The route westward, by the North Pacific to the Indian Ocean, was thus for the first time established as a great maritime highway by the enterprising mercantile community of the United States. We had ourselves long previously used the route _via_ Cape Horn and the South Pacific in our trade with Chili, Peru, and other countries on the west coast of South America. It was reserved for us for the first time to open out for the commerce of the world an eastern route from the Atlantic and from Europe across the South Pacific Ocean; in fact, to bring into practical use the voyages of Cook, Vancouver, and other circumnavigators of the globe, whose achievements during the past century had hitherto been regarded as interesting only in a geographical point of view. Here, again, it was an all-wise Providence which directed our path. On the 6th May 1851, it was first announced that gold had been discovered in our convict settlement of New South Wales. The news spread like wildfire throughout the colony; and in a very short space of time there were upwards of four thousand “diggers” at Ophir, near Bathurst, where the discovery was first made, whose success fully equalled that of the early adventurers at the Californian mines. Additional gold-fields were found shortly afterwards both in New South Wales and the province of Victoria; and before the end of July the arrivals of gold at Sydney, Geelong, and Melbourne were sufficiently abundant to create a perfect revolution in the labour market, not only in those towns, but in the agricultural districts of the entire colony of Australia. The ordinary pursuits of the population were everywhere abandoned. Men of all classes, capable of wielding a pick or a spade, and many to whom such instruments had been previously unknown, were seen abandoning their farms, their shops, or their counting-houses, to swell the throng which rushed forth from every quarter to “prospect” for gold in the gullies and creeks whose appearance or geological formation promised a yield of the precious metal. At the first announcement of so startling a discovery, a large portion of the public in this country were indisposed to credit it. Would-be-wise people shook their heads, and hinted that a mania had seized upon the Australian colonists, which in its issue must be productive of their utter ruin. We had black pictures painted of the effect of a neglected agriculture; and some wiser people than their fellows—journalists and statisticians—indulged in laboured arguments to show that picking up “nuggets” or dust must in a very short period become an unprofitable avocation, and absorb more labour than would yield a paying return, in comparison with the ordinary pursuits of industry. But each fresh arrival from the colony showed the fallacy of these anticipations and prophecies. Gold continued to be picked up in abundance, sufficient to remunerate every person engaged in its search,