When I landed in 1839, as I said before, Sydney, and a few—very few—other spots on the New South Wales coast, constituted the whole of the British dominions in the Southern Hemisphere. It was somewhat of a treat to join there my brother, and once more feel that I had a home. But somehow, when one has once taken to roving, it seems difficult to settle down. I had not been very long in Sydney, when the French corvette—the Aube—called for stores on her way to New Zealand. Captain Lavaud, hearing that I had been there, asked me to accompany him, and act as his interpreter. On our way down to the Bay of Islands I learned that his orders were to take possession of New Zealand for the French Government.
At the Bay of Islands, at a déjeuner given by the Resident Magistrate, Mons. Lavaud indiscreetly mentioned the object of his errand in the presence of the commander of an English man-of-war brig. During the afternoon, whilst we were paying a visit to the French Mission the brig sailed; and when, a few days after we reached Akaroa, we found her at anchor, and the Union Jack flying on shore!!
So much for the diplomacy of Captain Lavaud. The French settlement of the Campagnie, Nanto Bordelaise, which had been originated, had to be carried on; but, like most French colonising schemes, dragged on for a few years, and even under the English flag dwindled down, and in a few years died a miserable death. Having witnessed Captain Lavaud’s fiasco, I returned to Sydney, when, at the death of Mons. Bareilhes, I was appointed Chancelier of the French Consulate, a position I held until the Revolution of 1848.
My sympathies were naturally for monarchy—more especially for the Orleans dynasty—and when the 1848 Revolution broke out, I relinquished the diplomatic career, and proceeded to South Australia, where the discovery of rich copper deposits at the Burra and Kapunda caused a sudden rush to that young colony.
The extraordinary and rapid progress of the colony of South Australia in the short space of two years, owing to the rich returns of the Burra Burra mines, is certainly worthy of being recorded. At the first onset the land on which the metal had been discovered was divided between two distinct sets of applicants—one comprising the leading merchants and men of note and social standing, the other principally working men, and the hired servants of the former. When the ground was broken and the mine worked, by a strange freak of fortune the ground held by the last-named portion of speculators turned out to be the best of the two. Shares ran up from £5 to £500! and for a number of years paid dividends at the rate of 200 per cent. on paid up shares! This very naturally upset the equilibrium of the social scale; and in very many instances we saw the servant, now suddenly risen to a millionaire, eclipsing his master in luxurious style; securing the best cabins on board home-bound ships; and, in more than one instance, purchasing baronial residences in Europe out of their dividends. This, I take it, is a fair instance of the ups and downs which have occurred in the Australasian colonies within the last half century.
