EARLY CHRISTCHURCH.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 365, 5 March 1932, Page 21 (Supplement)

EARLY CHRISTCHURCH.

IMPRESSIONS OF 1851

The Potentialities of the Plains. GOLD IN AUSTRALIA. The following is the eighth instalment of a hitherto unpublished report by the first Bishop Designate of Canterbury. The document is a report submitted to the Archbishop of Canterbury by Dr Jackson on his return to England. The Bishop Designate sailed on the Castle Eden a month after the First Four Ships. At Mr Deans’s farm, white clover is plentiful, and seems likely to eat out several of the native grasses. A rich, saccharine couch grass was imported from India to New South Wales some years ago, on which cattle thrived rapidly. I have been promised some seed with which I hope to make experiments in the paddocks and meadows of the Episcopal Estate. ' It will probably flourish best in sheltered spots, removed from the severer frosts of our winter. I have conversed with several gentlemen both of Sydney and Melbourne familiar with sheep farming, and they all bear a like testimony to the capabilities of the Canterbury Settlement as a wool-growing country. One Sydney merchant has already sent a large cargo of sheep arid has received letters from his chief stockman informing him that they are doing remarkably well. In fact, the pasturage is boundless. It "ill carry easily three millions of sheep; enough to render our plains the home not merely of a contented, but a wealthy population. Nor must it be forgotten that lucerne grows with surprising rapidity and luxuriance wherever it is once planted. Once sown, and it seems ineradicable. Grain Growing. The further we ride, the stronger becomes our conviction that the plains are equally adapted to the growth of grain. I am unable to assign any reason why wheat and barley should not be extensively cultivated. In riding rapidly, one has to take care lest the foot of the horse should trip in a stump hole; that is, in a hole in the ground where the root of a tree has gradually decayed, and which has not been filled by the surrounding soil. This corroborates the testimony of aged natives that at no distant period the plains were covered with huge forest, of which the woods of Riccarton, Papanui, liarewood ancl Kaiapoi are fragments. These forests have been destroyed by conflagration. The natives, sometimes for the purposes of war, sometimes by accident, and sometimes for the pleasure of seeing a vast tract of country in flames, have kindled these fires.

Now wherever in New Zealand a forest is cleared, there the land is found to be well adapted for grain. This is the case with the Valley of the Hutt, near Wellington, which I visited. It

costs several pounds sterling to clear an’acre of land in this valley, and yet it is found worth the settler’s while to do so, as a money speculation, and to s.ow grain. Surely then it must be equally advantageous to cultivate grain

on our plains, which are already cleared for us. Australian Mountains. And if any one asks me where we are to find a market for any quantity of wheat which we may produce, beyond what is required for home consumption, I reply that Divine Providence has most mysteriously, most critically supplied a market for us, if we have, as a people, only the wit and wisdom to avail ourselves of it. It has been for some years the opinion of geologists in New South Wales (among whom the Rev W. B. Clarke, of St Leonard’s, near Sydney, is most conspicuous), that the “ Axis and flanks of the Australian Cordillera are of the same geological epoch, and have undergone similar transmuting influences with the axis and flanks of the Ural.” I quote from an able letter of the Rev W. B. Clarke to the “ Sydney Morning Herald,” the character and talent of which render it the leading journal of Australasia, that in constituents, in changes produced by ingenous action, in age, in almost every phenomenon, in elevation above the sea, in standing as a wall between the sea and the desert, just as the Ural stands as a wall between what was sea long after the Australian Cordillera became dry land, and the desert of Siberia, there is a perfect analogy in all respects between these distant Now we know' that the Ural is rich in gold beds. They produce, on an average, three millions sterling a year to the Russian Government. It might therefore be expected that the same result would follow a diligent search oVer the surfaces of similar hills or their bases, to those which had been successfully explored by the Russian gold-finders. This likelihood has been known for several years to the natural philosophers of New South Wales. They hesitated, however, to act upon it. They deemed the growth of wool and the cultivation of the vine and cotton a better source of wealth than the excavation of auriferous deposits. Lure of Gold. They dreaded the sudden and violent disruption of every social compact, the paralysis of every branch of mercantile, manufacturing and agricultural industry which would follow, for a season at least, the opening up of a gold field. The opulence which it would confer, like the prize in the lottery, upon a few fortunate individuals, would be too tempting to the mass of mankind, and all would be seized, as with a madness, with the desire to try their luck in the water-holes from which the precious metal might be washed. Meanwhile, the accounts brought from time to time of the sudden and magnificent fortunes achieved by some of the adventurers who were working on the Consommes and the Sacramento Rivers in California, and the impulse quently given to every kind of employment there, were gradually attracting many of the inhabitants of Sydney who were not bound to that city by strong religious and social ties. Mechanics and stockmen left lucrative situations and emigrated by hundreds, permanently deserting, in several unhappy cases, their wives and children, leaving contractors without workmen and masters without servants. Among others who visited California was a gentleman of the name of Har-

•greaves. He-returned with the strong impression that nature was exhibiting the same testimony in the mountains of New South Wales as had been read in California, and that the same discoveries would attend experience and skill. Alone he went to search and soon verified his presumptions. Towards the end of May, 1851, his success was complete and undeniable and speedily transpired.

Start of a Boom. The storekeepers of Bathurst, the nearest town to the locality where the gold was found, proclaimed far and wide the news. The attractive name of Ophir was forthwith given to the spot. The facts were whispered among the merchants of Sydney. Some pretended a cautious incredulity and hinted that the wonderful lumps paraded in the town had been brought in the pocket of some unprincipled Californian ; while they’ ripened their plans for securing a share of the spoil, vessels were suddenly and secretly chartered td distant ports. The coach fares to Bathurst were doubled. Groups of men might be seen, with a rifle and tin can slung over their shoulders, and a dray driven by their side, . loaded with tents, provisions, clothing and. more especially, mystic machines called cradles, for washing the mud and sand of the rivers—all marching magnetically in one direction. Others, too poor to purchase implements, and too cautious to provide food and clothing, carried merely themselves and perhaps the relics of what was once a frying pan. Of these people, some, when I left Sydney, had already returned, sick in despair; some had perished in the mountains; some had found and lost more gold iri a week than, under ordinary circumstances, they would have earned in a twelve month. Ships chartered to Panama and San Francisco, were left without passengers; many persons forfeited the deposit which they had paid on their fare. Provisions throughout the whole country were rising to famine prices. Lack of Labour. It was computed that ten thousand persons were on their way to, or had arrived at, Bathurst. Bakers were issuing advertisements and informing their customers that bread could no longer be delivered at their houses, nor credit given, as every ” hand ” had left lor the “ diggings ” and it was impossible any longer to keep book accounts. Masters were advertising runaway apprentices; captains for deserters from their ships. Houses in course of erection were stopped for want of masons; contracts for public works vvere considered virtually at an end. Seamen, generally so helpless on shore, were at a high premium, demanding sixty and seventy pounds sterling as wages for the trip to London. One gentleman informed me that his coachman, an ancient, asthmatic subject, had given warning and intended to “ try his hand,” an experiment which would P !£ , ly COSt him his life - M y friend added, “I suppose that I must drive carriage and clean my boots myself. ENTHUSIASM. Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.—Goethe.