed about three hundred pounds, which yielded one hundred and six pounds of pure gold, valued at four thousand pounds. This magnificent mass was accidentally discovered by an educated aboriginal in the service of Dr. Kerr; who, while keeping his master’s sheep, had his attention attracted to something shining on a block of quartz, and breaking off a portion with his tomahawk, this hitherto hidden treasure stared him in the face. The lump was purchased by Messrs. Thacker and Company, of Sydney, and consigned to an eminent firm in London.

Meanwhile, the Commissioner reported a gold field many miles in extent, north-east of Bathurst, adding that it would afford employment for five thousand persons, the average gain of each person being then one pound per day; while provisions, which at one time had been enormously high, owing to the cupidity of speculators, had fallen so low, that the sum of ten shillings a week was quite sufficient for one individual’s subsistence. The reports from the other commissioners were equally favorable; and it is gratifying to find that they all spoke in the highest terms of the orderly and exemplary conduct of the diggers.

Since the discoveries in the neighborhood of Sydney, there have been found, in South Australia, large tracts of country abounding in gold, only sixteen miles from Melbourne. The most recent accounts (December 15, 1851) from these regions are of a most astounding character. In the first week in December nearly fifty thousand pounds value in gold was brought into Melbourne and Geelong. The amount would have been greater but for want of conveyance. “To find quartz,” says the Australian and New Zealand Gazette, “is to find gold. It is found thirty-two feet from the surface in plenty. Gold is actually oozing from the earth.” Nuggets of gold, from fourteen ounces to twenty-seven pounds, are to be found in abundance. A single quartz “nugget,” found in Louisa creek, sold for one thousand one hundred and fifty-five pounds. The Alert was on her way home with one hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling in gold, and two other vessels with similar rich cargoes.

Every town and village were becoming gradually deserted. “Those who remain behind to mind the flocks demand such wages, that farming will not long pay. Labor is in such demand that any body with a pair of hands can readily command thirty-five shillings per week, with board and lodging.” The Government Commissioners had given in their unanimous report, that the gold fields were already so extensive as to afford remunerative employment for one hundred thousand persons. In conclusion, the last advices describe the excitement as so intense that fears were entertained that sufficient hands would not be left to get in the standing crops.

Every week the number multiplies of gold-seekers’ colonies planted about streams in Australia; at all, the conduct of the diggers is exemplary. Most of them cease from labor on the Sunday, and spend that day as they would spend it if they were in town. The first keg of spirits taken into an Australian gold field had its head punched out by the miners; and Government has since assisted them in the endeavor to repress the use of stronger stimulants than wine or beer. Where every member of the community possesses more or less of the great object of desire; where stolen gold could never be identified; where it would be far from easy to identify a thief who passes to-and-fro among communities composed entirely of chance-comers, having faces strange one to another, a little drunkenness might lead to a great deal of lawlessness and crime. There are men, however, who will drink; and what are called by the miners “sly grog-sellers” exist, and elude discovery in every gold settlement. Yet we read of one man who, being drunk, had dropped the bottle which contained his gold, and are informed that he was afterward sought out, and received due restoration of his treasure from its finder. Some settlements are much more lawless than the rest, and we have read, perhaps, more ill of Ballarat than any other; yet it is of Ballarat that we receive the following sketch from a private correspondent.

The writer, with a party of four young friends, quitted a farm near Geelong, in October last year, to experiment as a digger at Ballarat until the harvest. One man at a gold field can do little for himself; a party of about four is requisite to make a profitable division of the labor. “With this party,” our correspondent says, “I started on Thursday, October the second, for the Gold City of Ballarat. We took with us all requisite tools; a large tarpaulin to make into a tent; provisions to last us for two months. All this was stowed away in our own dray; and our man Tom accompanied it.

“This mode of travelling—the universal mode in Australia—is very pleasant in fine weather. We used to be up at daybreak, and start as soon as we had breakfasted. We would go on leisurely—for bullocks won’t be hurried—and get through a stage of from fifteen to twenty miles, according to the state of the roads, allowing an interval of one hour for dinner. Then we would stop for the night at some convenient camping-ground, where there was a good supply of grass, wood, and water. There, our first proceedings were to make a big fire, and a great kettle of tea—a kettle, mind; then we rigged out a temporary tent, spread our beds on the ground, and went to sleep as comfortably as if we were at a first-rate hotel.

“On Monday night—having left the farm on the previous Thursday—we camped about two miles from the diggings; and making a very early start, we got in sight of them a little after sunrise.

“It certainly was the most extraordinary sight I ever beheld. Imagine a valley, varying in width from one hundred to five hundred yards, inclosed on either side by high ranges of hills, thickly timbered. Through the middle of this valley there winds a rapid little stream, or ‘creek,’ as it is termed here. On the banks of the creek, and among the trees of the surrounding ranges, were clustered tents, bark-huts formed after the native fashion with boughs of trees, and every kind of temporary habitation which could be put up in the course of an hour or two.

“Some idea may be formed of the number of tents and other habitations, when I say that there were then at least five thousand men at work within a space of about half-a-mile up the creek. All these had collected together in a few weeks; for it was only in the latter end of August that gold was first found in this out-of-the-way forest valley—now the site of the ‘City of Ballarat,’ as it was nicknamed by the diggers.

“We chose a place for our tent on a rather retired spot, not far from the creek; in a couple of hours our ‘house’ was put up, the stores stowed away inside it, and Tom and his team were off on the home journey to Geelong. Leaving the others to ‘set our house in order,’ get in a stock of firewood, bake a damper, and perform various other odd jobs attendant upon taking up one’s residence in the Bush—Fred and I set out to reconnoitre the scene of our future operations.

“The place where there was the richest deposit of gold was on the face of a hill, which sloped gradually down from the edges on the right-hand (or east) side of the creek, going towards the source. I mention these particulars, because it is worthy of note that almost all the principal diggings have been discovered in places similarly situated. The whole of the hill was what geologists call an ‘alluvial deposit:’ consisting of various strata of sand, gravel, large quartz boulders, and white clay, in the order I have named them. It is in this white clay, immediately beneath the quartz, that the gold is found. In one part of the hill, where the discovery was first made, this layer of quartz was visible at the surface, or ‘cropped out:’ in other parts it is to be met with at various depths, of from five to thirty feet.

“When first these diggings were discovered, there were, as might be expected, continual disputes as to how much ground each man should have for his operations. One party applied to the Government, which immediately appointed a Commissioner and a whole staff of subordinates, to maintain order and enforce certain regulations, made ostensibly for the benefit of the diggers. Of these regulations the two principal ones were, that each person must pay thirty shillings per month for a license to ‘dig, search for, and remove gold’ (I inclose you my license as a curiosity); and that no person could claim more than eight feet square of ground to work at, at one time. In consequence of this last regulation, the workings were concentrated in a small part of the hill, where the gold was chiefly to be found. This spot was perfectly riddled with holes, of from eight to sixteen feet square, separated by narrow pathways, which formed the means of communication between each hole and the creek. A walk about this honeycomb of holes was most amusing. The whole place swarmed with men; some at work in the pits; others carrying down the auriferous earth to be washed in the creek—in wheel-barrows, hand-barrows, sacks, and tin dishes on their heads. In some of the holes I even saw men digging out bits of gold from between the stones with a table-knife.

“Busy as this scene was, I think the scene at the creek was busier. Both banks, for half-a-mile, were lined with men, hard at work washing the earth in cradles. Each cradle employs three men; and all the cradles are placed close to one another, at intervals of not more than a yard. The noise produced by the incessant ‘rock-rock’ of these cradles was like that of an immense factory. This—together with continual hammering of a thousand picks, and the occasional crashing fall of immense trees, whose roots had been undermined by some mole of a gold-digger—made a confusion of sounds, of which you will find it difficult to form a just idea.”

Our correspondent’s party was not very fortunate in its researches at Ballarat. Having explained this to us, he continues to give his impressions of the place.

“When we arrived there, the influx of people was still going on; tents springing up at the rate of fifty per diem. This continued until the third week in September, when the number of persons on the ground was estimated at seven thousand. Strange as was the appearance of the place by day, it was still stranger at night. Before every tent was a fire; and in addition to this general illumination, there was not unfrequently a special one—the accidental burning down of some tent or other. These little conflagrations produced splendid effects; the bright glare suddenly lighting up the gloomy masses of trees, and the groups of wild-looking diggers.

“Noise, too, was a prominent feature of ‘Ballarat by night.’ From dusk till eleven P. M., there was a continuous discharge of fire-arms; for almost every one brought some kind of weapon with him to the diggings. Then there was a band which discoursed by no means eloquent music: nine-tenths of the score being monopolized by the drum. In the pauses of this—which occurred, I suppose, whenever the indefatigable drummer had made his arms ache—we would hear rising from some of the tents music of a more pleasing character. The party next ours sang hymns very correctly in four parts; and from another tent the ‘Last Rose of Summer’ sometimes issued, played very pathetically on the flageolet.

“Sunday was always well observed at the diggings, so far as absence from work was concerned: and there was Service held twice a day by different ministers. Altogether, though there were occasional fights—particularly on Sundays—there was much less disorder than one would have expected, where a large body of such men were gathered together. While we stayed, there happened only one murder and two or three robberies. You must not take the quantity of gold we got as any criterion of the amount found by other parties. Numbers made fortunes in a few weeks. One party that I knew obtained thirty pounds weight—troy—in seven weeks; and a youth of seventeen, who came out with me in the ‘Anna Maria,’ received five hundred pounds as his share of six weeks’ work. These are but ordinary cases. The greatest quantity known to have been taken out in one day, was sixty-three pounds weight, nearly three thousand pounds worth.

“On Wednesday, November fifth, we packed up, left Ballarat, and set off for Mount Alexander, where we arrived on the Saturday following. The Diggings there are not confined to one spot, but extend for twelve miles up a valley. The gold is found mostly among the surface soil; some I have even seen lying among the grass. We tried first at a place where there was only one party at work; and the trial proving satisfactory, we stayed there three weeks, and obtained thirty-six ounces of gold. For a few days we did nothing; and then we went over to some other Diggings about five miles off. Here we went “prospecting” for ourselves, and the first day found out a spot from which we took thirty-five ounces in one week—the last of our stay; eighteen ounces we found in a single day.

“We then started off, back to Geelong; for I was anxious to be back for the harvest. We reached home on Saturday, December twentieth.”

Writing on the twenty-eighth of December, our informant adds:—

“This gold discovery has sent the whole country mad. There are now upward of fifty thousand men at work at the various diggings; of which I have only mentioned the two principal ones, Ballarat and Mount Alexander. Every body who can by any means get away, is off. It is almost impossible to obtain laborers at any wages. Half the wheat in the country will most likely rot on the ground for want of hands to reap it. Fortunately we shall be able to get in ours ourselves, for our man Tom is still with us, and Mr. R’s four brothers will lend us a hand. We have a very good crop of wheat, for the first year; the barley, of which we had an acre or two, we have already cut and threshed, and are going to send a load in to Geelong to-morrow. I can handle the sickle and flail pretty well for a beginner. We shall cut the wheat next Tuesday. As soon as the harvest is over, and the wheat threshed out and sold, Mr. R. and I mean to make up another party and be off to the diggings. We cannot do all the work on the farm ourselves, and hiring servants now is out of the question. Men are asking seven shillings and sixpence a-day wages, and will only hire by the week at that rate. Things will soon be in the same state as they are in California. All ordinary employments will be put a stop to for a time; but there will no doubt come a reaction in the course of a year or two.”

The reaction anticipated by the writer will not consist in a disgust at gold, or a decrease in the number of gold-diggers. It will be less a reaction than a recovery of balance. Although the gold in Australia is, on the whole, peculiarly accessible, and so abundant that a persevering worker cannot fail to draw a livelihood out of the diggings; yet there are very many workers who are not disposed to persevere. Experience has shown, that a large number of men who rush upon the gold field to pick up a fortune, like all sanguine people, take up quickly with despair, and come away after a few weeks of bad success. Of the large number of people who will be induced by their gold to emigrate into the Australian colonies, many will try the gold fields and abandon them, many will find their health or their acquired habits unsuited to the rough work of the diggings, and the “Home of the Gold Miners”—as one sees it advertised in Sydney papers, “weighing only twelve pounds—nine feet square by eight feet high, for thirty-five shillings.” Such men and others will be more ready to spread about the towns and through the pastures. In a year or two there will be in Australia labor willing to employ itself as readily upon the fields as upon the gold, while the work will proceed at the gold fields steadily enough.

The contrast is very great between the orderly behavior at the gold fields in Australia, and of California. There are few fields, we are told, at which a miner might not have his wife and family; if he could provide accommodation for them, they would be as safe, and meet with just as much respect as if they lived in their own house in town. A clergyman, quitting the Turon settlement, publicly returns his “sincere thanks to the commissioners of the Turon, and to the mining population in general, for the many acts of kindness which he experienced during his short residence among them. He considers it his duty,” he says, “thus publicly to state, not only his own personal obligations, but also the pleasure which he felt in witnessing the general desire of all classes to promote the object of his mission, and to profit by his humble labors; and if,” he says, “he were to judge from their orderly conduct, and from the earnest attention and apparent devotion with which they all joined in the religious services of the Sabbath, he could not help forming a very favorable opinion of the miners. It cannot be denied that the great majority are sober, industrious, and well-disposed.”

The weekly “Gold Circular,” at Sydney gets poetical on the subject:—

“In our first shipment, we could count the value of the gold in pounds sterling by hundreds; in a few weeks it rose to thousands; in a few weeks more it became tens of thousands; and we are fast approaching a period when each ship will convey hundreds of thousands.” At the time when that was written—on December sixth—in the very few months since the digging was commenced, there had been shipped from Australia, gold to the value of three hundred and twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven pounds; and since that time the yield of gold has been increasing. At the same time, California continues unexhausted, and the field of gold in Russia has enlarged.

It will be seen, therefore, that there is just reason for anticipating a change in the value of gold, which will begin to take place gradually at no distant time. The annual supply of gold promises now to be about eight times greater than it was at the commencement of the present century. The value of silver, with reference to corn, fell two-thirds in the sixteenth century, as that of gold is likely to fall in the nineteenth. The price of silver fell in consequence of the increased production from the great mines in America. A piece of gold is now assumed to be worth fifteen or sixteen like pieces of silver; during the Middle Ages it was worth only twelve such pieces. In Europe, under Charlemagne, ten pieces of silver were an equivalent; and, at one period in Rome, silver was but nine times less precious than gold: relative values, therefore, have varied, and they will vary again. Since they were last fixed by law, there have occurred no causes of disturbance. Now, however, a time of disturbance is again at hand.

In France, the monetary unit is a franc; and silver is, by law, the standard coinage; but, a supplementary law having assigned the value of twenty silver francs to pieces of gold of a fixed weight, our neighbors will not be exempted from our difficulty, and the French State, like the English State, may profit, if it please, at the expense of public creditors. Governments have only to do nothing, and a large part of their debts will tumble from them; holders of Government securities have only to be passive, and in the course of years their income will diminish sensibly. Debtors will hold a jubilee, and creditors will be dismayed, if gold shall be allowed to fall in value, without due provision being made to avert, as far as possible, all inconvenience attending that event.

In 1848, the value of gold had been for many years a very little more than the amount of silver allowed by law, in France, as its equivalent. The little difference was quite enough to put gold out of circulation. Gold was more precious as metal than as money: it was, therefore, used by preference as metal; when wanted as coin, it was only to be bought—at more than its legal current value—of the money-changers. There is a vast quantity of gold in circulation now, but it is newly coined.

The fall in the value of gold cannot begin to any appreciable extent, until the utmost available quantity has been employed upon the monetary system of the world. Coinage now goes on rapidly. A huge mass of sovereigns has lately been sent from England to the Australian colonies. When the depreciation once begins, it will be tolerably rapid. It is not absurd to calculate that, if the gold production should continue at its present rate, sovereigns will be as half sovereigns now are in value, in the course of about twenty years.

At the same time, it will be the duty of all States to take such precautions as shall make it impossible for a change of this kind to introduce confusion into commerce, or to change the character and spirit of existing contracts.

* * * * *

=SEMINOLE WAR SONG.=

=BY WM. H. C. HOSMER.=

Fire, famine, and slaughter,
Have wasted our band—
Our life-blood like water
Has moistened the land;
But truly our rifles
The bullet will speed,
While an arm can be lifted—
One bosom can bleed.

The raven is croaking
A dirge for the slain—
Our cabins lie smoking
On prairie and plain;
But paths we will follow
To carnage that lead,
While an arm can be lifted—
One bosom can bleed.

Our old men lie mangled
By wild-wolf and bear;
Our babes we have strangled—
Dread act of despair;
And vengeance will nerve us
To desperate deed,
While an arm can be lifted—
One bosom can bleed.

Pale robbers are swarming
In hammock and vale;
Their squadrons are forming
With flags on the gale;
We dread not their footmen,
Armed rider and steed,
While an arm can be lifted—
One bosom can bleed.

* * * * *

=STABILITY.=

=BY J. HUNT, JR.=

Be thou, like yon old mountain oak,
Of sturdy mien—in purpose strong;
And prove thyself to be unchanged,
In every sense, from Right to Wrong.

Let not success unbalance mind;
In adverse times be honest, then;
Support the Truth, and thou shalt march,
A monarch, in the van of Men.

* * * * *

=LINES,=

Suggested by reading an account of the very ancient Willow which
still stands in what were once the gardens of Semiramis, at
Babylon, with which it is supposed to have been coeval.

=BY MRS. E. L. CUSHING.=

Oh, solitary tree!
Living memento of the mighty Past!
Strange, dreamy images the mind o’ercast,
As dwell its thoughts on thee.

Where roved Semiramis
Thou still doth stand—perchance her foot she staid
Beneath thy silvery boughs—in their deep shade
To woo the zephyr’s kiss.

There now, thou standest lone;
And as the winds thine ancient branches sway,
Thou dost respond to their light mirthful play,
With melancholy moan.

[3]The wandering Arab hears,
And deems in thee unearthly spirits dwell;
Then hastes with flying foot the tale to tell,
Of his dark doubts and fears.

Ancient, mysterious tree!
What secrets deep lie hidden in thy breast?
’Twere strange, indeed, if aught could be at rest,
Knowing what’s known to thee.

Thou hast outlived thy race!
Lone dweller, thou, amid decay and death,
Where e’en the violet, with her perfumed breath,
No eye may ever trace.

Amid thy foliage dim
The wild bee murmurs not, nor e’er is heard,
’Mong thy pale folded leaves, the chant of bird,
Warbling her vesper hymn.

Not so, oh mournful tree!
When in their glory shone those gardens bright,
And plants of every clime, full fair to sight,
Smiled gayly there with thee.

Then thou did’st proudly wave
Thy graceful boughs above the queenly head
Of fair Semiramis, and soft dews shed,
Her beauteous brow to lave.

While at thy feet unrolled,
Lay Shinar’s plain, in whose bright midst there shone
The hundred gates of mighty Babylon—
Her towers and domes of gold!

Where are her glories now—
Her valiant kings—and he who reared yon tower
To brave the heavens? Spent is their little hour!
Oh, tree! why lingerest thou?

There thou hast stood and seen
Their doom fulfilled—hast seen gray ruin sit
In their bright halls, and marked the dark bat flit
Where song and dance have been.

Hoary and voiceless tree!
Could’st thou find human utterance, to impart
All the bright secrets treasured in thy heart—
Dark would the history be!

Well might’st thou moralize
On worldly hopes—thou that canst boast a span,
Ne’er in Time’s earliest records reached by man—
The mighty, nor the wise.

Briefer than thine, oh tree!
Earth’s glories are; for thou hast seen them pass,
Age after age, as in a magic glass—
Yet change comes not to thee.

Still may Time pass thee by,
Untouched, unscathed—sparing thee still to bind
Us to the Past—thou that art close entwined
With its strange history.

-----

[3] The creaking sound made by the branches of this aged willow, when moved by the wind, is believed by the superstitious Arabs to proceed from spirits dwelling among its foliage; and the fact that neither birds or insects ever frequent the tree, and that no flowers thrive in its vicinity, confirms them in their credulous belief.

* * * * *

=SONNET—VIRTUE.=

=BY WM. ALEXANDER.=

Hail! holy Virtue! sweet celestial guest!
To earth descending from the realms above,
Erst camest thou a dear messenger of love!
Man’s friend, be he or happy or distrest—
Bright emanation of the eternal Mind,
Thou express image of the One most high,
The God of gods—of matchless purity—

What refuge like to thee can we e’er find?
Check us when led by Passion’s voice astray;
Each idle wish, rude thought, do thou control;
And fling thy golden radiance o’er the soul;
That “more and more unto the perfect day,”
It brightly still may shine—lit up by thee,
A thing sublime—undimmed throughout eternity.

* * * * *

=THE SHARK AND HIS HABITS.=

Far as the breeze can bear, or billows foam,
All seas their kingdom, and each clime their home.

As free as a bird says the proverb—as free as a fish say we; for if fish be not their own masters, who are? No other creature has half the facilities for shifting quarters and changing domicile that he has. Furnished with a body in itself a perfect locomotive, a vigorous tail for a piston, and cerebral energy in lieu of steam, the sea offers itself as a railroad of communication and transport in every direction, and the North or South Pole is the only natural terminus to the journey. Man cannot compete with fish here; for few, from various lets and hindrances, care to vagabondize at will, and of these, fewer still possess the means of indulging their fancies—yachts. The yacht animal enjoys himself, no doubt, cruising about the high seas for amusement; but this pleasure has risks, as well as obvious limits. Squalls may upset, or whirlpools engulf the frail craft; the masts may be struck by lightning, the keel by sunk rocks; her rudder may be carried away; her sails torn to ribbons; her ribs melt in the red glare of fire on board; or, if she adventure too far in northern latitudes, the crew is liable to incarceration; and fortunate if, after six months’ bumping, “nipping,” and crushing, they bring her off at last, and manage to escape white bears, famine, and an icy grave. Besides these liabilities to mischief, the wants of those on board compel constant forced halts; here for coal, there for water, and sundry runnings into harbor in dirty weather to the delay of the ship’s voyage; all which “touchings” in order to “go” must retard a sigh in its passage from Indus to the Pole exceedingly.

In birds, wings supply the place and greatly exceed the efficiency of sails; but even wings have their limitations of action, and are also subject to many mishaps. Birds can neither soar toward heaven, nor skim across the waters without being continually made sensible of this; the stoutest pinion cannot long beat the icy air of high altitudes, and remain unnumbed; thus high and no higher may the eagle æronaut mount; and among birds of passage how many thousands die in transit to another continent; who, trusting—like Icarus—to uncertain wings, drop into and cover whole roods of ocean with their feathery carcases.

Quadrupeds again, are even more restricted in wandering over the earth; natural obstacles are continually presenting so many bars to progress in advance: the dry and thirsty desert where no water is; inaccessible snow-capped mountain ridges; the impenetrable screen of forest-trees; the broad lake; the unfordable and rapid river; the impassable line of a sea-girt shore; any of these impediments are enough to keep beasts within an area of no very great range. Thus it fares with all creatures, denizens of either earth or air; but none of these obstacles impede the activity of fish. They may swim anywhere, and everywhere, through the boundless expanse of waters; and, in defiance of trade-winds and storms, traverse the open seas at every season, unchecked; surrounded on all sides with suitable food, and finding at different depths a temperature alike congenial to health and comfort, whether in the torrid or the frozen zone. Some of the scaly tribe, to whom fresh water is not less palatable than salt or brackish, may even go far inland; visit without “Guide” lakes hitherto undescribed by tourists, or follow, à la Bruce, the meanderings of some mighty river from the mouth up to its sources. Supported in a fluid of nearly the same specific gravity as themselves, the upper portion of the body throws no weight upon the lower, and weariness is impossible. Where there is no fatigue repose becomes unnecessary, and accordingly we find these denizens of the deep—like their “mobile mother,” the sea, “who rolls, and rolls, and rolls, and still goes rolling on”—are never perfectly at rest. When all the day has been passed in swimming, and the evening paddled out in sport, away float these everlasting voyagers in a luxurious hydrostatic bed, and are borne through the night wherever the current chances to carry them; and, with only an occasional instinctive gulping for a mouthful of air to replenish the exhausted swim-bladder, on they go till early dawn—bursting upon a pair of unprotected eye-balls, gives the owners thereof timely notice to descend deeper, and to strike out fins and tail in whatever direction waking thoughts may suggest. To such tourists Madame de Stael’s definition of travel—_Le voyage, un triste plaisir_—cannot, of course, apply. Their whole journey through life is indeed singularly placid, conducing to health, and extreme longevity; for though it be not absolutely true as affirmed by Aristotle, that fish have no diseases or “plagues,” it nevertheless is certain that large fish—adequately supplied with little ones for food, well armed, and capable of defending themselves against greater enemies—will live several centuries—a Nestorian age, to which immunity from sudden changes of temperature, as well as a secured sufficiency of wholesome diet, together with their well-known habit of taking things coolly, no doubt materially contribute. So long a period allowed for growth, and such a fine field too for development as the open sea affords, readily explain the enormous size reached by some fish of rapacity in their vast domains, and particularly by those ocean pirates, the dreaded and dreadful sharks; who, according to the authorities, though “overwhelmed with cruelty,” yet “come to no misfortune like other” fish; whose eyes swell with fatness; who do even as they list; growing up the terror of navigators and the scourge of the deep.

The ancients have left us many lively representations of the sanguinary proceedings of these ill-omened Squali, whose reign of terror, after four thousand years of historical renown, remains as firmly established over the waters as ever. In early times, several different species of sharks were confounded, and supposed identical; but as knowledge of the sea and its marine stores has increased, it is now ascertained beyond controversy that these cartilaginous monsters, all of whom are the same in daring and voracity, and terrible according to their size and strength, are of various species. Under the heading “Canicula,” Pliny relates, in his usual pleasant style, the proceedings of one of these, evidently our Tope, the Squalus milandra of the French, La Samiola of the Mediterranean; where, by the way, they still abound, to the terror and detriment alike of Italian and Maltese boatmen. Though this Canicula averages but twelve feet, he is equal to the gigantic white shark in _cynopic_ impudence and rapacity; he has often been known to seize sailors standing beside their craft, and tardy bathers still in their shirts. The poor pearl divers of the Indian seas have particular reason to dread his approach; and the method anciently adopted by them to evade his jaws is very similar to what the black population of the East follow to the present day, and generally with complete success.

“The dyvers,” says Pliny, “that use to plunge down into the sea, are annoyed very much with a number of Sea-hounds that come about them, and put them in great jeopardie . . . . much ado they have and hard hold with these hound-fishes, for they lay at their bellies and loines, at their heeles, and snap at everie part of their bodies that they can perceive to be white. The onely way and remedie is to make head directly affront them, and to begin with them first, and so to terrifie them; for they are not so terrible to a man as they are as fraid of him againe. Thus within the deepe they be indifferently even matched; but, when the dyvers mount up and rise againe above water, then there is some odds betweene, and the man hath the disadvantage, and is in the most daunger, by reason that whiles he laboureth to get out of the water he faileth of meanes to encounter with the beast against the streame and sourges of the water, and therefore his only recource is to have helpe and aid from his fellowes in the ship; for having a cord tied at one end about his shoulders, he straineth it with his left hand to give signe of what daunger he is in, whiles he maintaineth fight with the right, by taking into it his puncheon with a sharp point, and so at the other end they draw him to them; and they need otherwise to pull and hale him in but softly; marry, when he is neere once to the ship, unless they give him a sodaine jerke, and snatch him up quickly, they may be sure to see him worried and devoured before their face; yea, and when he is at the point to be plucked up, and even now ready to go abourd, he is many times caught away out of his fellowes hands, if he bestir himself not the better, and put his own good will to the helpe of them within the ship, by plucking up his legges and gathering his body nimbly togither, round as it were in a ball. Well may some from shipbourd proke at the dogges aforesaid with forkes; others thrust at them with trout speares and such like weapons, and all never the neare; so crafty and cautelous is this foule beast, to get under the very belly of the bark, and so feed upon their comrade in safetie.”