The forego ng table explains the tremendous attraction which the southern colony possessed for the population of the Australasian group. The imports into Victoria during 1854 were no less than £17,659,051; it is therefore easy to understand how it happened that, for a period, the parent colony was quite eclipsed by the growth of its own off-shoot, and that the commerce of the South Pacific gravitated to Melbourne. During a single month as many as 152 ships arrived in Port Phillip, conveying thither 12,000 immigrants.

Agriculture was greatly neglected during the days of the gold fever. In New South Wales about one-third of the area went out of cultivation, the acreage falling from 198,000 acres in 1850 to 131,000 acres in 1852; in Victoria there was a reduction from 52,000 acres to 34,000 n the same period; in Tasmania and South Australia there were also considerable reductions in the area cropped. The check to the industry was, however, only temporary, as the ultimate effect of the gold discoveries upon agriculture was extremely stimulating. In Victoria, especially, there was a great expansion. In 1853 the breadth of land cropped was 34,000 acres; in six years this had been increased to 419,000 acres. In 1857 the cultivated area in Victoria exceeded that of New South Wales by 50,000 acres, a superiority which was afterwards greatly added to and is maintained to this day.

The progress of agriculture in each state may be seen from the ollowing figures :—

The principal crops grown were wheat, oats, potatoes, and hay, chiefly wheaten and oaten; but there were signs of attention being paid, especially in Victoria and Tasmania, to fruit-growing and other forms of culture requiring less land and more labour.

The influence of the gold discoveries on the pastoral industry was twofold-on the one hand retarding its development by depriving it of labour, and on the other, encouraging it by the creation of a demand for carcase meat. Before the discoveries, fat sheep sold in the Melbourne market at 10s. to 12s., in 1852 the price was 30s., and higher prices were subsequently obtained. During the whole period the value of the

carcase steadily gained on that of the wool, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the increase of the flocks was arrested. This was especially the case in Victoria, where the number of sheep depastured fell from 6,589,923 in 1851 to 4,577,872 in 1855. In New South Wales the number of sheep fluctuated according to the requirements of the southern districts, but there was no tendency for the flocks to increase. In 1859 the number of sheep depastured fell to 5,162,671, or three millions below the figures of some previous years, a result brought about by the demand for restocking in Victoria, and the opening up of new country in Queensland.

In the first years of the colony's history the coastal belt only was available for settlement, but with the crossing of the Blue Mountains, in 1813, a new horizon stretched before the pastoral imagination, and with each successive discovery by Oxley or Cunningham or Mitchell or Hume, plain was added to plain of pasture, and the paths of the explorers were dotted with chains of squattages. In the earliest years of pastoral settlement it was customary for stock-breeders to drive their herds to the nearest unoccupied good country when they increased beyond the grazing capabilities of their pasturages. In this manner the river-courses in the western districts became stocked, and the country bordering them occupied. The practice came into vogue when cattle were decreasing in value, and when, therefore, it was absolutely necessary to breed them at the least expense. These herds were, however, inferior in strain. They frequently became wild and unmanageable, and it was only with the influx of population during the gold fever days, when high prices were paid for meat, that they acquired any value. The cattle, nevertheless, showed that the interior country was good for stock-grazing, and proved that land which had hitherto been regarded as a desert was very fattening pasture; for they had discovered "salt-bush," a fodder plant which retains its vitality when other kinds of herbage have long withered away. The grazing value of the river country, or Riverina, has never since been challenged.

There were in effect three great waves of pastoral settlement which swept over Australia. The first is that just alluded to, which flowed over the inland plains between the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. The second rolled farther north, and beyond the occupied country, as far as the central basin of the continent. The third went still northward to the downs of Queensland. The first migration of stock arose from the demands for meat made by the gold-diggers. The success of this pioneer movement inspired the second experiment, which was prompted by the demand for wool. The third essay in pastoral settlement was occasioned by the maintained and increasing value of all squatting property.

The first of these migrations alone concerns the industrial history of the gold period, and began immediately the first fever of discovery had abated, and was the chief factor in producing the agrarian agitation which marked the following decade.

The following is a statement of the values of the chief articles of pastoral produce exported in the years named :—

The actual number of stock depastured in Australia was as follows:

Upon the manufacturing industry the first effect of the gold rush was disastrous; but there was an immediate change, especially in Victoria, where the camps of the diggers soon became thriving towns. It was to the population attracted to the country by the gold discoveries that the manufactories owed their subsequent revival and the labour required to operate them. The statistics of these states are not complete enough to enable a statement of the progress of the manufacturing industry to be given; but it is evident, from the rapid increase, after the year 1855, in the number and variety of establishments, that the ultimate effect of the gold discoveries upon the manufacturing industry was extremely stimulating.

Reference has already been made to the opening up of steam communication with England in 1852, during which year the "Chusan,” the "Australia," and the "Great Britain' -the last-named the largest ship afloat at that time-visited Australia. In 1856 a steam service, of anything but a satisfactory character, was carried on by the Peninsular and Oriental Company and the Royal Mail Company; but the days of efficient ocean communication were still to come. These early essays, however, had no small effect in encouraging the colonists to agitate for something better, and proposals were made for the establishment of a line of mail-packets via Panama, but they did not bear fruit until the year 1866. The history of railway construction is elsewhere dealt with. It was not until 1846 that the people of Australia began to awaken to the

advantages of railroad communication, and not until two years afterwards that a company was formed to construct a railway from Sydney to Parramatta and Liverpool. This line was commenced in 1850 and partly completed in 1855. Meanwhile, the discovery of gold had been made, and attention was directed to railway construction in Melbourne, and in 1854 the first line in Australia was opened for traffic; it ran from Melbourne to Port Melbourne, and was 2 miles long. For some years railway construction languished, the enthusiasm of its advocates being doubtless considerably damped by the reflection that the short line from Sydney to Parramatta-only 14 miles in length-cost £700,000, or £50,000 a mile. The progress of railway construction is shown by the following figures, which give the length of line open for traffic in the years named:-

With steam communication to other parts of the world, and the introduction into Australia of the railway system, new markets were being created for the trade in coal, although it was not before the subsidence of the gold fever that they began to be availed of. The quantity of coal raised in 1852 was 67,404 tons, and in 1858 over three times as much, viz., 216,397 tons. In 1850 and 1851 the price of coal ranged from 9s. to 10s. per ton; in 1852 it had risen to over 80s. per ton, although it did not remain for an extended period at this high figure. The quantity and value of the production of this mineral during the period under review were as follow :

The whole of this coal was mined in New South Wales.

During the whole of this period considerable activity was shown in testing the navigable waters of the Continent, and repeated efforts were

made to open up communication by way of the rivers Murray and Darling, which, of course, had a corresponding influence on the great pastoral industry by affording means of cheap transit for the leading staple of the interior. In 1853, W. R. Randall, in his small steamer, the "Mary Anne," was the first to proceed up the Murray, and eventually he reached Maiden's Punt, as the crossing from Echuca to Moama was then named. In the same year Captain Cadell proceeded in a steamer up the Murray to near Albury "with the greatest ease and success." This voyage attracted marked attention, and was the cause of the inauguration of regular steam-service on the river. Captains Cadell, Johnson, and Robertson, and Mr. Randall, subsequently followed up the original essays in the direction of inland river navigation by steaming up the courses of the Murrumbidgee, the Darling, the Barwon, and the Edwards, thus making accessible to population, and opening up to the wool-growing industry, an enormous expanse of territory. In the north, A. C. Gregory (in search of Leichhardt), Dalrymple, and other explorers, were successively unlocking to the squatters, who followed closely in their wake, the broad areas of pasturage, whose almost immediate occupation advanced the northern congeries of squatting localities, known as the Moreton Bay District, in rapid strides to the dignity of the Colony of Queensland. It is noteworthy, and distinctly characteristic of the period, that by the year 1854 the purchase of land for agricultural purposes had almost ceased, territory being taken up instead in large tracts by pastoral lessees for grazing purposes.

The population of Australia in 1850 was 480,120; in 1855 it had risen to 821,452, and in 1860 to 1,141,563. The tendency to crowd into the cities was already visible; in 1861 Melbourne held 139,916 people, and Sydney 95,789, or together 235,705, a total representing one-fifth of the population of the continent.

INDUSTRIAL PERIOD-1859–62.

The

The three years, 1860-62, may be regarded as a transition period, during which the country was undergoing the process of recovery from the days of excitement and dreams of chance, when the wealthy speculator of one moment became the beggared adventurer of the next, and the outcast of many years the millionaire of as many months. community was vaguely restless, as though beginning to realise that the golden era of its recent experience was drifting into a prosaic period of sterner conditions and slower and more arduous growth. There were many, however, still in the daily expectation of hearing of new discoveries as rich as those of the previous decade, and these refused to accept the conditions of settled industry, while the rumour of a new find was sufficient to entice them away from the employment they chanced at the time to be following.

The production of gold in 1859 was nearly ten and a half millions, of which one and a quarter million was from New South Wales, and the