_The New Rush._--J. RODGERS. The wonderful effect of the valuable discoveries made during the first few months of gold-seeking soon became apparent in Melbourne and Geelong, owing to the rapid departure for the diggings of great numbers of the townsfolks, who abandoned their ordinary vocations in order to get a share of the profuse rewards there meted out by Mother Earth to the industrious or the lucky. The Victorian population at this time was only 77,000, of which 30,000 were concentrated in the two principal towns. Nearly all these people became mad for gold. The whole of the colony was stirred to its inmost depths, and underwent a total revolution in all its social relations. Almost the first manifestation of the change was shown in the sudden appearance of an immense motley throng upon the roads that converged to the gold-fields. Thousands of men of every walk in life--rich and poor, old and young, sturdy and weak--were enticed from the comforts and delights of the domestic hearth, and from the conveniences and amusements of town life, by the allurements of the glittering prizes which Dame Fortune was lavishly dealing out to the pioneer prospectors, and which seemed to dangle before the expectant eyes of everyone. What a strange and entertaining sight the thickly-thronged roads must have presented to the observant student of human nature! Many a tramp hopefully toiling along with swag on back; bands of mechanics with lumbering drays and bony nags to assist in transporting the heavy necessaries; parties with light hand-carts and wheel-barrows energetically pushing and pulling their primitive vehicles; shopmen in spring carts; doctors and lawyers in first-class gigs and buggies. The whole of these, from beggar to barrister, from pickpocket to parson, were to be seen hieing along dusty roads and journeying through hitherto untrodden forest, all impelled by the one covetous desire to the one end--the gold-fields, where, perchance, they might reap a golden harvest without the laborious years of working and the wearisomeness of waiting, which are the usual checks to success in other pursuits. [Illustration: THE RUSH TO THE DIGGINGS.] Ere these fortune-hunters reached the Eldorado of their wishes, many obstacles had to be overcome. The roughness of the road, the yielding nature of the bush tracks, and general unevenness of the ground, occasioned many a poor horse to knock under and leave his master or masters in a sorry plight. Their fellow-wayfarers seeing such a predicament would sometimes lend a helping hand; and it was not uncommon to see thirty or forty men dragging a dray up some of the steep hills by means of ropes, or carrying on their backs portions of a heavy load.