"All that glisters is not gold."
--Merchant of Venice.
Let me begin upon early Ballarat by stating, what many may now have
forgotten, namely, that the original and native name was Balaarat, or
Ballaarat, which was the pronunciation then, and for some years after.
But our English way is to put the emphasis on the first part of a
polysyllabic word. I have long remarked this practice, comparing it with
that of races of inferior, or more or less barbarous condition, who, as
in countless other examples in Australia, and still more strikingly in
New Zealand, and generally, I think, over the world, lay the emphasis on
or towards the end of the word. What does it mean? I arrived at my
solution. The emphatic ending best preserves the whole word. The
barbarous, with few ideas, give surpassing importance to words; while
the civilized, under the crowd of ideas, disregard words except as mere
vehicles, and traverse them easiest by the early emphasis, to say
nothing of dropping the after part entirely when troublesomely long. The
Turanian, or lowest class of language, as Professor Max Muller tells us,
preserves its root-words for ever, tacking one to another, but never
losing the full sound of each; while all sorts of word "jerry mandering"
liberties go on in the highest class. I ventured to propound my theory
to my linguistic friend, Mr. Hyde Clarke; but he found so many
divergencies in Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and what not, that I was
driven to a partial reconstruction. It was the busy as well as civilized
race that scamped the words. The Greeks and Romans--that portion of them
that made society or the public opinion, and that consequently governed
the language--abhorred the vulgar hurry of business life, and thus gave
their words a better chance of unmutilated life. I have not yet been
driven out of this final theory.
With hardly anything else to do, it was as hardly possible to resist a
visit, with nearly everybody else, to Ballarat. So I appeared there on
the 3rd October, and, as senior member for Melbourne in the colony's
first Parliament, and first President of the recently established
Chamber of Commerce, I was, of course, "a man in authority." So,
mounting a gum-tree stump, as the only available chair or pulpit, I
harangued the diggers, first upon the grand fortunes that had overtaken
the colony, and next upon their sadly wasteful ways with the little
stream that ran through the Ballarat valley. I fear I did not much
impress my hearers on the latter point, for everyone did what was most
for his immediate needs, whether or not he thus sacrificed his neighbour
below him. Next I was conducted to Gold Point, which was just developing
its quality in the "blue clay," which had been struck at no great depth
below the surface. I was let down into a big hole, the early parent of
shaft-sinking, given a spade, and directed to apply it to a place where
a digger's quick eye had detected one speck of gold. There was probably,
he said, a string of gold behind it. And so it proved, for out of about
a pound weight of matrix which I removed on the corner of the spade, I
picked out 7 shillings and 6 pence worth of gold.
Then I retired from the crowd and the incessant noise of cradles, and
ascending from the valley to the high level plain, I came upon a small
lake, whose waters glittered peacefully in the warm sunshine of a bright
spring day. A tiny streamlet was still running from the lake, and
trickling down the small semi-precipice towards the main rivulet, now
sadly muddy, which I had just left. So near was this edge to the lake
that I increased the stream by deepening its bed with my foot; but I
repented of this waste, and restored the block, because the approaching
summer must be thought for, and this natural reservoir was by no means
deep. I waded into the pleasantly and invitingly cool water, but had
promptly to retreat from swarms of leeches which attacked my feet. The
scene was striking. Although the hum of busy humanity arose from
beneath, not an object was visible on the higher level, as I glanced
around to the far west and north, excepting the country's indigenous
features. There was not a human being, not even a sheep in sight. Around
this spot has since arisen the city of Ballarat, with fifty thousand
people, with streets, buildings, institutions, business (including an
extra busy Stock Exchange), equal to those of, at least, twice its
population at Home; while the lovely lake of that time has long been
fringed with residences and gardens, and its waters been the scene of
the regattas and other diversions of the leisure of the prosperous
citizens.
As I rode back on my horse to town--for Cobb and Co. had not yet
established their leather-hung stage drags, for which, in the
impossibility of others upon the unmade roads, we had reason to be
thankful--I mused over all I had seen, and long ere reaching home had
concluded that 10,000 pounds a day was being taken out of Ballarat.
Sundays excepted, that meant a product at the rate of over three
millions a year, into which, as one of its export items, the young
colony was already "precipitated" from a total export product of only a
trifle above a million the year before. No one was prepared to credit
such a statement. Indeed, unbelief on the point was prevalent until well
on into 1852, when Bendigo had been added to Ballarat, and when
Melbourne was seen to be full of gold, which the newly-instituted "gold
broker" was already practised, with critical eye as to quality, in
weighing out by the hundred or the thousand ounces, and which diggers by
hundreds were carrying away in their pockets, in most cases entirely
unrecorded, to Tasmania, Sydney, and Adelaide. There was hardly any
Customs record at the first, and only a very partial one for a while
after, until the diggers ceased thus to carry off the gold, upon finding
that the rival brokers gave them fair and full value. The yield of 1852
was estimated at no less than fifteen millions.
How the diggers, utterly inexperienced as they mostly then were, came so
suddenly upon such surpassingly rich drifts has never been, to my mind
at least, satisfactorily explained, unless the case be summarily
affiliated to those possibilities of throwing "sixes" in dozen
successions, and such like. In no one year, since 1852, have the
Victorian goldfields, although comparatively the most productive,
yielded even a near approach to fifteen millions.