ADVANTAGES POSSESSED BY BRITISH COLUMBIA OVER AUSTRALIA AS A FIELD FOR
EMIGRATION.
_From the Times' Correspondent_.
From Australia, too, the emigration will be large. In that country the
cream has already been skimmed off the "placers." The efflorescence of
gold near the surface has been dug out, hence the results of individual
exertions are becoming less promising; and the miner is a restless,
excitable creature, whose love of freedom and independence indisposes
him to associate himself in enterprises requiring an aggregation of
capital and labour. He prefers to work "on his own hook," or with one
or two "chums" at most. This is the feeling in this country. There is
another cause which will bring vast numbers of miners from Australia,
and that is the great scarcity of water--a desideratum of the first
importance. This first necessary for mining, operations exists in
abundance at all seasons in the new El Dorado, and this fact alone will
attract additional miners to it from every mining country and locality
in which water is scarce. Another great objection to Australia is the
impossibility of acquiring land in fee in small parcels at or near to
the mines. Many men take to mining as a means of making sufficient
money to buy farming implements and stock with. As soon as this object
is accomplished, they abandon mining for farming. Did not California
afford the means of gratifying this wish, thousands of our miners would
have left the country. As it is, with abundance of good land to be had
cheap, I have found that a large proportion of the farms in the interior
of this country are owned by farmers who bought them with the produce of
their labour in the mines. The same advantages can be obtained in the
new gold country, there being plenty of good land in the British
territory in the neighbourhood and on Vancouver's Island. It is to be
hoped the Government will make the price reasonable.