The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-06 00:00:00

THE WIZARD AT THE DIGGINGS.

We find the following amusing letter in the
Aberdeen Herald :
Ballarat, Victoria, Sept. 2.
I told you of my great nights under the patron-
age of the Communn na Feinne," when all Scot-
land around Geelong visited the theatre. I have
now to tell you of another Scottish patronage
received in Melbourne a week afterwards. Hav-
ing finished my engagement at Geelong, I pro-
ceeded to Melbourne in order to give six repre-
sentations of Rob Roy.' I had effected an advan-
tageous arrangement with Mr. Coppin, and was
very glad, for his sake, as well as my own, that
the opening night was one of the best houses which
had been seen in the Theatre Royal.
For the five following nights the theatre pre,
sented an almogt equally crowded conditim—the
last night (Saturday) rendered memorable by the
members of the Caledonian Society of Victoria at-
tending in Higland costume. This society is but of
recent origin, though it already numbers many of
the most influential Scotchmen of the colony among
its members. Its patron is. the governor Sir Henry
Barkly. The society is to have a gathering at Mel-
bourne in April of next year. Invitations have been
forwarded to all the Scotchmen in Victoria, New
South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, New
Zealand, and the Polynesian Islands, to attend.
Orders have been sent home for dresses and orna-
ments.. The governor has commissioned his tailor
in Scotland to fit him out in kilt and philabeg
in a manner befitting his position ; and every
body interested is vieing with everybody equally as
interested, to see how each can best look the High-
lander at the first great " gathering" in Australia.
Hear,this, ye dealers in tartan ! make a note of it,
ye consignees. of Cairngoruras ! pay attention to it,
ye designers of dirks and manulticturers of Cale-
donian curiosities ! I know of one jeweller in Mel-
bourne who alone has sent home for a thousand
pounds' worth of Cairngorums ; andthere is a draper
in Collins-street who tells me that the order for
tartan he sent home two months since will strain
the energies of three of the best manufacturing
houses up to the time for shipment in January
next. - If a thousand Scotchmen do not come out
in the ship which brings that cargo I shall be
very much disappointed, for I hear a rumour that
the ship is likely to be the Leviathan. Her com-
ing to Port Philip Bay is one of the chief topics
of talk. Every one believes that she will make
the voyage out in a month, so that her passengers
will -have a month in which to see the
colony be another month going home, and
thus after having voyaged 17,000 miles, seen the
richest colony of the southern hemisphere, and re-
turned by another voyage of. 17,000 miles, being
again in their shops in London, Edinburgh, Glas-
gow, or Aberdeen, after an absence of only three
months or thereabouts. Should this be accomplished,
as I have no doubt it will, a change will come about
in Victoria as great as that made by the discovery
of gold. No country on the globe will then be a
remote one when Australia becomes a pleasure trip
from England. Here remoteness is already fast
diminishing, for rumours are abroad that as soon
as the electric telegraph is completed to India, it
will be brought over the islands of the Eastern
Archipelago, and across Torres Straits to this great
southern land. There will then be daily communi-
cation between Melbourne and London, and " the
other end of the earth" will be at the finger ends of
him who who works the telegraph in Collins-street,
Melbourne, or in Lothbury London. Verily, science
will then have accomplished the greater part of her
mission to humanity, as Pope so well defines it—
" To speed the intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole." _ _

Meanwhile, however, while science waits with her
boundless resources at command, capital and enter-
prise seem sadly at fault with relation to Austra-
lian intercourse. To expect the arrival of the mail
at the time when it is due, and to have any regular
information on Englishmatters, have become fancies
in which no sane Victorian now indulges. When
in old heroic times they. wished to express the
idea of indulging in foolish anticipation or vain
exertion, they used the simile of its being as ab-
surd as " to seek the source of the Nile." At the
present F day in Victoria, the simile they employ,
under similar circumstances, is " to expect the
mail on the stk." Thus no one would think of
seeing snow here in January, being cold at Christ-
mas, warm in July, or neglecting to see the per-
formance of the great Wizard of the North, any
more than they would 'expect the mail on the sth.'
If it get in twenty days after it is due people think
it pretty well ; and considering the number of mis-
haps which befel the last mail steamer on her voyage
from Point de Galle, if the next two or three mails
never come in at all no one would greatly wonder.
Not that the Victorians are the sort of people to
submit to an annoyance of this kind tamely and
quietly. On the contrary, they have already pretty
well ,determined to take the mail service into their
own hands, and have obtained from the Colonial
Government the promise of a large grant of money
to make the attempt. The probability is that the
Panama route will be the one selected, though there
is a chance of both that and the Suez one being
used, the communication being by each alternately,
so as to establish a bi-monthly service. This is re-
quired by the importance to which the colonies have
attained and their vast commercial intercourse.
I left Melbourne for Ballarat by taking the road
to Geelong, and thence on to the gold fields. At
present the roads of Victoria constitute one feature
of its most striking deficiencies. There are only two
lines of route which are in anything like good
order—that from Melbourne to Castlemaine, and
that from Geelong to Ballarat. But even these are
characteristic of Australia. You mount a coach,
which is no coach at all, but a large American van,
painted red, with rows of seats across the interior
so that the passengers are seated knee to knee and
back to back. Around you and over your head is:a
leather canopy, made fast by straps, but altogether
removed in the hot weather. Six thin, spare, bony
little horses start with you at full gallop, and at
bidding, of the Yankee coachman, will go helter
skelter with you anywhere. These Yankee coach-
men are remarkable fellows, and have done much
to open up communication with the interior. My
previous experience in the United States rendered
them no novelty to me when I again saw their small,
thickly-set bodies, dark eves, and resolute look
on the box-seat of " Cobb and Co.'s Telegraph
Line" in Melbourne. But to a stranger who has
never visited America they must be very noticeable
portions of Australian society. They will drive you
anywhere, down anywhere, over anything, through
any forest or over any field, and handle their horses
with as much tact and to as great nicety.as though
they were performers in a circus, and their animnls
the " trained steeds."
It is a very pleasant trip from Geelong here if
you have fine weather. You do go down in a gully
sometimes, and through a steam of water now and
then, and you do see mud in more plenitude than
you ever saw on any road before. You have the
Yew-Yang Hills to your right, and the bold ridge
of the Banabools stretching away in the hazy diL-
tance to tha Cape Otway ranges, which can be
dimly seen away to your left. There is Mount Bun-
inyong straight before you, and by and by, when
you have got fairly on your way, you will see a bit
of thereal Australian scrub. The " bush" of Aus-
tralia is not composed of the loftiest of trees, but
chiefly of gums and wattle trees—the white gum,
the red gum, and the blue gum—the stringy
bark, box-tree, and lightwcod. Every now and
then you see the trunk of a tree perfectly black
and charred on one side, with, perhaps half the
interior of the trunk thoroughly encamped. Some
natives; or some wayfarers of a lighter skin, have
encamped against it, and there made their fire for
the night, causing the same tree to shelter them
with its boughs and warn them with its burning
wood, or occasionally you will trace for miles by
charred trunks of still leafy trees the track ofsome
bygone bush fire.
I am playing at the most popular of the three
theatres here—" The Charlie Napier," as it is called
—and am doing an excellent business. There are
three theatres built and one building. Of those
built, two are closed; the one which is open, and in
which I am to perform, is essentially the people's
house. It is where the diggers resort in the
evening to see the play, and afterwards to in-
dulge in the delights of the dance. A strange
set are those diggers—men who are far away
from home, friends, and all friendly associa-
tions—who are thoroughly " on the loose," and
who lead a careless, merry life ; working hard
though at times, and ofttun. es very hard—so hard,
indeed, that few would like to be subjected to the
same amount of labour in Scotland or England
without the certainty of receiving a better reward
than the digger is certain to get. He may " make
his pike," or he may get nothing. He may work
two years and never dig up a grain of gold, and he
may at length make a hundred pounds in a week.
It is the most haphazard game in the world this
digging, and many have found it such to their sor-
row. Ballarat is the chief of the gold fields, but
not the one for the poor man to come to if he means
digging. Capital and machinery are necessary for
him who would now rob Ballarat of its golden trea-
sures. You scrape up no nuggets on the surface,
inor pick then up among the grass. There i* the

earth before you, and down into that earth you
must go deeper than perhaps you have ever
dreamt of going. If you have been brought
up to the calling of a gravedigger so much the
better for you. There is a chance for your
finding the labour to be light. All gravediggers
turn out to be fortunate here. I know of one who
when he first went to the diggings had but 75., who
made £2,000 in four months, spent it all, and is
now a master of the ceremonies in a cheap ball room
in the neighbourhood.
I had wished to see a gold mine, and the other
day my wish was gratified. I went down the
deepest one in Ballarat. It is called the " Great
Eastern," and it is on what is called the " Malakoff
Reef." They received my party in the most cour-
teous manner, and each endeavoured to outdo the
other in the politeness of his attentions. I was
shown how they had gone through the alluvial soil,
how they had gone on through the basaltic rock
and the sandstone, and how they had come at last
to the alluvial soil and the quartz gravel drift in
which the gold is now found resting on the schist
which once formed the upper table rock, when the
gutters in which the gold is now discovered were
the water courses of the country in archaic days.
The gold-seeking being finished I produced my
" Inexhaustible Bottle," which I had taken down the
mine with me, and treated all the -workers to its
Contents. It was the first time of the Wizard of the
North performing in a gold mine, and a strange
group we must have appeared. My bottle was
never before called upon to do duty so arduous.
Whisky was the liquor most in requisition, but
your miners are thirsty souls, and no moderate
allowance of the Glenlivet would satisfy them ; the
small glasses which I usually employ would have
been of very little use. Some would have the
whiskey poured into the lid of their pannikins,
others held up their caps to catch the flowing
stream, and some collected it in the hollow of their
shovels, and drank whiskey out of the same shovel
with which they had just dug gold. They begged
me afterwards to leave them. the bottle as a curio-
sity, pressing me to do so, if I had another for my
magical display in the evening. Having first ob-
tained a promise from them that no one should
try its magical capabilities more than once a years
and then on the anniversary of the day
of my visit, I presented them with it in due form.
It now hangs from the roof of their shanty, with
" Professor Anderson's Magic Bottle" on the label
attached to it. I am much afraid, however, that
when they come to use it they will hay forgotten
the lesson in magic I gave them, and altogether fail
in finding out the secret of its inexhaustibility.
lam on the eve of leaving Ballarat to return to
Melbourne, and thence proceed to Sydney. XOll
will, therefore, receive my next communication
most probably from New South Wales, instead of
from Victoria.—l am, sir, yours faithfully,
JOHN HENRY ANDERSON,
Wizard of the North.