rolling on its tide all manner of credulous and inexperienced adventurers, – vast sums were lost, so, of those sums, certain fragments and pickings were easily griped and gathered up by a man of Uncle Jack's readiness and dexterity. Uncle Jack had contrived to procure excellent letters of introduction to the colonial grandees: he got into close connexion with some of the principal parties seeking to establish a monopoly of land, (which has since been in great measure effected by raising the price, and excluding the small fry of petty capitalists;) and effectually imposed on them, as a man with a vast knowledge of public business – in the confidence of great men at home – considerable influence with the English press, &c., &c. And no discredit to their discernment, for Jack, when he pleased, had a way with him that was almost irresistible. In this manner he contrived to associate himself and his earnings with men really of large capital, and long practical experience in the best mode by which that capital might be employed. He was thus admitted into a partnership (so far as his means, went) with Mr Bullion, who was one of the largest sheep-owners and landholders in the colony, though, having many other nests to feather, that gentleman resided in state at Sydney, and left his runs and stations to the care of overseers and superintendents. But land-jobbing was Jack's special delight; and an ingenious German having lately declared that the neighbourhood of Adelaide betrayed the existence of those mineral treasures which have since been brought to day, Mr Tibbets had persuaded Bullion and the other gentlemen now accompanying him, to undertake the land journey from Sidney to Adelaide, privily and quietly, to ascertain the truth of the German's report, which was at present very little believed. If the ground failed of mines, Uncle Jack's account convinced his associates that mines quite as profitable might be found in the pockets of the raw adventurers, who were ready to buy one year at the dearest market, and driven to sell the next at the cheapest.
"But," concluded Uncle Jack, with a sly look, and giving me a poke in the ribs, "I've had to do with mines before now, and know what they are. I'll let nobody but you into my pet scheme: you shall go shares if you like. The scheme is as plain as a problem in Euclid, – if the German is right, and there are mines, why, the mines will be worked. Then miners must be employed; but miners must eat, drink, and spend their money. The thing is to get that money. Do you take?"
Pisistratus. – Not at all!
Uncle Jack, (majestically.) – A Great Grog and Store Depôt! The miners want grog and stores, come to your depôt; you take their money; Q.E.D! Shares – eh, you dog? Cribs, as we said at school. Put in a paltry thousand or two, and you shall go halves.
Pisistratus, (vehemently.) – Not for all the mines of Potosi.
Uncle Jack, (good humouredly.) – Well, it shan't be the worse for you. I shan't alter my will, in spite of your want of confidence. Your young friend, – that Mr Vivian, I think you call him – intelligent-looking fellow, sharper than the other, I guess, – would he like a share?
Pisistratus. – In the grog depôt? You had better ask him!
Uncle Jack. – What! you pretend to be aristocratic in the Bush! Too good. Ha, ha! – they're calling to me – we must be off.
Pisistratus. – I will ride with you a few miles. What say you, Vivian? and you, Guy? —
As the whole party now joined us.
Guy prefers basking in the sun, and reading the Lives of the Poets. Vivian assents; we accompany the party till sunset. Major MacBlarney prodigalises his offers of service in every conceivable department of life, and winds up with an assurance that, if we want anything in those departments connected with engineering – such as mining, mapping, surveying, &c. – he will serve us, bedad, for nothing, or next to it. We suspect Major MacBlarney to be a civil engineer, suffering under the innocent hallucination that he has been in the army.
Mr Specks lets out to me, in a confidential whisper, that Mr Bullion is monstrous rich, and has made his fortune from small beginnings, by never letting a good thing go. I think of Uncle Jack's pickled onion, and Mr Speck's meerschaum, and perceive, with respectful admiration, that Mr Bullion acts uniformly on one grand system. Ten minutes afterwards, Mr Bullion observes, in a tone equally confidential, that Mr Speck, though so smiling and civil, is as sharp as a needle; and that if I want any shares in the new speculation, or indeed in any other, I had better come at once to Bullion, who would not deceive me for my weight in gold. "Not," added Bullion, "that I have anything to say against Speck. He is well enough to do in the world – a warm man, sir; and when a man is really warm, I am the last person to think of his little faults, and turn on him the cold shoulder."
"Adieu!" said Uncle Jack, once more pulling out his pocket-handkerchief; "my love to all at home." And, sinking his voice into a whisper, "If ever you think better of the grog and store depôt, nephew, you'll find an uncle's heart in this bosom!"
CHAPTER XCVI
It was night as Vivian and myself rode slowly home. Night in Australia! How impossible to describe its beauty! Heaven seems, in that new world, so much nearer to earth! Every star stands out so bright and particular, as if fresh from the time when the Maker willed it. And the moon like a large silvery sun; – the least object on which it shines so distinct and so still.2 Now and then a sound breaks the silence, but a sound so much in harmony with the solitude that it only deepens its charms. Hark! the low cry of a night-bird, from yonder glen amidst the small gray gleaming rocks. Hark! as night deepens, the bark of the distant watch-dog, or the low strange howl of his more savage species, from which he defends the fold. Hark! the echo catches the sound, and flings it sportively from hill to hill – farther, and farther, and farther down, till all again is hushed, and the flowers hang noiseless over your head, as you ride through a grove of the giant gum-trees. Now the air is literally charged with the odours, and the sense of fragrance grows almost painful in its pleasure. You quicken your pace, and escape again into the open plains, and the full moonlight, and through the slender tea-trees catch the gleam of the river, and, in the exquisite fineness of the atmosphere, hear the soothing sound of its murmur.
Pisistratus. – And this land has become the heritage of our people! Methinks I see, as I gaze around, the scheme of the All-beneficent Father disentangling itself clear through the troubled history of mankind. How mysteriously, while Europe rears its populations, and fulfils its civilising mission, these realms have been concealed from its eyes – divulged to us just as civilisation needs the solution to its problems; a vent for feverish energies, baffled in the crowd; offering bread to the famished, hope to the desperate; in very truth enabling the "New World to redress the balance of the Old." Here, what a Latium for the wandering spirits,
"On various seas by various tempests toss'd."
Here, the actual Æneid passes before our eyes. From the huts of the exiles scattered over this hardier Italy, who cannot see in the future,
"A race from whence new Alban sires shall come,
And the long glories of a future Rome"?
Vivian, (mournfully.) – Is it from the outcasts of the workhouse, the prison, and the transport-ship, that a second Rome is to arise?
Pisistratus. – There is something in this new soil – in the labour it calls forth, in the hope it inspires, in the sense of property, which I take to be the core of social morals – that expedites the work of redemption with marvellous rapidity. Take them altogether, whatever their origin, or whatever brought them hither, they are a fine, manly, frank-hearted race, these colonists now! – rude, not mean, especially in the Bush – and, I suspect, will ultimately become as gallant and honest a population as that now springing up in South Australia, from which convicts are excluded – and happily excluded – for the distinction will sharpen emulation. As to the rest, and in direct answer to your question, I fancy even the emancipist
"I have frequently," says Mr Wilkinson, in his invaluable work upon South Australia, at once so graphic and so practical, "been out on a journey in such a night, and, whilst allowing the horse his own time to walk along the road, have solaced myself by reading in the still moonlight."
