The Land of the Kangaroo Part 13

CHAPTER XI.

GEELONG--AUSTRALIAN GOLD MINES--FINDING A BIG NUGGET.

When they had finished with Williamstown and Sandridge our friends went to St. Kilda, which may be called the Coney Island of Melbourne, as it is very popular with those who are fond of salt-water bathing. Harry and Ned remarked that there were hotels, restaurants, and other places of resort and amus.e.m.e.nt such as are usually found at seaside watering places, and Ned thought it would require no great stretch of the imagination to believe that they were at the famous bathing place of New York. Ned observed that there were fences consisting of posts set in the ground, not more than ten or twelve inches apart, extending a considerable distance out into the water and completely enclosing the bathing place.

He asked why the fences were placed there, and was informed that it was because the bay abounded in sharks, and people who came there to bathe had a prejudice against being eaten up by these sea-wolves. "If we should take away the fences," said one of the attendants at the bathing house, "we would not do any more business here, and you may be sure that we are very careful to keep the fences in order."

Sharks abound all through the waters of Australia. They have caused not a few deaths, and everybody who understands about them is careful not to venture into the water at any place where the creatures are liable to come; but occasionally one hears of an incautious or ignorant person falling a prey to these monsters of the deep. When sailboats and other craft are overturned in storms or sudden squalls and their occupants are thrown into the water, they suffer fearful peril. Not long ago a small sailboat was overturned in Port Philip Bay with two gentlemen and a lady on board, in addition to the boatman and his boy. Before help could reach them the whole five had fallen victims to the sharks.

Port Philip Bay, into which Hobson's Bay opens, is a grand sheet of water between thirty and forty miles wide, and navigable for ships of all sizes, and the bay affords anchoring s.p.a.ce for all the ships in the world, in case they should come there at the same time. The entrance to the bay is about thirty miles from Melbourne, and at Queenscliff near the entrance there is a fine watering place, which is reached both by railway and by steamboat. It has the advantage of St. Kilda in standing on the sh.o.r.e of the ocean, while the former place has only the waters of the bay in front of it. Many Melbourneites go to Queenscliff to enjoy the ocean breezes and watch the surf breaking on the sh.o.r.e. While St.

Kilda may be called the Coney Island of Melbourne, Queenscliff is fairly ent.i.tled to be considered its Long Branch.

On their return to Melbourne, the youths found at their hotel an invitation to make a trip on the following day to Geelong. When Dr.

Whitney read the invitation to the youths, Harry asked where Geelong was.

"Oh, I know about that," said Ned; "I happened to be reading about it this morning."

"Well, where is it?"

"Geelong is a town forty-five miles from Melbourne," replied Ned, "and it is a fairly prosperous town, too. It is not quite as old as Melbourne, but at one time the inhabitants thought that their town would outstrip Melbourne completely."

"How is that?"

"The town stands on Corio Bay, an arm of Port Philip Bay, and has a good harbor; in fact, the harbor at that time was better than that at Melbourne. The people of Geelong went to work and built a railway from their city to Melbourne, with the idea that if they did so, all the wool that was being shipped from Melbourne would be sent to Geelong for shipment, while the cargoes of foreign goods that landed at Melbourne would be landed at Geelong."

"The plan did not work as they expected, did it?"

"Not by any means. As soon as the railway was built, wool coming into Geelong was sent to Melbourne for shipment, and goods that were intended for Geelong were landed at Melbourne and sent over by railway. In this way the measures they had taken to increase their trade worked exactly the other way and diminished it."

"Don't they have any foreign commerce at all at Geelong?" Harry asked.

"Oh, yes, they have some, but nothing in comparison with Melbourne. We will learn something about it when we go there."

As there are three pa.s.senger steamers running between Geelong and Melbourne daily, the party went by railway and returned by water. In the railway journey they had a pleasant ride along the sh.o.r.e of Port Philip Bay, and arrived at their destination in a little more than two hours from the time of starting. They found the town pleasantly situated on Corio Bay, being laid out on ground sloping to the bay on the north and to the Barwon River on the south. Along the streets were fine shops, attractive stores, and every indication of an industrious and prosperous population.

In the suburbs, where they were taken in a carriage by the gentleman who accompanied them, they found numerous private residences, many of them of a superior character. The gentleman told them that Geelong was famous for its manufactures of woolens and other goods, and that it built the first woolen mill in Victoria. Iron foundries, wood-working establishments, and other industrial concerns were visited, so that our friends readily understood whence the prosperity of Geelong came. Their host told them that Geelong had long since given up its ideas of rivalry with Melbourne, and had settled down with the determination to develop itself in every feasible way and let things take care of themselves.

Our young friends thought they would like to see something of the gold mines of Victoria, and asked Dr. Whitney about them. He readily a.s.sented, and the trip to Ballarat was speedily arranged, and also one to Sandhurst, which is the present name of Bendigo of gold-mining days.

Ballarat was the most important place of the two, and its placer mines gave a greater yield of gold than did those of Bendigo. At both places the placer mines were exhausted long ago, but gold is still taken from the rocks and reefs which underlie the whole region.

The mining establishments of Ballarat are outside of the city itself, and when the visitors reached the place and rode through the town they could hardly believe they were in a gold-mining region. The streets are wide, and most of them well shaded with trees, while some of them are so broad that they deserve the name of avenues rather than that of streets.

There are substantial public buildings and a goodly number of churches, a botanical garden, and all the other features of a quiet and well-established city, and it was quite difficult for them to believe that they were in a place whose chief industry was the extraction of gold from the ground. All the lawless features of the Ballarat of gold-rush days had disappeared, and the town was as peaceful as any one could wish to find it.

Our friends brought a letter of introduction to a gentleman of Ballarat, who kindly consented to show them about the place and answer any questions that they wished to ask.

Harry's first question was, whether the first discoveries of gold in Australia were made at Ballarat or elsewhere.

"It is very difficult to say exactly," the gentleman answered, "where the first discoveries were made, but certainly they were not made at this spot. According to history and tradition, gold was discovered in the mountains behind Sydney about the year 1814, but the news of the finding of the precious metal was kept a secret by the government. At intervals of a few years from that time small deposits of gold were found at various places in New South Wales and Victoria, but these were also kept a secret, the individuals who found the deposits being in one way or another under the control of the government.

"In the early part of 1851 a miner from California, named Hargreaves, discovered gold at Lewis Pond Creek in New South Wales, and about the middle of the same year another California miner, named Esmond, found a deposit of gold at Clunes, sixteen miles from Ballarat. Before the government could take any steps for suppressing it the news had spread and the excitement began. The stories were greatly exaggerated, and many people came here believing that they had only to shovel the gold from the ground into barrels and boxes, and send it away to be converted into coin. That was the beginning of the gold rush, and a rush it was, you may be sure.

"From all over Australia people flocked to the new El Dorado. Mechanics of all kinds left their employments; shepherds deserted their flocks; merchants and clerks fled from their counting-houses; farmers quit their fields and gardens, doctors and lawyers their offices, and the whole country seemed to have gone mad about gold. Youth and age got the fever alike; boys of sixteen and men of seventy walked side by side on their way to the mines. Melbourne and Sydney were deserted, and the prediction was made that before the end of the year gra.s.s would be growing in the princ.i.p.al streets of those cities.

"Provisions, clothing, and miners' tools and equipments rose to an enormous price. Picks or shovels worth four or five shillings apiece in the sea-coast cities were sold for ten pounds apiece at the mines. Nails for building sluices sometimes brought their weight in gold. Bacon and flour were worth a dollar a pound, and not always to be procured at that figure. The most ordinary shelter was worth ten shillings a night, and the rental price of a house for a month was the equivalent of its cost.

"The government refused to permit anybody to work at mining without a license, and the miners were so numerous that the revenue from the licenses issued was a large one. The money thus obtained was expended in organizing a strong police force and preserving order. Whereever mining fields were opened, a gold commissioner with a police escort at his back made his appearance as soon as possible, and insured a certain degree of safety. Miners could leave their gold with the commissioner, either on deposit, to be called for whenever they liked, or for transportation to Melbourne. I presume you already know about the bushrangers and how they used to plunder the homeward-bound miners."

"Were the early miners successful in finding large deposits of gold?"

one of the youths asked.

"The question is a difficult one to answer directly," was the reply. "A great many were successful, but, on the other hand, a great many had very poor luck in the mines and hardly succeeded in making a bare living. We always hear of the rich finds in the mining district, but rarely of the many failures. This has always been the case in gold mining the world over, and Ballarat and the region around it were no exception to the rule. I will tell you of some of the rich discoveries, and leave you to remember that the fortunate miners were in small number compared to the unfortunate ones. It may be safely said that the early yield of the Ballarat mines exceeded that of the best days of California.

"Some claims eight feet square yielded, each of them, from fifty thousand to sixty thousand dollars. One mine, which was owned by several men in common, was worked about four months and yielded eighty thousand dollars to each man. One tubful of earth which was taken from the bottom of a claim where the bed rock was sc.r.a.ped yielded nearly ten thousand dollars, and one claim which was supposed to have been worked out, and was abandoned, was again taken up by two men who obtained forty thousand dollars from it in two weeks. Up to the present time it is estimated that very nearly two billion dollars' worth of gold have been taken out of Australian mines."

Ned asked in what shape the gold was found; that is, was it in large pieces or small ones, fine dust or nuggets?

"It embraced everything between the large nugget and fine dust or flakes," the gentleman replied. "A great deal of the gold was in little lumps like bird shot; a great deal of it was in scales, and then, again, it took the shape of dust so fine that the particles were almost invisible to the naked eye. Nuggets the size of hens' eggs were not very unusual, while those the size of pigeons' and sparrows' eggs were much more numerous. The great nuggets were the ones most sought for, and of course they were the rarest found.

"One nugget, resembling in shape and size a leg of mutton, and weighing one hundred and thirty-five pounds, was found a long distance below the surface, where some miners were tunneling to reach the bed rock; and another nugget was found in such a remarkable way that I must tell you the story of it.

"A man who was wandering about the scrub in the neighborhood of Ballarat one day, sat down at the foot of a tree to rest. While sitting there he took out his knife to cut a stick, and finding the knife was dull, he proceeded to sharpen it by rubbing it upon a stone that lay almost completely imbedded in the ground. As he rubbed, he found that the surface of the stone became yellow. He was greatly surprised at this, and then he dug around the stone with his knife, sc.r.a.ping it in several places, and then trying to lift it. He might as well have tried to lift a horse. Do what he could, he could not budge it an inch, and for a good reason, as it was a ma.s.s of solid gold.

"He felt his head swimming and his wits leaving him. He pinched his cheeks and pulled his ears to make sure that he was not dreaming. Here he was with a fortune in his possession and he could not move it! Then he sat down again and wondered what was best to do.

"Even if he could move it and started for the camp, he might be robbed before he got there, as bushrangers infested the country, and he was just as liable to come upon them as upon honest men. He could not stay and watch it, as he had no provisions; and he was afraid to leave it, for fear that somebody might come upon it during his absence. But there was no help for it, as leave it he must, and after thinking the matter over he acted about as sensibly as he could have done.

"He covered the nugget up very carefully, replacing the earth and sprinkling it with leaves so that there was no indication that the spot had been disturbed. Then he stripped the shirt from his back and tied it to a neighboring tree, wisely concluding that it was not judicious to hang the garment on the tree beneath which he had sat. Then, on his way out of the scrub, he marked the trees here and there so that he could find the place again, and as soon as he was in sight of the diggings he went straight to the tent of the gold commissioner and told the story of his discovery. The commissioner immediately sent the man back again with a strong escort to secure the valuable find. The man received for the nugget, after deducting all charges and commissions, the sum of fifty-one thousand dollars.

"A great many fortunes were taken out of the earth around Ballarat before the placer mines were exhausted. The news of the discovery of gold in Australia spread to other countries, and thousands of people came from all parts of the world to search for it. Nearly every nationality was represented, and they came in great numbers. Just before the gold discovery there were seventy-seven thousand inhabitants in the colony of Victoria. The population doubled in a single year, and three years after the discovery the colony had two hundred and thirty-six thousand inhabitants. The gold rush properly ended when the placer mines were exhausted, although in the meantime new mines had been discovered in several localities, princ.i.p.ally at Bendigo and Castlemaine. Ballarat was nearly deserted for a time after the placer mining gave out, and the same was the case at the other places mentioned. Then the reefs and ledges were attacked; crushing machinery was erected, and the form of work which you call quartz mining in America had its beginning. It has gone on steadily ever since and gives employment to a great many people.

It also employs a great deal of money, as quartz mining requires capital, while placer mining does not. To get a fortune by quartz mining you must have a fortune to begin with, while in placer mining you need nothing more than a pick and shovel.

"Australia will continue to produce gold for a great many years to come," the gentleman continued. "New discoveries are made almost every year, and in some years half a dozen fields will be opened. The government has changed its tactics in regard to gold discoveries. It rewarded Hargreaves and Esmond for their discoveries in 1851, and it has rewarded the discoveries of other gold fields. Most of the colonial governments have a standing offer of a handsome pecuniary reward to anybody who discovers a gold field, provided there are not fewer than two hundred men working in that field six months after its discovery.

This, you see, bars out all those finds that are exhausted in a few weeks, which is the case with the majority of them.

"Every little while there is an excitement over a new discovery, companies are formed for working the mines, and their stock is placed on the market. It is safe to say that, in the majority of instances, more money is made by shrewd speculators in Melbourne and Sydney manipulating the stock than is taken from the mines. A few years ago there was a wild speculation in mines in what is called the 'Broken Hill' district of Victoria, and at present there is an excitement about gold discoveries in Western Australia. According to the latest accounts from the last-named region, there is a difficulty in working the mines there on account of the scarcity of water. You cannot work a mine any more than you can run a steam-engine without water, and many people have paid very dearly to ascertain this fact."

From Ballarat our friends went to Sandhurst, which was formerly called Bendigo. They found there a mining region resembling Ballarat in its general features, but not in all of them. At Ballarat the mines are not in the town but in its suburbs, while at Sandhurst they are directly in the town itself. One of the residents remarked that there was a gold mine in every back yard, and our friends found that this was not very far from the truth.

Mining operations were carried on in the rear or by the side of the houses, and it was said that sometimes the dust of the streets was gathered up and washed to obtain the gold in it. An individual who certainly appeared credible, said that the first brick house ever built in Bendigo was torn down and the bricks crushed in order to obtain the gold in them; this gold amounted to three ounces per ton, and not only the house but its chimney yielded handsomely of the precious metal.

Bendigo yielded enormously to the placer miners of the early days. When the placer mines were exhausted the place was nearly deserted, and then came the era of quartz mining the same as at Ballarat. Thousands of men are employed at Sandhurst and in its neighborhood, working in the gold mines or in the crushing establishments connected with them. The quartz mines thus give employment to a great number of people. Some of the mines have been pushed to a great depth, one of them being twenty-six hundred feet below the surface. There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of gold-bearing rock, and it is a common saying in Victoria that a true ledge has never been exhausted.

Harry made some inquiries as to the amount of gold annually produced in Victoria, and learned that it was not far from five million pounds sterling, or twenty-five million dollars. He was further told that the cost of production amounted to very nearly the same figure; that is, including the cost of the mining machinery, the wages of laborers, and the many other expenses. It was admitted that the best mines showed a fair profit on the investment, but not enough to make a fortune in a short time.

The youths came to the conclusion that gold mining had been most profitable to the people that never engaged in it. In this number he included the brokers, bankers, storekeepers, farmers, and others who kept out of the actual business of digging gold but profited by their dealings with those who were engaged in it. Nothing so delights the owner of a large farm in Australia as to learn of a gold discovery a few miles from his place. He knows that it will give him a good market for all he has to sell, though there may be occasional thefts from his horse or cattle paddocks. Traders of all kinds get an enormous profit at the mines, and as for the brokers and bankers, there is no doubt of their ability to take care of themselves.

When Harry made the remark contained in the foregoing paragraph, Ned said that it reminded him of a story.