The Press. — London, England, 1853-09-03 00:00:00

414 tumble* ea to the bank, and the drays back up to them to be WWI through pools et Week nut in which they stand sandy . Boxes, owes, and begs (no matter what their conten ts i s may roll into the slush, and stay there seeking till called for. Expensive as horseflesh is, half the power of the animal is wasted in getting out of these pita and the deep ruts of the roadway, which a few loads of steam would fin and level. There is no shed to protect goods liable to be damaged by rain. Reckless indifference everythingbut collecting the enormously high freights up the river, and the still higher rate of carriage to the city, seems to he the rule. Combined, these charges have fre quently amounted to more, for a distance of six or seven miles, than the freight of the goods from England. Once clear of Cole's Wharf, things begin to mend : you ascend into the city, and in the course of a walk of an hour or two a better impression is produced. The main streets of Melbourne are well planned, wide, and regular. The houses are, of °nurse, very dissimilar—is good stone or brick building often having a mean little wooden shed for its neighbour. There are many vacant plots of ground fur building, and in geed situations they command fabulous prices, far more than would be given for ground in the heart of London : it is difficult to believe that these prices represent the real values. Many lots have been bought over and over again, not to build on—the only thing that could make them profitable—but to sell as a speculation. The original owners, or the first purchasers of them, have netted enormous sums ; but those who bought late, calcu lating that such sites must continually rise in price, may find themselves disappointed. Of public enterprise, even to guard against impending social perils, there is none ; the rains of heaven are the only scavengers of the city, and, out of the main streets, the filth of the alleys and back premises is excessive, there being no drains of any kind. Much alarm, indeed, begins to be felt for the health of the place, and with good reason, when 1,000 souls are being added to the population weekly. But in this, as in every thing else, gold paralyses effective exertion on a large scale, and the very wealth of the land seems to be condemning its capital to disease and pestilence. The great error in the plan of Melbourne is the dispro portion between the main streets and the lateral communi eations. The last have been made much too narrow, little better than alleys. The inconvenience is already apparent, and will be felt more and more every year. Land has be come so valuable that it is feared the evil is now beyond remedy. For all defects of drainage, for the bad supply of water, the peril of a tire of Californian magnitude without an engine in the place, the Government, the corporation, the police, mid the authorities; generally are abused; but the people thenualves, who might do so much in all these matters, have attempted nothing. All are too busy in the one pursuit—money-making ; nor can any improvement be expected till the place becomes less of a camp and more of a community. The feeling of citi zenship has yet to grow up ; the merchants and shop keeper's are rather euttlers to an immense army, suddenly thrown into the province, than patriotic burghers. The mass of the people are strangers to the place and to each other; the diggings are nut a home Wally one, and the spirit that takes men there is almost as visible at Mel bourne. No common action for a future and general benefit can yetbe organised ; and it is useless to complain of an evil that nee in the very structure of society; time only, and the subsiding of the present feverish excitement of the search for gold into a steady and regular trade, can re move it. Some few months ago the city was far less safe than now; but those who have resided there any length of time do not, even at present, trust wholly to the police. Many of them always carry arms, if they have to be out after dark, avoid certain localities, keep the centre of the street, and answer any inquirer of the hour, or applicant for a light to a cigar, by the click of a pistol, and UM injunction to the parties to keep their distance. The fact is, so completely are the relations of society reversed, that the garb of a gentleman is in itself a protection, being the badge of poverty—he is not worth robbing—he either has no money, or, being sober and discreet, leaves what he may have at home. But the drunken digger, just down from the mines with his gold dust in his belt, reeling from potbellies to iwthouse, is a rieh and easy prey. He is marked out, fol lowed, sad robbed in a systematic matter. Many a better ' pocket' of gold is 'slaked out of a kennel in the city than ouuld be got by weeks of delving at Ballarat. Except to this class the place is safe enough, and quieter than could be expected. The tide of iiumigration continues to the into Mel bourne at a rate almost alarming. Up to the end of 18114 the population of time province of Victoria had more than doubled what it was in ISM ; what it will be at the close of Pitlft it would be difficult to predict. The arrivals in the month of April have exceeded the slia.riesum of any month in Virt2; and on the 27th of May more than 2,100 immi grants arrived in the bay in the course of the twenty-four hours. To meet this daily-increasing masa of life there is in Melbourne little or no preparation; the place is fed, like a besieged city, by supplies thrown in by distant specula tion, and provisions are, indeed, nearly at siege and famine prices. As to housts•room, every nook is filled: the Owes of those who leave for the goldfields are instantly occupied by new comers. Only the more provident and better cir cumstanced arrive furnished with tents, which they can pitch at ' Canvas Town,' or portable houses, to put up ou any patch of ground that can be obtained. Tired and impoverished in Melbourne, the new comer resolves to proceed without delay to the dig Rings, where at first he may deem himself lucky if, by incessant work, lie secures a bare subsistence : Mr. Hardy. the late chief gold commissioner, states, from his own experience, that the average earnings of the diggers do not exceed one ounce a week ; in prop ortiou to the tl sands engaged in the pursuit, those who snake large sums are few ; those who succeed are men who have had some knowledge of mining or been used to the roughest labour. To do anything, more experience is ne- THE PRESS. cessary than most new-comers possess. The holes are now sunk to greater depths than when the workings began, and are rather mines in miuiature than mere excavatil els. A hole, seventy or eighty feet deep, or even BM, may be called a shaft; when the vein is round, side galleries are driven under it, and the bed containing the gold is re moved by working from beneath it. These veins are followed, if rich in metal, as far as it can be done with safety, without regard to the limits of the claim on the surface. It is often a keen competition between the parties in two neighbouring holes which can sink to the gold vein first, so as to undermine the other completely, and clear out the precious deposit before his rival gets down to it. It may be imagined what chance a party of London shopmen or clerks have against neighbours of the hard-handed sort to whom the work is familiar. In works of this depth some rough kind of machinery is also re quited,—boarding for the shaft and supports for the side galleries. For anything but surface work same skill and a little capital are necessary ; the best organised parties now generally include • carpenter and blacksmith; and those who come out thinking that mere digging, as the term is generally understood, will do, will be grievously dis appointed. But when a great `find' is made, the brilliancy of the result blinds those at a distance to the laborious nature of the process, and the rush to the gold fields continues. A little experience cools the ardour of the new-comers considerably, and both in Melbourne and Sydney numbers of persona arc to be found who have re turned in despair to do what they had better have done at finit,—resort to ordinary labour for a living. Those who know a trade, the skilled workman or mechanic, will make high wages, and unless he takes to drinking—the great peril—will do well. But the condition of the many edu cated men, the weak gentilities, clerks, accountants, shop men, and those of half or no professions, who, having no other resources, have failed at the diggings, is pitiable in the extreme. There are university graduates in the colony breaking stones on the road, and dashing men upon town' driving drays. If extremely lucky they may get appointed to the police; but, if they cannot descend to actual work, they are in danger of starvation. The true gold-mines are the public-houses at Melbourne and the several diggings ; the publicans make large and rapid fortunes, and thousands of pounds a►e freely given for the goodwill of a house of the lowest class—the lower, indeed, the better, for in them greater profits are made than in the respectable hotels. The diggers frequently give their gold to the landlord, drink it out, and go back to the fields as poor MK they came. If they deposit it in a bank, the simplest forms of business are a puzzle to them; in some cases the proffered pass-book has been indignantly refused, under an impression that it is something equivalent to a convict's tick-.' 'leave. It is calculated that a large Melbourne lsu►ks will never be amount of gold in the claimed, the depositors having drunk themselves to death, or died by accident or disease at the mines, where casualties are by no means rare. Those who save their earnings, to invest them in land or business, are in the minority, the prudent or educated; but fortune is capricious, and the luckiest are not always the most deserving. The Victoria gold-helds continue to produce the greatest duantity of the metal, and have drawn away most of the iggers from the northern province. There is a sameness in the accounts from all the fields: reports of the greater productiveness of certain spots, and the invariable rush to them from others, complaints of the enormous prices of provisions and forage, anti the uon-arrival of the post, form the staple of news. The roads are in a terrible state, and will be worse as the winter comes on ; in the same fWaSOII last year, 1001. per ton was paid for the e it ruisge of goods front Melbourne to the gold•tields, and even the diggers regard with apprehension the prices provisions are likely to reach within the next few months. (bold has unhinged every industrial pursuit, and at the diggings money has almost lost its value. Governmunt are pitying, at liendigo, KR for every 'bound of low for the horses of the escort and police; cats were V. .ss. a bushel; bran, 16s. the 101 b.; 10a. was the cost of shoving a horse, and :Ms. a night was charged fin livery." HOLYHEAD HARBOITR OF REFUGI4'.. MN recent transit of her Majesty through Holy head, en route to Ireland, has directed attention to the progress already effected toward' the completion of that grand national undertaking, the Holyhead Harbour of Refuge, and the means that have been adopted for its accomplishment. As the most direct route from London to 'Dublin, the passage rid Holyhead has always engaged the attention of Government, and, before the introduc tion of railroads, they bad caused to be formed one of the finest mail-coach roads in the kingdom. This great work, executed by Telford, in the beginning of the present century, was considered his chef u rre, with the graceful suspension-bridge spanning the Menai Straits, and the road terminating in Holyhead, at what is now called the Old Harbour, from whence sailing-packets carrying the mails then took their departure direct for Kingstown. The next road constructed to the port with the object of shortening the distance between the two capitals was an iron one, and Stephenson constructed the now world-known Britannia Tubular-bridge, through which the mails and passengers from London pass at a level of 100 feet above the tide, and then across the IFland of Anglesca to Holyhead Harbour, where the company's and mail steam packets are waiting to receive them, and 44 hours of sea passage, for the 04 miles intervening, land them in safety in Ireland. The increasing importance of this station, toge ther with its applicability, induced the Board of SATURDAY, Admiralty, at the suggestion of their engineer, Mr. Itendel, to select this spot for the formation of one of the national harbours of refuge, and this work is now being carried out there with a speed anti activity, aided by appliance of steam and machinery, which the science of the present day has developed, in a manner positively surprising. The harbour was commenced in 1840, and is intended to include a total area of 300 acres, two thirds of thatspace having a minimum depth of seven fathoms at low water. Accommodation will thus be provided for about 400 vessels of all classes, including 70 men-of-war as large as the Duke of Wellington. The north or great breakwater will be 5,000 feet long and 170 feet wide, and of this immense work 4,00) feet have already been completed to low-water mark-3,500 feet of it being from 14 to 15 feet above high water. The depth at low water thus tilled up is from 45 to 48 feet ; and some idea may be formed of the magnitude of this mole from the fact that the stonework which surmounts it is about 80 feet above the foundation. The smaller or eastern breakwater, which protects the harbour on the landward side, will be 2,1(M) feet long, and 1,000 feet of it have already been formed, in a depth of 30 feet at low water, and to a width of 100 feet. Since the works were begun, 2,400,000 tons of stone, in blocks vary. ing in weight from 10 tons downward, have been de posited in the sea; and the rate at which this gigantic operation is carried on is said to be from 22,0(M) to 27,000 tons per week, and from 4,000 to 5,000 tons per day. . The method adopted by Mr. Itendel for carrying out this breakwater is by means of a timber staging of five roads, 40 feet above the water, and 150 feet wide, supported on piles 80 feet long, which piles remain buried in the bank of stone as the work advances. The loaded stone-waggons are taken down these five roads by locomotive engines, then tilted, discharging their contents, each of from eight to ten tons of stone, through the staging into the sea, forming a bank of nibble•stone, from► the bottom upon which the piles rest to above the surface of the water. Whole trains of waggons can thus be made to deposit simultaneously, and with a rapidity and certainty that no other system would admit of. The staging is constantly kept in advance of the work by means of cranes upon the stage itse:f, which lifts the piles (80 feet in length) f'ro►u the water till they become upright ; they are then properly adjusted in their place by the aid of a lilliputian screw• steamer, (0) feet long, when the framing and roads are then placed upon them, and rails laid to receive the wag gons; the discharged waggons are again drawn up to the quarries for a fresh supply of stone, and the movement from the quarries to the end of the staging goes on continually. This five-road timber stage of the north pier, as above described, has now advanced 4,000 feet to sea; and the length of breakwater already formed has afforded shelter to hundreds of vessels for the last three winters, and 00 to 80 sail at a time of wind-bound vessels may now occasion ally be seen anchored within the area of the new harbour. In order to obtain so large and unprecedented a supply of rock, blasting upon a large scale has been introduced, and at the foot of the mountain called Holyhead Mountain (which is of a hard schistose quartz rock) quarries have been opened and formed, which, for extent, height of face (about 200 feet), and yield of stone, are certainly unparalleled. Fifty or sixty shafts and galleries are sunk or driven into the rock, which is of so hard and impenetrable a nature that only one foot upon an average can be driven in twenty-four hours by the three relays of miners, who continually go on driving day and night. After the chambers or galleries are completed, two or three of them are sometimes discharged simul taneously with charges of gunpowder varying from 3,00 lbs. to 10,000 lbs. ; the instantaneous ignition of which is brought about by means of the galvanic battery, and the result set: free at once from 30,000 to 50,000 tons of rock. About 20,000 lbs. of gun powder, or 10 tons, are thus expended weekly, in large and small blasts. In the quarries appears the largest amount of activity of any part of this great work-50 moveable cranes (some with steam-power) for raising the stone, 200 to 300 wrought-iron waggons for conveying it, N locomotives, and about 50 horses for the move ment of it—these, together with a staff of men on the work of about 1,400, are daily employed by the contractors in pressing forward to its completion this great national undertaking. The average daily progress of this breakwater is stated to be, upon comparison, no less than 250 times more rapid than that of the Plymouth Break water, constructed early in the century, and with no greater practical difficulties to surmount. The ex pense is also very largely reduced. Under the pre sent contracts, Holyhead Harbour is to be completed for 800,000 t, of which about one-half has been already expended. This also includes some extensive purchases of laud in the vicinity. The once small town of Holyhead, situated in a remote corner of Anglesea, is thus, year by year, 1