The Press.
London, England, 1855-06-02 00:00:00

JUNE 2, 1855.

Yittraturt.

Land, Labour, and Gold ; or, Two Years in
Victoria. By William Howitt. London :
Longmans.

WE have yet had no work descriptive of
Victoria since the gold discoveries at all com-
parable to this journal by Mr. Howitt. It is a
faithful record of personal observation and
experience during his two years' residence in
the colony, written with point, vigour, and
that talent for natural description which
Mr. Howitt is well known to possess, but with
great simplicity and so much minuteness that
the scenes through which the author passed
are, as it were, vividly conjured up before our
eyes, while his wanderings and adventures,
from their continual novelty and forcible
reality, strongly seize on our attention and
enlist our sympathies in his fortunes. This is
especially the case up to the close of his first
expedition to the gold-fields, " the Ovens."
Subsequently, his narrative is less precise, and
he misses many details—such as the actual
amount of his gold at the diggings, and
the general effect of the expedition, and
indeed of the whole voyage, on his personal
fortunes—which the reader would have been
glad to find.
We were puzzled by the opening para-
graph :
Melbourne, September 23, 1852.
At sea, on the 9th of this month, I wrote, " To morrow,
if the wind is favorable, I trust we shall cast anchor off
Melbourne, after a voyage of 111• L days ! " This morning,
at ninety miles from land, on opening the scuttle in my
cabin, I perceived an aromatic odour, as of spicy flowers,
blown from the land; and going out to announce the fact,
I met a gentleman coming into the cuddy, who said,
" Come on deck, and smell the land ! "

But if he wrote on the 9th of September,
"To-morrow I trust we shall cast anchor,"
how was it that not until under date of Sep-
'ember 23 he could say—" This morning, at
' ninety miles from land " ? We expected for
a time to read of some storm or disaster which
kept the ship at sea, but afterwards the entry—
" Melbourne, September 23—Here we are, and
" have been, these ten days "—leads to the in-
ference that the first date is erroneous, or that
the journal was commenced several days after
landing, and that " this morning" was a slip
of the pen.
The gold fever was at its height on the
author's arrival ; prices had risen to their
most extravagant height, and he had the
greatest difficulty in getting his effects
landed. Servants were not to be had. Mr.
Howitt had a relative, Dr. Howitt, in the
colony, and he had been fortunate in his
groom :

I must do the last groom justice. He we, a real
gentleman, a gentleman by birth and education. His
father is a clergyman of high standing. He himself was
educated at Oxford, and used to ride with the Melton
hounds. One of the many real gentlemen who came out
at the first successful account of the diggings, he had
been up and found no luck at the El-Dorado ; so, being
very knowing in horseflesh, and liking horses, he engaged
with my brother ; and never was there such a groom.
Steady, orderly, attentive at all hours and all points,
invulnerable in his good humour, he was the perfect
groom, and yet the perfect gentleman, and in nothing
more so than in that he never presumed upon it. He
sunk all pretensions to an equality of rank ; he set himself
to be the groom and nothing more, while he occupied that
situation ; but he was never more agentleman in spirit and
in manners than when grooming his horses or driving out
his master. When importuned by his old mates, as the
term is—his old comrades—to make another trial of the
diggings, he told the doctor that be should be obliged to
go, but that he would not go till he was suited. This was
the only instance of such true politeness which our rela-
tives have met with since diggerdom commenced, for the
general announcement is " I am going to-morrow ! "—and
they go. Richard, however, kept his word, and did not go
. .
his •

THE PRESS.

dig out 5 lbs. weight of gold ! He sees other two men
wash out of two tin dishes of earth, I think, 8 lbs. weight
of gold ! He pokes the moss away from the foot. of a
tree, and picks up a piece of gold! He sees gold every-
where; and winds all his wonders up by declaring in his
despatch that "the whole country is of the same cha-
racter." After this, is it not rather cool to profess
astonishment at the avidity of the millions at a distance
to witness some of these miracles of affluence for them-
selves ?

After much consideration, the author, with
his party, resolved on proceeding to the
Ovens diggings, 150 miles distant from Mel-
bourne, and accordingly furnished himself
with the necessary outfit. He commenced
his journey in company with two other parties,
but, finding much more annoyance than benefit
from their company, he soon decided on pro-
secuting it alone. The roads, or tracks rather,
were discovered to be desperately bad soon
after leaving Melbourne, and his journey was
a continued struggle with difficulties through
accidents to his waggon and the straying of
his cattle. The first forest on his route bore
traces of the great bush fire of 1851 :

If you traverse these woods in the dusk or in the moon-
light, your imagination has abundant scope for exercise.
All the old blackened stumps, or fallen trees bleached to
whiteness, assume characters many of which never really
existed in these lands. Others recal the past of these
forests themselves. Some appear like dark images of the
natives, who have been pushed from their hereditary seats
by the white man. In one place appear dark women
carrying their infanta, black as ebony, on their backs ;
and often they are followed by a little troop of other
children. Here are dark figures standing as if in deep
consultation, or in an attitude of indignant resentment
at the encroachments of the stranger. There are gro-
tesquely-shaped trees, which assume the forms of all
kinds of animals—kangaroos, iguanos, huge crocodiles,
and serpents of enormous size and tortuous length. But
far oftener these dark masses appeal in the shapes of
your own native regions, and your own history. Kings of
lofty stature, and in flowing robes, sit on ebony thrones ;
bishops and abbots stand arrayed in stole and mitre ; silent
women, seated with their heads stooped on their knees,
seem lost in profound grief; and hollow stems of trees,
broken off at some six or eight feet from the ground, pre-
sent the appearance of strange orators in some historical
scene, with elevated arms, from which fall their robes in
picturesque volumes to the ground, their whole aspect
eloquent with an earnest and mysterious enthusiasm. I
do not know that these objects affect others in this manner ;
but I cannot avoid seeing them thus continually in the
twilight or the moonlight. _ _

On one occasion it seemed that they had
really lost their horses. Hearing some tidings
of them they set out for the hills, and travelled
far without success :

Mile after mile we went on, through the hills and
the woods, getting ever deeper and deeper into their
intricate glens; the drayman, as we reached an eminence,
pointing to the lofty ranges which we had seen from our
camp on the other side of the valley, and telling us, for
our comfort, that the highest range there was Mount Dis-
appointment; that, if our horses got into that labyrinth
of hills, they were lost for ever ; that in the valleys be-
tween those hills there are scores of horses that have
escaped, and in time grown wild and irreclaimable; that
one valley ran into another, and t*t into a third, and so
on, in such a network, that it is exceedingly difficult fur
any one going in to find his way out again ; and that a
gentleman, some time ago, who attempted to explore
them, never was heard of till his bones were found. He
said, three months before a horse of his escaped thither,
and he had tried to recover it in vain. The herd is called
" Wills's wild Mob," and they range at will, knowing the
defiles of the hills better than any human creature. In
those valleys, he added, the wood is so dense that it is
almost dark at noon. Fern trees grow there to a great
size, and close so thickly above your head that you cannot
see the sky.
- -

The animals luckily were recovered when all
hope of finding them was nearly lost. A more
serious disaster was the break down of their
cart, which detained them soma days, and this
was followed by the severe illness of the
author. His life was saved by the hospitality
of a " squatter," a class, by the way, against
whom Mr. Howitt seems to have conceived an
unaccountable prejudice :

At this moment we discovered that we were on the
station of Mr. Forlonge, a wealthy squatter ; and Alfred
about miles dis•

thongs of bullock hide, and still more secured from the
force of the winds by poles, which are fastened along the
outside of the roof. Remember, that in such huts the
greater number of the squatters of Australia live ; people,
many of them of old English and Scotch families, retired
officers, medical men, and clergymen—wealthy, and even
elegant people. Here lived the squatter of whom Mr.
Forlunge bought the run or station; and here Mr. For-
lunge and his family lived some time, till he built his
present handsome house in a much finer situation.

While yet on tho road they encountered
some of their old travelling companions re-
turning in disgust, bringing with them only
stories of disappointment and disaster. But
our author and his party resolutely resolved
to see and try for themselves. They did not
reach " the Ovens " until Christmas-day 1852,
having spent nearly two months in their
arduous journey. The account of the diggings
is a masterpiece of descriptive writing, nor
can we too strongly recommend it to the
notice of those persons—if any such still there
be—who imagine that gold-digging is a pro-
fitable and lucrative pursuit.
Having tried one or two fields without suc-
cess, and satisfied that nothing was to be
done in so crowded a field, the author with his
party resolved to " prospect" for themselves.
They stole away from the diggings quietly and
advanced up the creek whence they conjec-
tured the gold must be washed down. The
narrative of this journey has more than the
interest of romance. The reader can himself
scarcely escape a touch of the gold fever as he
reads. He sympathises with the anxiety of
the party to baffle pursuit by obliterating all
traces of their route, and participates in their
eager scrutiny of the soil. The story of the
bullock-waggon stealthily proceeding to some
newly- discovered spot, with two eager Yankees
dodging it, and the trick by which at last the
vigilant pursuers are baffled, are told with
dramatic effect. At lust the diligence of Mr.
Howitt promised to meet with a rich reward.
He relates of his scouts :

They passed through glens where the tree-ferns were so
tall and thickly grown as to close over their heads, and
made it nearly dark. But the most important thing was
that at some twelve or fourteen miles distance amongstthe
hills, they prospected a considerable stream, and found
abundant signs of gold. Hither, therefore, we mean to
steal away as secretly as possible.

The spot thus selected on the Upper Yackan-
danda proved really rich in gold, but the dis-
covery was soon made known:—

Yesterday a man made his appearance, and spying our
tin-dish, in which we had washed out a few ounces of gold,
and placed it in a hollow tree, he very unceremoniously
marched up to it, took it up, and began to examine it. I
called out to him that that was making rather too familiar.
" All right !" said he; set down the dish, and disappeared ;
and this morning he reappeared at the head of some scores
of others, marching in Indian file through the wood,
shouldering their picks and spades.
So farewell to the quiet of these woods, and to the gold
of this creek. This formidable invading army, looking
gay enough in their red jumpers, and blue jumpers, and
wide-awakes, but by no means attractive to us, at onco
marched straight up to our claim ; sprang down into it,
examined the clay at the bottom, nodded to each other
their approbation, and hastened to appropriate sections of
the creek both above and below. We had cast our eyes on
several spots which appeared particularly promising ' they
have pounced upon them all; and already we behold their
carts arriving with their tools and tents. They must
have been somewhere not far off when their scout,dis-
covered us.

Tho success of the party excited the envy
of some neighbouring diggers, and never did
the auri sacra fames assume a more devilish
aspect than in the case of the ruffians who,
with passions wound to uncontrollable fury by
their own disappointment and the Howitts
success, endeavoured to drive them from the
spot or compass their destruction. A savage
threat of murder at last brought matters to
crisis ; the protection of the gold commissioner
was invoked, and the ruffians were effectually
silenced.

teeted with the present

tile only instance 01 SUUII LIIO y0..,,c,.,.. ~—..--. --
Jives have met with since diggerdom commenced, for the unaccountable prejudice : crisis ; the protection of tile Bola commissioner
general announcement is "I am going to-morrow ! "—and At this moment we discovered that we were on the was invoked, and the ruffians were effectually
they go. Richard, however, kept his word, and did not go station of Mr. Forlonge, a wealthy squatter ; and Alfred silenced.
till his master thought he was suited. immediately rode off to his house, about seven miles dis• On all points connected with the present
to
Some just reflections are made on the state and unparalleled industrial progress of
wonderful accounts sent home by Mr. La suitable for an invalid. Mr. Forlonge instantly sup- . .
plied him with as much good bread, butter, eggs, milk,
Trobe in his despatches : Victoria these volumes give full, and generally
and vegetables as he could bring; and the next day sent fair, information. We must except, however,
There is certainly no man who has done so much to one of his overseers from the hut near us, and took us—
turn the heads of people all the world over, regarding the tent, baggage, and crippled cart—all away together. Mr. Howitt's remarks on all that relates
to the squatting interest—a subject on which
gold here, as Mr. La Trobe by his official statements; and They soon had our tent pitched near the hut, where our
yet, when he hears of the crowds coming, he affects to party could sleep, while Alfred and myself were located his Radical predilections, we suspect, blind
him almost as completely as the lust for gold
wonder at it l "What are all these people coming for?" in the hut. To this generous and hospitable treatment
he demanded of me. "What?" I replied in astonish- there is no doubt that I owe my life. A few days more
did the ruffians with whom he had to contend
ment ; "why, simply to gather the gold that you tell on the banks of the old creek would have seen the last
at the diggings. By his own showing, the
them lies everywhere and all over the country." Surely of me. squatters are by far the moat estimable and
never were there such Arabian Nights' stories as those Here we have been since then, and here we are; and I intelligent class in the colony, and though of
of Mr. La Trobe's despatches. He rides up to Mount must now give you some notion of the place, and the life
course it would not be desirable to give them
Alexander, and the first two men that he sees at work here. We are lodged in a slab hut, roofed with broad
he pauses to watch. In two hours he sees these men sheets of the stringy bark; whieh are tied to ths rafters by a monopoly of power, yet it would appear that