ed its worst aspect to a stranger. The rainy season had been
unusually protracted this year, in fact it was not yet considered
entirely over, and the gold mines had completely upset everything and
everybody, and put a stop to all improvements about the town or
elsewhere.

Our party, on returning to the ship the day after our arrival,
witnessed the French-leave-taking of all her crew, who during the
absence of the captain, jumped overboard, and were quickly picked up
and landed by the various boats about. This desertion of the ships by
the sailors is an every-day occurrence; the diggings themselves, or the
large amount they could obtain for the run home from another master,
offer too many temptations. Consequently, our passengers had the
amusement of hauling up from the hold their different goods and
chattels; and so great was the confusion, that fully a week elapsed
before they were all got to shore. Meanwhile we were getting initiated
into colonial prices--money did indeed take to itself wings and fly
away. Fire-arms were at a premium; one instance will suffice--my
brother sold a six-barrelled revolver for which he had given
sixty shillings at Baker's, in Fleet Street, for sixteen pounds, and
the parting with it at that price was looked upon as a great favour.
Imagine boots, and they very second-rate ones, at four pounds a pair.
One of our between-deck passengers who had speculated with a small
capital of forty pounds in boots and cutlery, told me afterwards that
he had disposed of them the same evening he had landed, at a net profit
of ninety pounds--no trifling addition to a poor man's purse. Labour
was at a very high price, carpenters, boot and shoemakers, tailors,
wheelwrights, joiners, smiths, glaziers, and, in fact, all useful
trades, were earning from twenty to thirty shillings a day--the very
men working on the roads could get eleven shillings PER DIEM, and, many
a gentleman in this disarranged state of affairs, was glad to fling old
habits aside and turn his hand to whatever came readiest. I knew one in
particular, whose brother is at this moment serving as colonel in the
army in India, a man more fitted for a gay London life than a residence
in the colonies. The diggings were too dirty and uncivilized for his
taste, his capital was quickly dwindling away beneath the
expenses of the comfortable life he led at one of the best hotels in
town, so he turned to what as a boy he had learnt for amusement, and
obtain