Australia was inhabited by over 100,000 natives, black cannibals of the ugliest description; but at this day not a hundred of them remain. The natives were exceeding stupid and useless; the first settlers, who, as Capt. Rocksalt observes, were jail-birds and scape-gallows, were not very dainty in dealing with the obnoxious natives; so they determined to get rid of them as fast and easy as possible. For this purpose, they used to gather a horde of them together, and give them poisoned bread and rum, and so kill them off by hundreds. It was a sharp sort of practice, but the ends seemed to justify the means.
Gold, "laying around loose," as it did, was, no doubt, discovered years ago; but not in quantities to lead the ignorant to believe money could be made hunting it. People may be stupid; but it requires a far greener capacity than most of them would confess to—at least, ten years ago—to make them believe gold could be picked up in chunks out in the open fields.
But Australia began to be populated; by convicts first; and then by far better people; though the very worst felons sent out often became decent and respectable men, which is indeed a great "puff," we think, for the healthfulness of the climate. A convict shepherd now and then used to bring into Sydney small lumps of gold and sell them to the watch-makers, and as he refused to say where or how he got them, it was suspicioned that he had secreted guineas or jewelry somewhere, and occasionally melted them for sale.
However, one day the thing broke out, nearly simultaneously, all over Australia. Gold was lying around everywhere. The rocks, ledges, bars, gullies, and river-banks, which were daily familiar to the eyes of thousands, all of a sudden turned up bright and shining gold. Old Dame Nature must have laughed in her sleeve to see the fun and uproar—the scrabble and rush she had caused in her vast household.
"It did beat all!" exclaims the old Captain. "In forty-eight hours Sydney was half-depopulated, Port Phillip nearly desolate, while the interior villages or towns—Bathurst, &c., were run clean out!"
Stores were shut up, the clerks running to the mines, and the proprietors after the clerks. Mechanics dropped work and put out; servants left without winking, leaving people to wait on themselves; doctors left what few patients they had, and bolted for the fields of Ophir; lawyers packed up and cut stick, following their clients and victims to the brighter fields of "causes" and effects. The newspapers became so short-handed that dailies were knocked into weeklies, and the weeklies into cocked hats, or something near it—mere eight-by-ten "handbills."
These "discoveries" wrought as sudden as singular a revolution in men, manners, and things. As we said before, Australia was the very apex of singularities in the way of Dame Nature's fancy-work, long before the gold mania broke out; but now she seemed bent on a general and miscellaneous freak, making the staid, matter-of-fact Englishmen as full of caprice as the land they were living in.
"Only look at it!" exclaims the Captain: "the day comes in the middle of our nights! When we're turning in at home, they are turning out in Australia. Summer begins in the middle of winter; and for snow storms they get rain, thunder and lightning. About the time we are getting used to our woollens and hot fires of the holidays, they are roasting with heat, and going around in linen jackets and wilted dickeys. The land is full of flowers of every hue, gay and beautiful, gorgeous and sublime to look at, but as senseless to the smell and as inodorous as so many dried chips. The swans are numerous, but jet black. The few animals in the country are all provided with pockets in their 'overcoats,' or skin, in which to stow their young ones, or provender. Some of the rivers really appear," says the Captain, "to run up stream! I was completely taken down," says the Captain, "by a bunch of the finest pears you ever saw. Myself and a friend were up the country, and I sees a fine pear tree, breaking down with as elegant-looking fruit as I ever saw.
"'Well, by ginger,' says I, 'them are about as fine pears as I've seen these twenty years!'
"'Yes,' says my friend, who was a resident in the country; 'perhaps you would like to try a few?'