In the table we have copied from Mr Wyld, the produce of gold for 1851 is estimated—guessed is a better word—at £22,500,000. Advices from Melbourne to the 22d of December state that the receipts of gold in that place in a single day had amounted to 16,333 ounces—that the total produce of the Ballarat and Mount Alexander diggings, from their discovery on the 29th September to the 17th of December, two months and a half, had been 243,414 ounces, valued at £730,242—that from twenty thousand to thirty thousand persons were employed at the diggings—and that the auriferous grounds, already known, which can be profitably worked, cannot be dug for years to come “by any number of people that can by possibility reach them.” Those from Sydney calculate the export from that place to have been at the rate of three millions sterling a-year; while the report of the Government Commissioners, “On the extent and capability of the mines in New South Wales,” gives it as their unanimous opinion, that they offer a “highly remunerative employment to at least a hundred thousand persons—four times the number now employed.” With these data, there appears no exaggeration in the estimate now made in the colony, that the yearly export of gold will not be less than seven or eight millions sterling. With this more accurate knowledge of the capabilities of Australia than was possessed when Mr Wyld’s estimate was made, and with the hopes and rumours that exist as to other new sources of supply, are we wrong in guessing that the total produce of gold alone, for the present and some succeeding years, cannot be less than £25,000,000 to £30,000,000 sterling? What was the largest yield of the most fruitful mines in ancient times compared with this? The annual product of the ancient Egyptian mines of gold and silver is said by Herodotus to have been inscribed on the walls of the palace of the ancient kings at Thebes, and the sum, as he states it in Grecian money, was equal to six millions sterling! This Jacob[[22]] considers to be a gross exaggeration; but he believes, nevertheless, that “the produce of the mines of that country, together with that of the other countries whose gold and silver was deposited there, far exceeded the quantity drawn from all the mines of the then known world in subsequent ages, down to the discovery of America.”
And what did America yield after the discovery by Columbus, (1492,) and the triumphs of Cortes and Pizarro? Humboldt estimates the annual yield of gold, from the plunder of the people and from the mines united—
| From | 1492 to 1521 at | £52,000 |
| „ | 1521 to 1546 at | £630,000 |
And from the discovery of the silver mine of Potosi in 1545, to the end of the century, the produce of silver and gold together was about £2,100,000 from America; and from America and Europe together, £2,250,000 a-year.
Again, during the eighteenth century, the yearly produce of the precious metals—gold and silver together—obtained from the mines of Europe, Africa, and America, is estimated by Mr Jacob (ii. p. 167) at £8,000,000; and for the twenty years previous to 1830, at about £5,000,000 sterling.[[23]] And although the greatly enlarged produce of the Russian mines, in gold especially, has come in to make up for the failure or stoppage of the American mines since 1800, yet what does the largest of all past yields of gold amount to, compared with the quadrupled or quintupled supply there seems now fair and reasonable grounds for expecting?
And what are to be the consequences of the greatly augmented supply of gold which these countries promise? Among the first will be to provoke and stimulate the mining industry of other countries to new activity and new researches; and thus, by a natural reaction, to add additional intensity to the cause of change. Such was the effect of the discovery of America upon mining in Europe, and especially in Germany. “In fourteen years after 1516, not less than twenty-five noble veins were discovered in Joachimsthal in Bohemia, and in sixty years they yielded 1,250,000 marcs of silver.”[[24]] And,
“The discovery of America, and of the mines it contained,” says Mr Jacob, “seems to have kindled a most vehement passion for exploring the bowels of the earth in search of gold in most of the countries of Europe, but in no part of it to so great an extent as in the Bishopric of Salzburg. The inhabitants of that country seemed to think themselves within reach of the Apple of the Hesperides and of the Golden Fleece, and about to find in their streams the Pactolus of antiquity. Between the years 1538 and 1562,[[25]] more than a thousand leases of mines were taken. The greatest activity prevailed, and one or two large fortunes were made.”—(Jacob, i. p. 250.)
This impulse has already been felt as the consequence of recent discovery. The New York papers have just announced the discovery of new deposits of gold in Virginia, “equal to the richest in California;” in Queen Charlotte’s Island gold is said to have been found in great abundance; in New Caledonia and New Zealand it is spoken of; and the research after the precious metal is at the present moment propagating itself throughout the civilised world. And that the activity thus awakened is likely to be rewarded by many new discoveries, and by larger returns in old localities, will appear certain, when we consider, first, that the geological position and history of gold-producing regions is far better understood now than it ever was before; second, that the value of quartz veins, previously under-estimated, has been established by the Californian explorations, and must lead in other countries to new researches and new trials; thirdly, that the increased supply of quicksilver which California promises may call into new life hosts of deserted mines in Southern America and elsewhere; and, lastly, that improved methods of extraction, which the progress of chemical science is daily supplying, are rendering profitable the poorer mines which in past days it was found necessary to abandon.
About the end of the seventeenth century the reduction in the price of quicksilver, consequent on the supplies drawn from the mines of Idria, greatly aided the mines of Mexico, (Jacob, ii. p. 153;) and of the effects of better methods Rose gives the following illustrations, in his description of the celebrated Schlangenberg mine in Siberia:—
“At first, ores containing only four solotniks of silver were considered unfit for smelting, and were employed in the mines for filling up the waste. These have long already been taken out, and replaced by poorer ores, which in their turn will probably by-and-by be replaced by still poorer.”—“The ancient inhabitants washed out the gold from the ochre of these mines, as is evident from the heaps of refuse which remain on the banks of the river Smejewka. This refuse has been found rich enough in gold to pay for washing and extracting anew.”[[26]]