Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Critical Notices Of The Literature Of The Last Three Months,
diggings themselves , or the large amount they could obtain for the run home from another master , offer too many temptations . Consequently , our passengers had the amusement hf hauling up from the hold their different goods and chattels : and so great was the confusion , that fully a week elapsed before they were all got on shore . Meanwhile , we were getting initiated into colonial prices—money did indeed take to itself wings and fly away . Firearms were at a premium : one instance will suffice— -my brother sold a six-barrelled revolver , for which he had given sixty shillings at Baker ' s in Fleet-street , for 161 ., and the parting with it at
that price was looked upon as a great favour . Imagine boots , and they very second-rate ones , at 41 . a p ; di \ One of our between-deck passengers , who had speculated with a small capital of iOl . in boots and cutlery , told me that he had disposed of them the same evening he bad landed , at a net profit of 901 . ; no trifling addition to a poor man ' s store . Labour was at a very high price : carpenters , boot and shoe makers , tailors , wheelwrights , . joiners , smiths , glaziers , and in fact all useful trades , were earning from twenty to thirty shillings a day . The very men working on tbe roads could get eleven shillings per diem ; and
many a gentleman , in this disarranged state of affairs , was glad to fling old habits aside , and turn his hand to whatever came readiest . I know one in particular , whose brother is at this moment serving as colonel in the army in India , a man more fitted for a gay London life than a residence in the colonies . The diggings were too dirty and uncivilized for his tastes ; bis capital was quickly dwindling away beneath the expenses of the comfortable life he led at one of the best hotels in town ; so he turned to what , as a boy , he bad learned as an amusement , and obtained an addition to his income of more than 4002 . per annum , as house-carpenter . In the morning you might see him trudging off to his work , and before night , might meet him at some ball or soiree , nmong the elite of Melbourne . "
We conclude our notice of Mrs . Clacy ' sbook , m the words of one ofthe rough diamonds of the mines , " That eveiy young man , before paying his passage , should take a few days ' spell at well-sinking , in England ; if he can stand that comfortably , the diggings won't hurt him . " The Bev . Mr . Jones * follows much in the same track as Mrs . Clacy , although his adventures are confined to Morctou Bay and Sydney ; and
Mr . Westgarth gives a summary of the Port Phillip district of New South Wales , together with some account of the colony and its gold-mines , in a volumef which , if n ' ot very lively or original , contains a good deal of useful information and practical knowledge . With these three works we must perforce bring to a conclusion our notice of what we may well call , for it is a department by itself , our Australian literature . Not a day passes but one or more volumes issue from the press , and fill the
advertisement sheets of every newspaper and periodical . To do them all justice , or even to discriminate between the good and the bad , the useful and the useless , would be an endless task . Eor the present , therefore , we abandon the idea , until the rage for writing " our personal adventures in the land of gold " shall have somewhat subsided . Returning again to Europe , ! we have a scientific American ' s description
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Critical Notices Of The Literature Of The Last Three Months,
diggings themselves , or the large amount they could obtain for the run home from another master , offer too many temptations . Consequently , our passengers had the amusement hf hauling up from the hold their different goods and chattels : and so great was the confusion , that fully a week elapsed before they were all got on shore . Meanwhile , we were getting initiated into colonial prices—money did indeed take to itself wings and fly away . Firearms were at a premium : one instance will suffice— -my brother sold a six-barrelled revolver , for which he had given sixty shillings at Baker ' s in Fleet-street , for 161 ., and the parting with it at
that price was looked upon as a great favour . Imagine boots , and they very second-rate ones , at 41 . a p ; di \ One of our between-deck passengers , who had speculated with a small capital of iOl . in boots and cutlery , told me that he had disposed of them the same evening he bad landed , at a net profit of 901 . ; no trifling addition to a poor man ' s store . Labour was at a very high price : carpenters , boot and shoe makers , tailors , wheelwrights , . joiners , smiths , glaziers , and in fact all useful trades , were earning from twenty to thirty shillings a day . The very men working on tbe roads could get eleven shillings per diem ; and
many a gentleman , in this disarranged state of affairs , was glad to fling old habits aside , and turn his hand to whatever came readiest . I know one in particular , whose brother is at this moment serving as colonel in the army in India , a man more fitted for a gay London life than a residence in the colonies . The diggings were too dirty and uncivilized for his tastes ; bis capital was quickly dwindling away beneath the expenses of the comfortable life he led at one of the best hotels in town ; so he turned to what , as a boy , he bad learned as an amusement , and obtained an addition to his income of more than 4002 . per annum , as house-carpenter . In the morning you might see him trudging off to his work , and before night , might meet him at some ball or soiree , nmong the elite of Melbourne . "
We conclude our notice of Mrs . Clacy ' sbook , m the words of one ofthe rough diamonds of the mines , " That eveiy young man , before paying his passage , should take a few days ' spell at well-sinking , in England ; if he can stand that comfortably , the diggings won't hurt him . " The Bev . Mr . Jones * follows much in the same track as Mrs . Clacy , although his adventures are confined to Morctou Bay and Sydney ; and
Mr . Westgarth gives a summary of the Port Phillip district of New South Wales , together with some account of the colony and its gold-mines , in a volumef which , if n ' ot very lively or original , contains a good deal of useful information and practical knowledge . With these three works we must perforce bring to a conclusion our notice of what we may well call , for it is a department by itself , our Australian literature . Not a day passes but one or more volumes issue from the press , and fill the
advertisement sheets of every newspaper and periodical . To do them all justice , or even to discriminate between the good and the bad , the useful and the useless , would be an endless task . Eor the present , therefore , we abandon the idea , until the rage for writing " our personal adventures in the land of gold " shall have somewhat subsided . Returning again to Europe , ! we have a scientific American ' s description