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oles being dug in depths of from seven to forty feet before arriving at the desired metal, look upon such statements as so many myths, or fancy they are fabricated by the lucky gold-finders to deter too many others from coming to take a share of the precious spoil. There was a passenger on board the vessel which took me to Australia, who held some such opinions as these, and, although in other respects a sensible man, he used seriously to believe that every day that we were delayed by contrary winds he could have been picking up fifty or a hundred pounds worth of gold had he but been at the diggings. He went to Bendigo the third day after we landed, stayed there a fortnight, left it in disgust, and returned to England immediately--poorer than he had started. This is not an isolated case. Young men of sanguine dispositions read the startling amounts of gold shipped from the colonies, they think of the "John Bull Nugget" and other similar prizes, turn a deaf ear when you speak of blanks, and determinately overlook the vast amount of labour which the gold diggings have consumed. Whenever I meet with this class of would-be emigrants, the remarks of an old digger, which I once over heard, recur to my mind. The conversation at the time was turned upon the subject of the many young men flocking from the "old country" to the gold-fields, and their evident unfitness for them. "Every young man before paying his passage money," said he, "should take a few days' spell at well-sinking in England; if he can stand that comfortably, the diggings won't hurt him." Many are sadly disappointed on arriving in Victoria, at being unable to invest their capital or savings in the purchase of about a hundred acres of land, sufficient for a small farm. I have referred to this subject before, but cannot resist adding some facts which bear upon it. By a return of the LAND SALES of Victoria, from 1837 to 1851, it appears that 380,000 acres of land were sold in the whole colony; and the sum realized by Government was 700,000 pounds. In a return published in 1849, it is stated that there were THREE persons who each held singly more land in their own hands than had been sold to all the rest of the colony in fourteen years, for which they paid the sum of 30 pounds each per annum. Yet, whilst 700,000 pounds is realized by the sale of land, and not 100 pounds a-year gained by LETTING three times the quantity, the Colonial Government persists in the l
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