Heads of the Plenty, Oct. 28. 1852.

We are now really on our journey. On Wednesday last we left Melbourne. There was a train of three carts, attended by thirteen men, well armed, and, therefore, not very likely to be attacked by bushrangers. Our blue cart, well loaded, and drawn by two capital horses,—the shafter a bay, whom we named Ben, and the leader a handsome gray, whose name too was Gray,—led the way, the articles it contained defended from any rain that might overtake us by a good tarpaulin. Our party consisted of myself, Alfred and Charlton, and my nephew Edward. The next party was headed by the surgeon of the ship we came over in, and Mr. L., our fellow-passenger, and was completed by several young men, whom they had engaged from amongst the intermediates. The third was headed by a Captain Nolusbolus, who chose to follow without asking any one's permission, and was made up of his ship associates. We led the way, because we had possessed ourselves of most information regarding the route.

We had made all possible inquiries on this point, from parties most likely to know, both as to the best route to the Ovens, and as to the state of the roads; and, as in all such cases, we found no two persons of the same opinion.

Ballarat, May 16th, 1854.

Soon after leaving the Mount Alexander Diggings on our way hither, we came out upon open, green downs, with a fine turf, and scarcely a tree upon them, and, at seven miles distance, crossed the Loddon, there a stream so small that in some places I could jump over it. The ford that we crossed I suppose some Nottingham man must have named, for it was Wilford.

Between the Loddon and Ballarat we alternately travelled through woody ranges and over wide extents of these high, green downs, as finely turfed as the South Downs themselves, and, of course, grazed by immense flocks of sheep. Most of these lie higher than the wooded ranges, and show themselves afar off. We had actually to descend into the wooded hills. These downs are all of volcanic origin, and covered with the black, rich soil which is always found on the volcanic plains. Here and there rises upon them a lofty conical hill, evidently an extinct volcano. These hills are smooth, and very green, and only thinly clothed with trees. At the feet of most of them lies a lake, or a great reedy swamp, as if the ground had sunk in the place from which the hill had been heaved up.

These downs are remarkably pleasant, and must in summer be fine, fresh places to live upon. They are splendid pastoral regions.

Bendigo, April 25th, 1854.

We arrived here nearly a week ago, and have been detained by unluckily stumbling on the races; and as we wanted to dispose by auction of a number of heavy things that we left here, so that we might go on our survey of the remaining diggings lightly, we have been compelled to wait; for, of course, no business is to be done while the races last, which continue three days. We have pitched our tent in our old place in the bush, below the diggings, but unfortunately the race-course is only a quarter of a mile from us, and we hear too much of the noise.

Two young gentlemen—real gentlemen,—who had sunk a deal of gold on the diggings, instead of raising it, contracted to make this course, by clearing the trees away and drawing them to each side. The ground was perfectly level and good, and made an excellent course. I believe they cleared 70l. by their contract. But unluckily, they entered into another speculation. They procured a license for a coffee-shop and eating-house on the course, for the term of the races, and so managed to lose all the money again. They had an unbounded stock of energy, and were quite in their element in making the course; but they were gentlemen and not publicans, and, therefore, were totally out of their element in drawing and entertaining customers of the prevailing class.

Melbourne, May 28th, 1854.

Turning our backs on the diggings, we made an easy and pleasant journey to Geelong, and thence to Melbourne. We made this detour to see as much of the country as we could, and also to visit the thriving town of Geelong, the second in the colony.

Once out of the awful quagmire of Ballarat, we hoped to get into tolerable road; but the whole country, for about half the way to Geelong lay full of wet, and the roads in consequence were execrable. However, at Ballarat we had sold our large tent, and everything except what was absolutely necessary for our journey down, and, therefore, we had no difficulty in wading through. I may say generally of our journey that it was all through a volcanic country, in many places abounding with large trap boulders, scattered on the surface; in others clear and green, but always exhibiting the rich, black, volcanic earth.

Thousands of farms may be laid out along this part of the country, capable of yielding the richest harvest, as well as of pasturing any amount of cattle and sheep; and by universal testimony the whole of the colony westward, at least a very broad tract of it from the coast inwards, is still more fertile, and is, indeed, the very richest land in the colony.

Upper Yackandanda Creek, March 1st, 1853.

The crowds which every day oppress, as I may truly say, the diggings, grow constantly and rapidly. They are discontented crowds, and far from healthy ones; and I should not give a true picture of the real condition of the gold-fields, and of the colony generally, if I did not at some length here endeavour fairly to state the causes of these facts. We will despatch the question of the salubrity of the colony and the diggings first, as the soonest dealt with.

If we were to judge of the healthiness or unhealthiness of the colony of Victoria by the amount of sickness in the population, we must pronounce it to be very far from a healthy country. But this would be by no means a fair judgment. There are many circumstances to be considered before drawing a conclusion on so very important a point, as it regards emigration. In the first place, this is a new country, and a country yet uncultivated to any considerable extent. It is to Englishmen a new climate; and, however mild and delightful a climate for six months in the year, for the other six months it is a far hotter climate than England; and it is not to be supposed that, were there no other causes to affect the health of immigrants, this change of climate could be made by adults with impunity.

M'Ivor Diggings, June 20th, 1853.

I must give you yet some further details of our journey hither, as it is only by a complete narrative of the journey that those who follow us can have any real idea of what it is: the whole distance, be it remembered, being only seventy-five miles.

The weather had been fine while we were down in Melbourne for a couple of days, and the north wind and sun had considerably dried the roads, so that we got through the abominable road between the fences better than before. Instead of finding a party of good-natured Skyemen this time, we overtook a party who had more the appearance of Cockneys. Their cattle did not appear very likely to drag them through that six mile quagmire, and we proposed, for mutual security, to lend each other an extra horse in any case of sticking fast. They declined, saying, somewhat haughtily, they were quite strong enough to take care of themselves. In less than half an hour they were stuck fast up to the axles, and then came to ask us to lend them a horse. Though they did not deserve it, and though we believed they would not have lent us one, had the case been ours, after the manner in which they repulsed our offer, yet we stayed and helped them out, but we then went on and left them to their own sufficiency.

Spring Creek, Ovens Diggings, Jan. 15. 1853.

We have now passed more than six months since leaving home, and have bade adieu to the year 1852. The close of the year was celebrated here by the diggers, in firing off guns and making bonfires, with the usual additions of drinking, fiddling, and the like; There was no such thing as any body sleeping till near morning. It is the custom of the diggers to keep up a temporary firing every night. It is the custom at all the diggings, and probably originated in the idea of letting the evil-disposed know that they were well armed. The diggers think, too, that it is necessary to discharge a gun or pistol at night, and charge it afresh; but, except in rainy weather, the powder in this climate is not likely to become damp. However, all are armed, and all fire off their guns at night in rapid succession, so that you may imagine the abominable noise. But the diggers seem like children, who are immensely delighted with the noise of gunpowder.

The diggers seem to have two especial propensities, those of firing guns and felling trees. It is amazing what a number of trees they fell. No sooner have they done their day's work, than they commence felling trees, which you hear falling continually with a crash, on one side of you or the other.

Yackandanda Creek, March 12th, 1854.

We were delighted to get back again to our old creek, to cool shades, quiet, and delicious water. We have remained here ever since awaiting the approach of the cooler weather, at the same time that we have been profitably employed. We have had only about half-a-dozen neighbours; the great bulk of the diggers from these diggings have gone down to Byrant's Ranges, or as they are now called, Tarrangower, so named by some Highlander. We hear that great disappointments have occurred there, but that the people, utterly exhausted by their rushes over such immense distances, cannot get back, and are obliged to do as well as they can. The drought and want of water are said to be unheard of, and that water for culinary purposes is 2s. 6d. a bucket, having to be brought several miles. But as we propose to leave here the day after tomorrow, and shall take all these diggings in our way, we shall be better able on the spot to learn the truth,—a very difficult thing to get at here; meantime, before quitting this pleasant and long abode of ours, we will give a few further notices of our life here, though of a very quiet kind.

To our great satisfaction, on our return from the Buckland, we found Captain Murray located here, as the Commissioner.

Mount Midway, near Kilmore, May 28th, 1853.

We started once more up the country on May 6th, our first destination a new digging called M'lvor, and thence to Bendigo. We dined with His Excellency the evening before our departure, and he very kindly wrote down in my memorandum-book the best route for us, having himself been up to the diggings recently. He also gave us a general letter of introduction to the Commissioners at all the diggings, requesting them to give us all the assistance they can in our inquiries.

The weather was very fine when we set off, but that very day it broke up; heavy rain came dashing down, and the roads, absorbing it rapidly, were immediately in a most discouraging state. This is a grand fatality here, that the roads and everything in the colony have been so entirely neglected by the Government. The labour of getting up a country with no roads consumes all your time. As we meant to winter at the diggings, we determined to take up sufficient stores; but we had been calculating on sufficient fine weather, and being overtaken by the wet, we have been nearly a month on the way, and have only made forty miles out of the seventy-five to M'Ivor.

During this time we have broken our axletree four times, and have spent 13l. in repairs of it.

White Hills, Bendigo Diggings, Aug. 12th, 1853.

We have quitted our quiet, green retreat in the outskirts, and have encamped in the very heart of the diggings at the foot of the fourth White Hill, and facing the Bendigo Creek. We have done this so as to be able to note more completely what is going forward on these great diggings. Below us runs the Bendigo Creek, whence the whole of the digging takes its name. The valley through which it runs is all dug up for at least ten miles. But this constitutes but a small part of the diggings. The greatest extent of these lie on the other side of the creek, in valley beyond valley,—the farthest, Myer's Flat, being said to be twenty-two miles from this spot, the White Hills; so that the diggings cover an area, at the very least, of ten miles square; and they are still extending themselves in a north-western direction.

On this side the creek, another creek, called the Back Creek, falls into it about a mile higher than where we are camped. It runs several miles to the south-west; and it was near it that we were first encamped. The valley of the Back Creek is a fine, fertile, green valley, or rather was so; but now an enormous extent of it is dug up.

Euroa, on the Severn Creeks, Dec. 1. 1852.

The day before I closed my last communication, we had travelled over good road, and with splendid weather, through a pleasant country. All at once we came to a most formidable gully called Sandy Creek. It was in fact a river lying deep amid a scene of chaos which the wintry torrents had produced. First there was a precipitate descent down to the bed of the river, steep as the roof of a house. Then there was a quagmire of adhesive clay, deep enough to take the horses up to their bellies, and the cart to the axles. Then, if you got through that, you would be obliged to make a sudden turn upon a heap of solid earth thrown up in the middle of the river, and then make another steep descent to the water, and, finally, to pass through the bed of the river, of some twenty yards wide at least. The water was up to your waist; and some huge trunks of trees lay sunk in the stream, ready to stop or to overturn your vehicle.

The party that was passing this hideous place immediately before us, had their cart at once turned topsy-turvy, and their horse thrown upon its back in the water, with his heels in the air. Luckily the water was not deep just at the spot; or the horse must have inevitably been drowned.

“Upper Yackandanda, Feb. 28th, 1853.

We have begun to destroy the beauty of this creek. It will no longer run clear between its banks, covered with wattles and tea-trees, and amongst its shallow parts over-grown with foreign-looking shrubs, flags, and cypress-grass. A little while, and its whole course will exhibit nothing but nakedness, and heaps of gravel and mud. We diggers are horribly destructive of the picturesque.

The creek runs about fifty yards to the left of our tent, and is, perhaps, some ten or a dozen feet across; but the stream only occupies part of this space, running amongst thickets of the afore-mentioned shrubs. Well, we set to work in earnest as soon as our tent was complete. This is what may be called surface-digging, for the gold lies near the surface of the bottom of the creek; and, indeed, we find it hanging in the roots of the shrubs that we pull up from the spaces that stand above the water. But the main quantity of gold in this stream is found to lie on a layer of clay about two feet below the surface. On this lies mud; and in this mud there is more or less gold. We have no need, therefore, to dig holes of from ten to eighty feet here.

Our first business was to select a portion of the creek where, from its slope, from natural obstructions in it or otherwise, it appeared likely that the gold would lodge.

Melbourne, September 28. 1852.

Having effected a landing in this country bristling with hostile steel pens, and where they come down upon you with tremendous charges,—not of cavalry, but of city train-bands, all furnished with an awful artillery of prices,—let us endeavour to get some idea of the features of the place.

We landed at Liardet's Beach, a low sandy shore, where there was a shabby sort of inn, looking English but slovenly, before which stood a shabby sort of long waggon meant for an omnibus, the driver of which generously offered to convey us the three miles to Melbourne for half-a-crown; but, having been locked up in a floating prison for 13,000 miles at sea, we preferred stretching our legs on terra firma. We marched on amid a wildish scene of sand, fern, odd sorts of shrubs, dusky evergreen trees with broken heads, and other lower trees the leaves of which seemed cut out of dingy green paper, and the stiff scrubby boughs stuck over with bottle-brushes. These, we found, were Banksias; the trees like battered, windtorn willows, were gum-trees; and besides these were others like great trees of broom,—Casuarinas, or Shiacks. All around us stood plenty of stumps of other trees cut off about a yard high, American fashion; and amongst them, here and there, was erecting a new wooden hut. The scene was not especially paradisiacal, for a first glimpse of this far-famed Austral Eden.

My object in the following work has been to place the reader, as much as possible, in my own position whilst collecting the material for it. To let him see, feel, and draw his conclusions, as far as I could enable him, as fully and fairly as I did myself. I found myself in one of the most noble dependencies of England,—in a country which one day must become a great and populous one, and that at a crisis unexampled in history,—new, strange, and without an exact precedent. I saw that the position into which I had thus stepped created a great national duty; and I determined to discharge it faithfully. As I had no interest in the questions involved,—except such as are the interests of every British subject,—and no purpose to serve but a patriotic one, I resolved to state simply, fully, and without fear or favour, what fell under my notice. If, therefore, my plain speaking shall, as it probably may, give pain occasionally to individuals, I can only plead a most sincere desire to avoid such annoyance; but that, without an honest and candid exposition of prominent parts, I could not give to the whole portraiture that truth which the most vital interests, both of the colony and the mother-country, demand at this moment.

The condition of our Australian colonies is singular and anomalous beyond conception; and what is not the less extraordinary is, that it is almost totally unknown at home.

The Upper Yackandanda, Ovens, Nov. 28th, 1853.

We struck our tent soon after the date of my last, quitted the banks of the Bendigo, and advanced once more on our journey to the Ovens. Mr. Berkeley and Mr. Duncan thought they should follow us in about six weeks, when the wool was all packed and despatched. Meantime a huge Irishman unexpectedly became the associate of our journey. This gentleman we met with at the tent of a highly respected friend of ours, who introduced him, stating that he was travelling in the colony, was anxious to go farther up the country, and would be glad to accompany us; that he had a horse, and would arrange with us for accommodation in our tent, and carriage of his trunk as far as the Ovens. Though averse to admitting any stranger into our tent and party, even as a mere fellow-traveller, from sufficient observation of the inconveniences arising from such associations in others, yet, to oblige our friend, we consented.

The new companion of our travels we shall call Lignum, the Irish Giant, for reasons that are sufficient, as the sequel may suggest. Lignum was, in fact, a gigantic fellow. He stood upwards of six feet three, and was largely and heavily built; so heavily, that he seemed to have considerable labour in lifting his ponderous body along by means of his elephantine legs.

Melbourne, September 23. 1852.

At sea, on the 9th of this month, I wrote, “To-morrow, if the wind is favourable, I trust we shall cast anchor off Melbourne, after a voyage of 102 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!” People could not at first believe it; but there it was, strong and delicious, as Milton describes it from the coasts of Mozambique and of Araby the Blest. The wind is blowing strong off the shore; and the fragrance continues, something like the scent of a hayfield, but more spicy. I expect it is the yellow mimosa, which my brother Richard said we should now find in flower all over the valleys.

A very amusing fellow-passenger, who was always ambitious to be the first to suggest anything, said, eagerly, “It is the scent of cowslips; mind! I say it is cowslips; and we shall see when we get there. Remember that!” On my observing that I did not believe that there was either cowslip or primrose in the country, except they were in a garden, our amusing friend exclaimed, “Oh! I say it is cowslips, or something like them. It is mimosa, or something with a honied smell. It is something of that kind. I say it is that.”

October 13. 1852.

We have delayed our journey a little to obtain more precise information respecting these Ovens Diggings, as they are quite new, are 150 miles distant, and especially as five or six parties seem determined, go where we will, to follow in our wake. We hear from private sources, as well as from the newspapers, that they are yielding a most extraordinary quantity of gold; that it lies very near the surface; that there is plenty of good water there all the year round; and that it is a beautiful and healthy country. These diggings lie on the Sydney mail road, so that there are inns and stations all the way, at which we can procure necessary supplies. At the same time, as the distance is so much greater than to Mount Alexander and Bendigo, we hope that it will be a good while before there is that rush and crush there which are now over-whelming those earlier diggings. The alarming numbers which are pouring into the colonies from all countries and quarters are certain to produce much distress. They cannot all be supplied at once with food, except at a frightful price, in a country which produces nothing itself but meat and wool; and they will literally cover the present digging-grounds. In a while they will be extended; for there is no doubt but that the gold will be found far and wide.

Forest Creek, May 1st, 1854.

Another week, and we are encamped near the famous original diggings of Mount Alexander, now styled by the name-changing Government, Castlemaine. I do not know on what principle the Government of Victoria proceed in giving unmeaning names to places that before had native names full of meaning and often euphonious, or good rough names given by the earliest settlers. It seems as if on the arrival of each batch of new novels, they set about and selected the names of the most Rosa Matilda character for their townships. Thus, the Ovens has rapidly given way to Beechworth, on the lucus a non lucendo principle, because there are no beeches there; M'Ivor into Heathcote, because there is no heather; Bendigo into Sandhurst, because there is quartz; Forest Creek into Castlemaine, in some mysterious connection with the memory of one of Charles II.'s sultanas; and on the same principle they have a Hawthorne, because the spot is blest, probably, with wattles and tea-scrub. A place with the good native name of Kinlocue is recently turned into Campbell Town—a very original conception. And thus they go on; so that in a while the whole country will be dotted over by caricatures of English towns, and every appellation that would give a character of individuality will have vanished. However, that may concern the poetical ideal of Australia, but it does not concern our journey.