THE ADMINISTRATION OF SIR HENRY BARKLY 99 



a marvellously rich goldfield having been discovered at Port 

 Curtis, 1,500 miles from Melbourne, under the tropic of Capricorn. 

 The furore for adventure seized upon the miners. The coastal 

 steamers were filled to overflowing, and the hoardings of Mel- 

 bourne and Geelong were aflame with placards soliciting pas- 

 sengers for a fleet of brigs and schooners, and even small sloops, 

 laid on for the new Eldorado. And when the eager thousands had 

 surmounted the cramped discomforts of the scrambling voyage, 

 they were landed on the edge of a wilderness, where there was 

 neither water nor food obtainable for such an invasion, and where 

 gold only existed in trifling quantity and widely distributed patches. 

 Hundreds succumbed to dysentery and unhealthy climatic surround- 

 ings, and the Legislature was moved to urge the Ministry, in the 

 interests of humanity, to save the remnant from starvation. Mr. 

 O'Shanassy accordingly sent the surveying steamer Victoria, under 

 Captain Norman, with a full cargo of provisions, to the rescue. 

 Altogether, the Government provided the means of return to 

 nearly 2,000 stranded miners, in the hope that the severe lesson 

 would induce them to transfer their energies to the development 

 of the assured mineral resources of their own colony. But the 

 lesson was not learned even by that generous outlay. Two years 

 afterwards some 8,000 miners were lured away, by vague reports, 

 over the ranges at the head of the Snowy Eiver, to the neighbour- 

 hood of Kiandra, in New South Wales, whence, six months later, 

 they gravitated back in a half-starved and generally destitute 

 plight. In 1861 startling rumours from New Zealand set them 

 again in commotion, and once more an exodus of 10,000 or 12,000 

 men took place to Otago, only to find that they had been the 

 victims of the grossest exaggeration. The effort to move the 

 Government again to undertake the task of bringing them back 

 was a failure. The Chief Secretary had bought his experience, 

 and he declined to renew the process. 



This restlessness of the mining population, while it was confined 

 within the limits of the colony, though it probably retarded the 

 increase in the gold yield, was certainly instrumental in helping the 

 settlement of the country. As a rule, wherever a mining " rush " 

 took place a town grew up, and, though in many cases when an 



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