In minerals, it is nearly as rich as any of the colonies, the gold yield having been $9,937,125 in 1873, and the total exported to July 1, 1875, $151,407,045. Copper, silver, tin, iron, and coal have also been found. Nearly everything grown in Great Britain flourishes there, together with the fern in tree form thirty feet high, a wild flax, nearly equal to manila for rope-making, an excellent variety of valuable building and ship-building woods, and an abundance of the fruits of both semi-tropical and temperate countries. The population has risen thus from 26,707 by the original census of 1851: 1858, 59,413; 1861, 99,022; 1864, 172,518; 1867, 218,668; 1871, 256,260; 1874, 299,514; and of 1875, 375,876; all these figures exclusive of aborigines and Chinese, it thus appearing to be equaled only by Victoria and New South Wales, of the Australian colonies.
In respect to emigration, it compares favorably with Victoria, its excess of immigrants over emigrants having been 38,106 and 25,270 in 1874 and 1875 respectively, against 3,367 and 2,698 for Victoria in those years. It has 550 miles of railroad, and 7,065 of telegraph wire; Victoria has 586 and 4,981 miles respectively; New South Wales, 437 and 8,014. Its number of sheep was 11,704,853 in 1874, having multiplied about two and a half times in ten years. The land under cultivation two years ago was 1,788,797 acres—an increase of 285,445 during the previous twelve months. Small as this total is—less than three per cent. of the whole—the proportion of cultivated land in New South Wales was less than one and one-half per cent., and in all Australia less than one-fourth per cent. at the same time. Taking as the assumed habitable portion the strip 250 miles wide along three sides of the Australian coast, 758,000 square miles in extent, that piece, nearly equaling in size the twenty-six States of this Union lying east of the Mississippi, would contain, if the island population were distributed over it, about three persons to the square mile, against three and one-half in New Zealand, eighty-three in New York, one hundred and fifty-eight in Massachusetts, three hundred and seventy-two in England, and four hundred and ten in Belgium. But the reader should remember that as these colonies are all pastoral, the area tilled is a very different matter from the area occupied. The principal endowment of Australia at present, besides mineral resources, being the vast areas of rich native grasses and the peculiar fitness of soil and climate which “make bad fleeces good and good better,” the colonist has become a herdsman.
It does not appear that New Zealand is behind her larger neighbors, a thousand miles distant, in any material respect. The colonies all invite immigration, and some of them have latterly taken energetic measures to secure it. They offer bounties to settlers, reduced passage rates, and other inducements, and have been quite successful both in England and America.
RICH MINERAL DEPOSITS.
The mineral resources of New Zealand are quite as varied as those of Australia. The rocks contain copper, iron, silver, gold, tin, and other metals, and there are extensive beds of coal of excellent quality. The processes employed in working the mines are almost identically the same as in Australia, so that an extended description is unnecessary. The great majority of the miners in New Zealand came originally from Australia, and their proportion of good and bad luck has been much like that in the latter country.
LIV.
UNDERGROUND IN SAN FRANCISCO.
CHINESE OPIUM DENS.—PISCO.—EXPERIMENTS IN LIQUORS.—SATURDAY NIGHT AMONG THE CHINESE.—COCOMONGO.—MURDERER’S ALLEY.—CHINESE MUSIC.—THE THEATRE.—BETEL AND ITS USE.—THE BARBARY COAST.—CHEAP LODGING-HOUSES.—A DYING VICTIM.—A DEN OF THIEVES.—“THE SHRIMP.”—UNDER THE STREET.—A REPULSIVE SPECTACLE.—OPIUM SMOKING.—ITS EFFECTS.—SAMSHOO.—ITS PREPARATION AND QUALITIES.—INTRODUCTION TO AN OPIUM DEN.—THE OCCUPANTS.—EXPERIMENT ON A SMOKER.—HOW TO SMOKE.—TRYING THE DRUG.—MESCAL.—GOING HOME.—TRYING A SEWER.—A COUNTRYMAN’S DRINK.