The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-06 00:00:00

THE Si N, LONDON, FRIDAY !lEVEMNO, APRIL 6, 1866.

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AUSTRALIA.

(From the Correspondent of the Times.)

MELBOURNE, FEB. 17,

The Northam, with the December mail, bearing London
dates to the 19th, reached Nepean Bay on the sth inst., and
Melbourne on the 7th. By the use of even the broken tele-
graphic communication to Aden, our local papers now
favour us with eight or nine days' later news. This time
our intelligence reached the 28th of December. When Puck
proposed to " put a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes,"
he would have been deemed equally absurd, and not quite
so poetical and fairy-like, had he limited his pledge to half
the earth, and extended the time to 40 days. Yet that is
now habitually accomplished, and we know with absolute
eertainty that to do the thing in 40 minutes is reduced to a
matter, not of impossibility, but only one of very great
difficulty and of somewhat discouraging expense. To
my mind, the only reasonable definition of the term " diffi-
culty" is a thing to be overcame." We have, at all events,
by the enterprise of the press, *got the thing reduced to 40
days. Fill up the hiatus in the Mediterranean line, and
we have a further reduction to 33 days. Let that work
well for a while, and I am still sanguine that a communi-
cation will :ultimately be completed to Australia in the
way I have before pointed out. On the day the Northam
touched at the South Australian mail station (Sunday, the
oth) the Great Britain steamed into Hobson's Bay. She
sailed from Liverpool one day before the Northam left
Southampton, and arrived here nearly two days
before her, thus beating the mail by nearly one day.
Her passage was made in 55 days and 16 hours. I
believe the Simla made her first voyage out to join the Red
Sea lino in 55 days and 15 hours, but there is a dispute
between the respective owners and agents of these vessels
about an hour or two. In the meantime the unhappy fate
of the Royal Charter and her living freight has raised the
objection by many that the intense greed of the owners of
rival lines to accomplish " the shortest passage on record"
must greatly increase the risk of life. Of this there can be
no doubt. It is really awful to put the proposition broadly
—that the wholesale sacrifice of life in the Royal Charter
was part of the price the world pays for enormous speed.
Can any one doubt that railway travelling at 40 miles an
hour involves a greater risk of accidents eceteris paribus,
than a speed of 20 miles an hour ? Yet speed the world will
have, with all its risks. It is, however, satisfactory to know
that there are going hand in hand with this same speed
other improvements—other compensations, which have lint
doubtedly rendered travelling by both land and water safer,
on the whole, than it was in former unimproved times, in
spite of the occasional occurrence of an appalling disaster
such as we have lately had to mourn.

On Sunday, the 22d January, we were visited by one of
the hottest of all the hot winds we have experienced for the
last five or six years. It is difficult, bywords, to give any con-
ception of these scorching blasts. I can only compare them
to the high-dried and heated air which has passed over the
surface of melted metal in a foundry. Various thermome-
ters in diffennt situations marked in the shade 102 deg.,
106 deg., 108 deg., 111 deg., and at Castlemaine 116 deg.
These differences are to be accounted for by the interven-
tion of some slight circumstance calculated to moderate the
heat of the blast before it reaches the instrument. For in-
stance, I have found that the wind passing under a veran-
dah will be reduced in temperature by the time it makes its
exit, and if there be creepers around the verandah—a very
oommon thing here—the disturbing effect will be greater.
If the creepers be wetted, so as to keep up evaporation, the
temperature will be lowered many degrees. In 1855 I had
an opportunity of measuring very carefully, and, I believe,
accurately, the temperature of the hot blast in the shade,
and in a spot which the rays of the forenoon sun had not
reached. The thermometer was insulated, was not in the
way of radiated heat, was protected by an angle of the house
from the N.E. and N.N.E. sun, and exposed to the direct
action of the hot wind from the north (oscillating a little
to the eastward and westward). The degree then attained
was 117. I have no doubt that Sunday, the 22d, was as
hot in favourable—perhaps, you would rather say unfavour-
able—situations. It may be thought that this degree of
heat is unbearable, but it is not so. The wind blows hard,
the air is perfectly dry, while, with a calm or light air
from the S. or S.E., I have often found a lower tempera-
ture quite intolerable. I am very sure that 80 deg. or 90
deg. with a southerly and moist wind produces much more
lassitude than a hot wind of the highest temperature. I
have, however, seen the small birds fall and die, and the
smaller domestic animals do the same. On the late occasion
the gardens were desolated, ordinary vegetables destroyed,
shrubs stripped of their leaves, and the unripe fruit
literally cocked upon the trees. After two or three days of
hot wind, we invariably have a sudden change of wind to
S.E., with a great reduction of temperature. On the late
occasion the cool breeze set in at 5.30 p.m., and two days
afterwards we were shivering with cold, the thermometer
standing at 57 deg. Influenza has since prevailed to a con-
siderable extent, with an analogous disorder among animals.
There has also been great mortality among infants, and I am
assured that if birth take place during a hot wind, the child
scarcely ever rallies, the lungs seeming not to acquire power
to decarbonise the blood. It is also during these hot winds
that the danger of fires—especially bush fires—is very great.
The grass is so dry that the slightest spark is at once fanned
into a flame, which is carried over the ground with great
rapidity, increasing fearfully in volume in its progress. On
the Sunday to which I have alluded, an extensive bush fire
occurred near Lake Burrambeet, about 14 miles north of
Ballarat, which did considerable damage, marching over the
country at the rate of about 15 miles in half an hour, and de-
stroying stacks, cottages, and growing crops. One frightful
devastation of this kind, which occurred during a hot gale
in an unusually dry season (1851), has become historical as
" Black Thursday." The late bush fire was, fortunately.
of limited extent—that of 1851 was general over a great part
of the colony. The groat extension of roads and cleared
land within the last eight years has very much diminished
the risk of these visitations, and the great density of popu-
lation affords better means of subduing them.

Although trade continues to be very depressed, the past
month has not seen marked by any great commercial dis-
aster. There have been several insolvencies, it is true, but
thoy are generally for moderate, and in many cases very
trifling amounts; and the state of commercial confidence is
decidedly better than it was when the January snail left.
The state of the exchange has checked the 'transmission of
specie to Europe, and the banks have been much more
liberal in their accommodation. The quarterly statement
of the banks shows some improvement in the increased
amount of deposits in the fourth quarter of 1859 as com-
pared with the third quarter, the difference being £217,000,
while the debts due to the banks—chiefly for discounts—
have increased about £lB,OOO. Still there are features in
the commercial condition of the colony which afford grounds
for considerable anxiety, and which ought to operate as a
warning to shippers on speculation in England. These are
chiefly the decreased production of gold, and the continued
pouring in of goods upon an already overcharged market.
As to the supply of gold, we have long been anticipating
that the increased and still increasing application of machi-
nery, and the carrying on of mining on a large scale with
combined labour, would result in a considerable increase of
supply ; but that expectation has not yet been realised, and
the weekly returns still exhibit continued decrease.

•
Much of the labour which was devoted to gold min-
ing when " digging"
was a popular pursuit now goes
to the production of consumable articles. Agri-
culture has greatly extended of late years. A large num-
ber of trifling articles which used to be imported are
now manufactured here. A great deal of cheap clothing is
now made in Melbourne. There are at least two manufac-
turers of lead pipes by improved hydraulic machinery.
Sawmills are numerous ; gristmills have also kept pace with
agriculture. Marble chimneypieces :and ornamental parts
of mouldings for the best class of houses aro made on the
spot. Iron foundries are springing up on every goldfield.
All these enterprises supply on the spot articles which we
used to buy with raw gold. Thus, while we have less gold,
we really want less gold. That our revenue from all sources
keeps up is proof that production on the whole has not de •
creased.. But by the English speculative shipper this new
feature, this gradual transition, so to speak, should be re-
garded as a special warning. Another evidence of the ac-
tivity of productive enterprise not necessarily increasing
foreign trade is afforded by the number of patents taken out
annually for improved processes of manufacture. They have
amounted during the last two years to about 100 per annum.
I have been informed that one trifling process for making
lace or gauze cap-fronts for women saves an importation of
about £40,000 a year. A company is now at full work re-
fining sugar. The Argus, always usefully suggestive, points
out that papermills might be established with advantage, as
we now export a good deal of linen rag. This suggestion
of the Argus, whether sound in this particular instance or
not, shows the bent of the public mind. Yet, in the face of
this silent revolution in the channels of trade, the imports
of I his year are about £350,000 in excess of last year up
to the same time, while our exports have fallen off about
£120,000.

There has been another great inter-colonial cricket match
between the players of Victoria and New South Wales,
which ended in favour of Victoria. Cricket, within the
last few "3 ars, has become quite a passion in these colonies,
and is played with admirable skill, especially by the "na-
tive born." The public excitement on the late occasion was
very great. The Legislature could scarcely be kept together,
the banks closed at 1 o'clock, the lawyers forgot their briefs,
the merchants abandoned their counting-house to swell the
10,000 spectators of the grand match; and, to say the truth,
Ido not envy the man who could not enjoy the scene. I
doubt whether better playing was ever exhibited at Lord's,
and there is some chance of testing this, for an enterpris-
ing body of restaurateurs, who carry en that useful trade
gigantically, have proposed to import an All England
eleven at their own charges—taking it out, of course, in
the creature comforts that the 10,003 daily spectators will
consume.

Hohour to Edward Wilson! The charminesinging birds,
which he despatched by the Great Britain, have arrived
safely, with few casualties. Out of the 42 thrushei and 51
larks shipped, no less than 37 of the former and 48 of the
latter have been successfully established in the Botanical
Gardens. Of 12 pairs of pheasants only 7 cocks and 4 hens
remain alive. They were unexpected, as the Great Britain
arrived 24 hours before Mr, Wilson's adyices of their flip-
Aleut,