"And have you been long here? and do you like this new country?" I continued, determined to hear if her voice was as pleasing as her countenance.
"No!" she answered quickly; "we starve here. There was plenty of food when we were in England;" and then her childish reserve giving way, she spoke more fully of her troubles, and a sad though a common tale it was.
Some of the particulars I learnt afterwards. Her father had held an appointment under Government, and had lived upon the income derived from it for some years, when he was tempted to try and do better in the colonies. His wife (the daughter of a clergyman, well educated, and who before her marriage had been a governess) accompanied him with their three children. On arriving in Melbourne (which was about three months previous), he found that situations equal in value, according to the relative prices of food and lodging, to that which he had thrown up in England were not so easily procured as he had been led to expect. Half desperate, he went to the diggings, leaving his wife with little money, and many promises of quick remittances of gold by the escort. But week followed week, and neither remittances nor letters came. They removed to humbler lodgings, every little article of value was gradually sold, for, unused to bodily labour, or even to sit for hours at the needle, the deserted wife could earn but little. Then sickness came; there were no means of paying for medical advice, and one child died. After this, step by step, they became poorer, until half a tent in Little Adelaide was the only refuge left.
As we reached it, the little girl drew aside the canvas, and partly invited me to enter. I glanced in; it was a dismal sight. In one corner lay the mother, a blanket her only protection from the humid soil, and cowering down beside her was her other child. I could not enter; it seemed like a heartless intrusion upon misery; so, slipping the contents of my purse (which were unfortunately only a few shillings) into the little, girl's hand, I hurried away, scarcely waiting to notice the smile that thanked me so eloquently. On arriving at home, I found that my friends were absent, and being detained by business, they did not return till after dusk, so it was impossible for that day to afford them any assistance. Early next morning we took a little wine and other trifling articles with us, and proceeded to Little Adelaide. On entering the tent, we found that the sorrows of the unfortunate mother were at an end; privation, ill health and anxiety had claimed their victim. Her husband sat beside the corpse, and the golden nuggets, which in his despair he had flung upon the ground, formed a painful contrast to the scene of poverty and death.
The first six weeks of his career at the diggings had been most unsuccessful, and he had suffered as much from want as his unhappy wife. Then came a sudden change of fortune, and in two weeks more he was comparatively rich. He hastened immediately to Melbourne, and for a whole week had sought his family in vain. At length, on the preceding evening, he found them only in time to witness the last moments of his wife.
Sad as this history may appear, it is not so sad as many, many others; for often, instead of returning with gold, the digger is never heard of more.
In England many imagine that the principal labour at the diggings consists in stooping to pick up the lumps of gold which lie upon the ground at their feet, only waiting for some one to take possession of them. These people, when told of holes being dug in depths of from seven to forty feet before arriving at the desired metal, look upon such statements as so many myths, or fancy they are fabricated by the lucky gold-finders to deter too many others from coming to take a share of the precious spoil. There was a passenger on board the vessel which took me to Australia, who held some such opinions as these, and, although in other respects a sensible man, he used seriously to believe that every day that we were delayed by contrary winds he could have been picking up fifty or a hundred pounds worth of gold had he but been at the diggings. He went to Bendigo the third day after we landed, stayed there a fortnight, left it in disgust, and returned to England immediately—poorer than he had started.
This is not an isolated case. Young men of sanguine dispositions read the startling amounts of gold shipped from the colonies, they think of the "John Bull Nugget" and other similar prizes, turn a deaf ear when you speak of blanks, and determinately overlook the vast amount of labour which the gold diggings have consumed. Whenever I meet with this class of would-be emigrants, the remarks of an old digger, which I once over heard, recur to my mind. The conversation at the time was turned upon the subject of the many young men flocking from the "old country" to the gold-fields, and their evident unfitness for them. "Every young man before paying his passage money," said he, "should take a few days' spell at well-sinking in England; if he can stand that comfortably, the diggings won't hurt him."
Many are sadly disappointed on arriving in Victoria, at being unable to invest their capital or savings in the purchase of about a hundred acres of land, sufficient for a small farm. I have referred to this subject before, but cannot resist adding some facts which bear upon it.
By a return of the LAND SALES of Victoria, from 1837 to 1851, it appears that 380,000 acres of land were sold in the whole colony; and the sum realized by Government was 700,000 pounds. In a return published in 1849, it is stated that there were THREE persons who each held singly more land in their own hands than had been sold to all the rest of the colony in fourteen years, for which they paid the sum of 30 pounds each per annum. Yet, whilst 700,000 pounds is realized by the sale of land, and not 100 pounds a-year gained by LETTING three times the quantity, the Colonial Government persists in the latter course, in spite of the reiterated disapprobation of the colonists themselves; and by one of the last gazettes of Governor La Trobe, he has ordered 681,700 acres, or 1,065 square miles, to be given over to the squatters. The result of this is, that many emigrants landing in Victoria are compelled to turn their steps towards the sister colony of Adelaide. There was a family who landed in Melbourne whilst I was there. It consisted of the parents, and several grown-up sons and daughters. The father had held a small tenant farm in England, and having saved a few hundreds, determined to invest it in Australian land. He brought out with him many agricultural implements, an iron house, &c.; and on his arrival found, to his dismay, that no less than 640 acres of crown lands could be sold, at a time, at the upset price of one pound an acre. This was more than his capital could afford, and they left for Adelaide. The expenses of getting his goods to and from the ships, of storing them, of supporting his family while in Melbourne, and of paying their passage to Adelaide, amounted almost to 100 pounds. Thus he lost nearly a fourth of his capital, and Victoria a family who would have made good colonists.