THE ILLUSTRATED

No. 514.-VOL. xix.]

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1851.

ANOTHER " EL DORADO."

THE world is startled by a new announcement. California, if some recent intelligence which appears in the daily papers, do not turn out to be a hoax, is no longer the only El Dorado." Brother Jonathan has of late, to use a popular phrase, been taking the shine out of us." He has been going ahead in every direction. The discovery of the gold of California was the first great achievement by which of late years he astonished the Old World and the New ; and to this feat he has lately added Mr. Hobbs and his picklocks, and Commodore Stevens and his yacht. As regards locks, the English makers seem to be fairly beaten by the acute, patient, and skilful Yankee and, unkindest cut of all," on the superiority of our naval architecture, the late doings on the shores of the Isle of Wight show that we have much to learn from our young and vigorous friends of America. But all in good time. We have made a beginning already. If the Australians have not been playing a scurvy trick upon us, we have matched Brother Jonathan's auriferous region by dis- covering gold in Australia, as plentiful as it is beyond the Rocky Mountains. Bramah and Chubb-or there is none of the old stamina left in England-will speedily set all future Hobbses at defiance, by the invention of new locks; and as for the yachts, so far from being aggrieved by the easy victories ob- tained over our best boats by the America, the public already looks upon the gallant Commodore Stevens as a benefactor, and considers that an immense improvement in the construction of our vessels will be the almost immediate result.

But the golden question is at present the more engrossing one, and has thrown Hobbs and Stevens and their achievements in the shade. Australia, a land of which the mineral is only surpassed by the pastoral wealth, and whose copper mines, the richest in the world, have prepared the public to believe in the existence of many yet undiscovered sources of mineral treasure, is said to suffer as great a paroxysm of the gold fever as ever afflicted America; and if the accounts which have been published in the Sydney Herald of the 20th of May last, and which found their way to London during the present week, should be wholly or even in part confirmed, the contagion will spread to England, and the emigration to Australia will show a large increase. It is stated that the country, from the mountain ranges beyond Bathurst to an indefinite, or at all events an undefined, extent inwards, is one immense gold-field." The facts, which are affirmed on the authority of a local journal, represent that a Mr. Hargrave, to whom the discovery appears to be mainly due, accompanied Mr. Stutchbury, the Government geo- logist, to the " diggings," and " with his own hands washed a pan of earth, in his presence, from which twenty-one grains of fine gold were produced; that he afterwards washed several baskets of earth, and produced gold therefrom." Nor is the gold only to be found in grains. A young man, the son of a brewer, fanned the previously existing excitement in Sydney into a flame, by ar- riving from the diggings with a lump of pure metal, weighing eleven ounces, which he sold for £30. An old man was still more fortunate, and arrived in Sydney with several lumps of the pure metal, weighing in all from two to three pounds, and worth from £100 to £160. Mr. Kennedy, the manager of the Bathurst branch of the Union Bank of Australia, visited the diggings with two gentlemen, and each of the three was re- warded by the discovery of a lump of metal, the weight and value not stated; and a few handfuls of loose earth brought from the bed of a creek by Mr. Kennedy, having been sifted and analysed, produced numerous grains of gold. forming, altogether, a quantity as large as a pea. The consequence has been, as we are told, that Bathurst and Sydney, and all the country round, have gone as mad for gold as ever the Yankees did, and that high and low, rich and poor, master and servant, magistrates and policemen, landsmen and seamen, men, women, and children, have all set out for the diggings. People of all trades, callings, and pursuits," says the Bathurst Free Press of the 17th of May, 'have been transformed into miners and many a hand which has been trained to kid gloves, or accustomed to wield nothing heavier than the grey goose quill, has become ner- vous to clutch the pick and crowbar, and rock the cradle at the mines." The blacksmiths of Bathurst speedily got rid of their stock of implements, reserving, of course, sufficient to try their own fortunes with a more tempting metal than iron. Such is the in- tensity of the excitement," says our Bathurst contemporary, "that people think of nothing but gold, and the roads are literally alive with newly made miners from every quarter; some armed with picks, some with shovels, and not a few bearing wash-hand basins, tin-pots, and cullenders." The first great result of the gold fever is said to have been a rapid rise in the price of provisions of every

kind;-flour from 28s. to 45s. per cwt., and other articles of prime necessity in a similar proportion.

It is possible that there is some exaggeration in the hasty and imperfect accounts which have reached England, and it is also possible that the whole story is 2 fabrication ; but it is, at the same time, not improbable that these accounts may be strictly true, and that Australia mayyetrival California in the production of gold. Further information will be anxiously expected; and, until it ar- rives, it will be unwise to indulge in speculations as to the

Two NUMBERS, 1s. WITH WHOLE-SHEET SUPPLEMENT, GRATIS.

probable consequences of the discovery upon the fortunes of the colony, or upon the commerce of the world. Our old Europe seems to be getting stale. The divine command to increaseand mul- tiply, and replenish the earth, hashitherto been but imperfectly obeyed. But what the natural emigration of races in search of homes and subsistence has failed to effect, in peopling the remotest ends of the earth, seems about to be expedited by the more captivating and exciting lust of sudden wealth. The shores of the Pacific were for the first time peopled by the old races of the world, in consequence

LANDELLS