Bendigo, October 30th, 1853.

During the period included in my last two letters, a new phase of these diggings was showing itself, and growing into a prominent feature. There had been for some time a number of people digging the surface from some of the slopes about these White Hills; for this to six inches, and in some cases to a foot deep, showed considerable quantities of gold in it. Huge piles of this reddish earth, chiefly a mixture of small quartz and burnt slate, had been carted down to the creek; and men were busy washing it through toms, races being cut from the creek, and streams of water conveyed through the toms. One party had been collecting their pile all the last summer, amounting to some thousands of tons; and this winter they have been as busy washing it out. It is said that their aggregate proceeds will not be less than 4000l.

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that their profit has been considerable, though they have had to pay 10s. a load for its carting. The surface stuff, however, was growing scarce, when suddenly the attention of the diggers became turned to the mountains of white, snowy-looking stuff thrown out of the deep sinkings on the White Hills. On testing it, some of it was found to yield from a quarter to half an ounce a load, and that ten loads might be put through in a day.

Spring Creek, Ovens Diggings, Dec. 18. 1852.

Here we are at The Broken River, thirty miles farther on our way. We left Euroa on Thursday, and we are now resting on the Sunday. We felt that so long as we continued in inaction, notwithstanding the kindness of our hosts, we should never get entirely rid of our indisposition. Alfred and Edward, as well as myself, were affected by it. We therefore resolved to set out and try what change of place would do; and on Thursday afternoon, we made a short stage. The moment that we moved on, we left our tiresome enemy behind. Every symptom disappeared, and I was as well as ever, except for debility. But I can already comfortably walk about five miles a day, and the rest I ride in a snug corner of the load, which these good boys have made for me. We have camped for the day on the banks of The Broken River, so called because it is broken into many channels. There is a village here and two inns. We had a letter to Mr. Smythe, the Commissioner of Crown Lands here; but he is at the Ovens Diggings. His overseer, however, offered us anything that he had in the garden; so that we have a good supply of vegetables; and he would have baked us some loaves, had it not been Sunday.

Forest Creek, May 10th, 1854.

The immense extent of diggings already worked out here gives one some serious thoughts regarding this colony, and the policy which has been pursued in it since the gold discoveries. You would see a short time ago a very scarifying article in the Times, on the conduct of Mr. La Trobe in this great crisis. In this article it recurred to a favourite topic of its own, that of the impropriety of allowing anybody and everybody to come and dig up, and carry away the wealth of the crown here. Substitute the word nation for crown, and I agree perfectly with the leading journal. That the British people should be allowed to come and dig up the treasure of the British people, under proper conditions, certainly cannot be wrong. But I confess that I cannot see the soundness of that policy by which foreigners of all other nations are allowed to come and take this wealth from the crown and people of England, and carry it away to their own countries.

No doubt it was done in imitation of the policy of America, which allows all nations to enter and dig gold in California, but there, it was under very different views and conditions. The United States made and still make it an inducement for these foreigners to settle in America—to invest what they took from the earth in the earth again.

London, March 28th, 1855.

On the 16th of August, 1854, I once more passed the heads of the bay of Port Phillip, and pushed out into the great ocean, on board the ship “John Banks,” for England; leaving Australia with the fullest conviction that it is destined to become one of the greatest and most flourishing countries in the world. God has done his part. He has planted her amid the southern seas in genial latitudes, and in a position calculated to develop all her resources through unlimited commerce. He has given rich lands for the plough and the pasture; mountains and prairies for the flocks and herds; forests and minerals for her arts; a bosom ample enough and rich enough to nourish myriads of inhabitants; and it depends alone on man whether her progress shall be slow or rapid.

In the course of these volumes I have so fully and so frequently discussed all the chief topics connected with the colony more particularly under notice, that but little remains to be said here, and that rather concerning the general interests and prospects of Australia at large.

The climate, which is a point of great importance to the intending settler in a new country, varies, of course, according to latitude in different parts of the continent, but may be pronounced, spite of all that has been said in interested eulogy, or in the depreciation of disappointment, a fine and genial climate.

Ballarat, May 20th, 1854.

After all the accounts which I had seen of the Ballarat Diggings, I had no idea of what sort of place it really was. On approaching it, instead of traversing, as usual, long gullies filled with great heaps of gravel, and quantities of tents, I found myself standing on a green bank near the Commissioner's camp, and before me lying a deep basin, which had evidently been some time a great lake. This basin, the main field of the diggings, is some mile and half wide or so each way. In the bottom of it rises up a chain of low, rounded hills, something like the White Hills of Bendigo, and these hills and the slopes all round this great basin were dug up, and presented the usual chaos of clay and gravel-heaps.

On the right hand lay, as usual, a Golden Point, and before me, more centrally, a Red Hill. A creek, now strong and rapid from the rains, traversed the bottom of the basin in the foreground, coming from the left, and running across a little below the camp. On the left the hills rose higher than on the right, and well wooded; and up and over the top of the nearest and loftiest of these hills had been diggings. This hill was called the Black Hill, for no reason that I could discover, but that it was green, and the gravel turned up whitish-yellow.

Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land, July 5th, 1854.

I returned to Melbourne in good time to witness the arrival of the new Governor, Sir Charles Hotham. A triumphal arch was erected on the bridge over which he had to pass into the town, where, of course, the kangaroo and emu cut a prominent figure with the Hotham arms, and the union Jack, indicative of Sir Charles being an admiral, and over all a grand motto “Victoria welcomes Victoria's choice;” on which the Argus put forth a mischievous paraphrase, “Victoria welcomes Hobson's choice;” having a double allusion to Hobson's Bay, in which the new ruler lay at anchor, and to the colony having no choice but Hobson's in the matter. A clerk in a Government office, also, being requested to sketch a design adapted to the embellishment of this arch, humorously sent in a hot ham smoking on a dish.

But these were only the jocose ebullitions of fun and good humour. The whole population were most cordially disposed to welcome their new viceroy, and to hope all sorts of benefits from his administration. The train which attended his entrance seemed endless. Liardet's beach, where he landed, is about three miles from the town, and the throng of carriages, horsemen, and people appeared to fill the whole way. There was no lack of banners and evergreen garlands, showy rugs, and lengths of carpet hung out of windows in continental style; and the streets and house-tops exhibited thronging thousands.

The Buckland River, Buffalo Mountains, Jan. 1st, 1855.

I waft across the world a happy New Year to you. For ourselves, we begin it in new scenery.

The exposition of the Land Question in my last, which I wished to make clear to every one, put out a few incidents occurring at the Yackandanda which I shall now note, before proceeding to fresh scenes.

Mr. Bateman arrived from Melbourne, and brought us much news of heat, dust, and sickness, in that city, from which we in these pleasant woods are comparatively free. I had observed by the newspapers, that one day when the thermometer with us only stood at 115° in the sun, it was 139° at Geelong; an evidence that we are much cooler here near the Snowy Mountains. That you may not think either that I have at times exaggerated the dust-winds of Melbourne, I now cut you out the following passages of a letter from the Argus.

“CONFOUND THE DUST.

“To the Editor of the Argus.

“Sir,—You may have read of the evasive answer of the countryman, who, when rebuked by his pastor for swearing, and reminded that Scripture says, ‘Swear not at all;’ simply, or perhaps shrewdly, replied, ‘I don't swear at all, I only swears at those who annoys me.’[…]”

Melbourne, Sept. 29. 1852.

We have sent off a parcel and letters by the Australian, which sails to-day. But heaven preserve us! What a piece of work it has been to get it off. The rage for gold here is not confined to the Diggings; it seems to pervade everybody and everything in the colony; so the agent of the steam-packet company only wanted to charge me two guineas instead of ten and sixpence for the parcel to London. Fortunately, I had the printed terms of the company, and showed them to the man; here, they take care to keep these terms out of sight, and to put into their own pockets the modest sum of three times the amount they take on the company's account. At first, the man refused to take the proper sum, and declared that he would not take the packet at all. “Be so good,” I observed, “as to say that again, for I am writing to-day, and shall be glad to address a note to the packet company, to apprise them of the happy style in which you execute their business.”

On this he took the parcel, but with the scowl of a thunder-cloud, and not deigning to give me another word. I left Alfred, to fill up the required bill of lading, but the amiable fellow was resolved to put me to all the trouble possible, in revenge for my mulcting him of his guinea and half booty, and insisted that Alfred should come and send me down again.

Melbourne, June 1st, 1854.

The growth of Melbourne during the twelve months that we have been up the country is something absolutely marvellous. Here is a town which in 1851 counted only 23,000 inhabitants, which now counts nearly 80,000. And this is only in accordance with the general growth of the colony, the whole population at that period being only 90,000, and now being calculated at 250,000.

On whatever side of Melbourne you take your walks you are met by the same evidences of rapid and unparalleled growth. Where two years ago Liardet's Beach and the lands between it and the town showed an odd house or a few straggling tents, Sandhurst and Emerald Hill now present populous towns, with good houses, excellent inns and stores, a fine macadamised road traversed by numbers of omnibuses and other carriages.

It is the same if you extend your excursion to Prahran, Windsor, St. Kilda, and Brighton. There you find yourselves amid miles and miles of houses. Go to the north of Melbourne, there is the same wonderful extension of human habitations where you left bare ground. Collingwood and Richmond, populous then, are doubly populous now.

Come into the town, there you find innumerable open spaces, no longer open, but occupied by good houses, and the town swelling out on all sides. What is more, there is not only a vastly increased number of houses, but there is an equally rapid process of elevation of character in the buildings going on.

Euroa, on the Severn Creeks, Dec. 8. 1852.

My writing to you was suddenly cut off by illness; and to this day—seventeen days—I have not been able to hold a pen. As I always mean to tell you the worst, as well as the best, which befalls us, I shall now tell you exactly what has happened. We had not been many days waiting for our cart-wheel, when I was seized with a violent attack of dysentery. I believe the place was an unhealthy one. Though perfectly dry at this time of the year, during the winter it is almost entirely under water; and therefore, no doubt, an unwholesome miasma arises from it. The creek, too, was sluggish, and had vast quantities of fallen trees rotting in it. However, we all more or less felt the effect of it, but I far more than any of the rest. In fact, the complaints which prevail in this country, as in all warm ones, don't trifle with you. They are rapid and resolute, and make short work with you; and this seemed as if it would make very short work with me. We were thirty miles from any medical man. Edward's pills, which he had brought with him as a perfect nostrum in this disease, so fatal here, produced not the slightest effect. We did not know who, or if anybody, lived anywhere near us in the woods.

Sydney, June 14th, 1854.

Steam-vessels ply between Sydney and Melbourne twice or three times a week. Of these, the “City of London” and the “Waratah” are excellent vessels, with good accommodations, and well-supplied tables. They should be so, for, compared with the charges of such vessels at home, their rate is high. Seven pounds ten shillings for a voyage, frequently done in fifty hours, is a round sum; but these vessels are generally well filled, and the charge is only on a par with the usual prices of Australia, including provisions and coals, of which latter article, I think, Captain Bell, of the “Waratah” said they burnt about thirty tons on a trip, at 6l. 10s. per ton. My lot, however, was to get, in going, into a small steamer, called the “Fettercairn,” which had an engine, apparently, of one-donkey power. The wind was dead in our teeth nearly all the way, and it was almost more than this one-donkey engine could do to make head against it. In fact, once or twice the captain despaired of getting there, and was on the point of putting about, and running back to Melbourne.

The character of this steamer was, no doubt, pretty well known to the public trafficking between these cities, for there were only two cabin passengers besides myself, and about a dozen steerage ones. Well, in about five days we had managed to plough our way thither. There was nothing on the voyage to record.

Bendigo, April 23rd, 1854.

Before leaving the Yackandanda Creek, we made an endeavour to undertake a large sluicing concern. In the new act of Regulations for the Gold Fields there is a clause empowering the Government to grant leases of such portions of those fields as are worked out and abandoned by the ordinary digger. These, when they have ceased to remunerate the digger who works them in the ordinary fashion with a small party, and with cradle and tom, yet frequently contain sufficient gold to pay, and pay well, for working on a larger and more rapid scale. Where the digger by the cradle, or even by the tom, can put through a few cartloads of earth, the sluice will work out hundreds.

It will not pay the cradler or the tommer to put through much rough earth. He must carefully separate the auriferous strata from all else. This requires much time and labour, and the result is comparatively small. But the sluicer will come after him, and even out of the earth that he has cast aside as containing little or nothing, will obtain in the aggregate large quantities.

This is effected by bringing a strong stream of water to the spot, where he runs it through a long descent of wooden troughs into a capacious tom. The sluicers can therefore dig up and throw into this stream of water immense quantities of earth, which are borne away by it, carried down, dissolved, and all its auriferous particles separated before it reaches the tom.

M'Ivor Diggings, June 30th, 1853.

In perambulating these diggings, we find them very various in the depth of sinking and in yield. The central parts near and behind the Commissioners' camp are reported to have been the richest, and these parts are the deepest, from thirty to forty feet. The richest of all, Golden Gulley, in that quarter, it is said, was discovered by a lad, the son of a blacksmith, as he was delving and making a sham, boy's digging—playing, in fact, at digging,—but carrying gold in considerable quantities to his father, the blacksmith set to work in good earnest, and there was very soon a rush there. Since then, the digging has extended in this direction, that is, towards the Melbourne side; and Californian Gully, German Gully, Caledonian Gully, mere hollows, scarcely below the ordinary level of the ground, are being dug up with very partial success. In and along the creek others are digging, but they are all complaining, and say, “Oh! these are only sham diggings.” In the direction of the ranges, the granite rocks assume some of the oddest and most grotesque shapes that I have seen in this colony. They rise in some places abruptly out of the ground, and stand in long ridges, some like sugar-loaves, others like pyramids, and others very much resemble the rocking-stones of Derbyshire and Cornwall.

Upper Yackandanda, December 18th, 1853.

This country is certainly a splendid field for the naturalist. The animals are most curious; the birds are almost endless in variety, singular in habits, and the notes of many of them are peculiarly musical. We find fresh ones in every new part of the country that we visit. The Blue Mountain parrot, a splendid bird of deep red and brilliant blue, has many very musical notes. The flowers of the colony are immensely numerous in species; and, though generally small, many of them are very beautiful. There grows in the woods here a clematis which we have seen nowhere else (Clematis appendiculata); a very beautiful thing, with large white and very fragrant blossoms. This clematis hangs on the bushes and young trees in lovely masses. There is a plant of it near our tent, running over the fallen bole of a huge blue gum-tree like a garland. It is worthy of a painter. There is also, in the wet places of the woods, a yellow-flowered rush, which smells exactly like pine-apple (Xerotes longlfolia).

The insects, as I have often said, are countless; swarm everywhere, and over everything. Their tenacity of life is most amazing. I have told you of the manner in which one half of a bulldog ant fights the other if cut in two. I saw an instance of it just now. Our giant cut one in two that was annoying him.

Encampment near Kilmore, Nov. 7. 1852.

We had not proceeded many miles before we found the linchpin of our cart was broken, and that it was necessary immediately to stop. We had to ascertain where there was water, which we found not very far off.

On examining the extent of the mischief, we discovered that the terrific jolts that our cart had made over stocks, stones, and roots, had broken one of the bushes of the wheels; and this in its turn had broken the linchpin. Here was a situation! alone in the woods, and uncertain how far it was to any place where we could get a smith or a wheelwright.

Scarcely, however, had we encamped, when we saw a man coming whistling up the wood, clad in a blue shirt and trowsers, and without a hat. “That,” said Alfred, “is one of the Kent sailors.” And sure enough up the man came, merrily calling out “Well, Mr. Howitt, how are you?” It was a jolly sailor of the name of Wright, who had gone off in the captain's boat. He could not tell what had become of the rest of his companions, except Smidt, the Dane, who he said was at Mr. Broadhurst's sheep-station near. They had all dispersed on landing, so as the better to get up the country; for, as he observed, seventeen of them together could not get supplied at the same farm-house; and as they had come away without their wages, they could not afford to go to inns.

White Hills, Bendigo, October 10th, 1853.

In my last I stated that by a Government return of Van Diemen's land it was shown that upwards of 9,000 of the convict population of that island had made their way over to Victoria, largely originating those effects of robbery, murder, and demoralisation which I described. I promised you at the same time a striking example of the character and doings of escaped Norfolk Islanders on this colony; and here it is. I do little more than cut out the strange narrative as it stands in the Launceston and Melbourne papers:—

Melbourne, April 27. 1853.

I see immense changes here in the few months that we have been away. Canvass Town, as they call it, a large camp on the other side of the Yarra, where people who cannot get lodgings, or who cannot afford to pay exorbitant prices for them, pitch their tents, has sprung up while we have been up the country, and contains, I suppose, some thousands of people. There are also in the same locality whole rows of wooden houses, erected for the same purpose, the temporary shelter of the immigrants, who yet keep pouring in. On Emerald Hill, a slight elevation in the swampy flat between Melbourne and Liardets' Beach, where was a camp of emigrants, there is now a whole town of wooden houses sprung up like mushrooms: inns, shops, and cottages. On all other sides of the town there is the same amazing increase of population. The Government, the most pedling Government in the world, totally inadequate to, or totally unmindful of, the unexampled crisis which has arisen, is still doling out one small scrap of land after anǝther in the suburbs for building upon. They will not throw a good quantity into the market, so that people could get little farms and enclosures, for that would reduce the price; but they only sell little bits at such intervals of time as ensures a monstrous price for it; for people must have houses of some sort and somewhere.

Buckland River, January 29th, 1854.

The diggers here are a very quiet and civil race, at the same time that they are a most active and laborious one. This is all wet work; and you see them wading about to the waists in water all day, as though they were amphibious creatures. I have stated that this superior character was most striking at the Ovens; and the principal part of the diggers here are from the Ovens. The men here address you courteously, though with a manly freedom that I like; but you have no vulgar insolence. You have none of them accosting you with—“Well, old fellow, how goes it?” or, “I say, old fellow, are you a sailor, that you wear blue trousers?” or, “I say, fellow, what's the clock, eh?” It is here, “Good day, sir,” and nothing more. I never received a single incivility at the Ovens, except from the Miller and his men; but I have received many a one at Bendigo and at M'lvor. Not but that there is a large population of quiet, intelligent, and respectable people at both these places; but it is their misfortune to have, or to have had while I was there, a prominent admixture of the ruder class. The only instance that I have seen here of that lawlessness which was common at those places, was last Sunday, as Alfred and I rode up to Camp for our letters.