- —and of such failures the world takes no record. Be that
as it may gold has done very much to make the fortune of the Australian Colonies. This has not been done by the wealth of the gold-finders. It is only now and then,—and I may say that the nows and thens are rare,—that we find a gold-seeker who has retired into a settled condition of wealth as the result of his labours among the Gold Fields. But great towns have sprung up, and tradesmen have become wealthy, and communities have grown into compact forms, by the expenditure which the gold-seekers have created. Melbourne is a great city and Ballarat is a great city, not because the Victorian gold-diggers have been rich and successful;—but because the trade of gold-finding creates a great outlay. If the gold-diggers themselves have not been rich they have enriched the bankers and the wine-merchants and the grocers and the butchers and the inn-keepers who have waited upon them. While one gold-digger starves or lives upon his little capital, another drinks champagne. Even the first contributes something to the building up of a country, but the champagne-drinker contributes a great deal. There is no better customer to the tradesman, no more potent consumer, than the man who is finding gold from day to day. Gold becomes common to him, and silver contemptible.
I say this for the purpose of showing that though the gold trade of the Transvaal has not as yet been remunerative,—though it may perhaps never be truly remunerative to the gold-seekers,—it may nevertheless help to bring a population to the country which will build it up, and make
