“This gold discovery has sent the whole country mad. There are now upward of fifty thousand men at work at the various diggings; of which I have only mentioned the two principal ones, Ballarat and Mount Alexander. Every body who can by any means get away, is off. It is almost impossible to obtain laborers at any wages. Half the wheat in the country will most likely rot on the ground for want of hands to reap it. Fortunately we shall be able to get in ours ourselves, for our man Tom is still with us, and Mr. R’s four brothers will lend us a hand. We have a very good crop of wheat, for the first year; the barley, of which we had an acre or two, we have already cut and threshed, and are going to send a load in to Geelong to-morrow. I can handle the sickle and flail pretty well for a beginner. We shall cut the wheat next Tuesday. As soon as the harvest is over, and the wheat threshed out and sold, Mr. R. and I mean to make up another party and be off to the diggings. We cannot do all the work on the farm ourselves, and hiring servants now is out of the question. Men are asking seven shillings and sixpence a-day wages, and will only hire by the week at that rate. Things will soon be in the same state as they are in California. All ordinary employments will be put a stop to for a time; but there will no doubt come a reaction in the course of a year or two.” The reaction anticipated by the writer will not consist in a disgust at gold, or a decrease in the number of gold-diggers. It will be less a reaction than a recovery of balance. Although the gold in Australia is, on the whole, peculiarly accessible, and so abundant that a persevering worker cannot fail to draw a livelihood out of the diggings; yet there are very many workers who are not disposed to persevere. Experience has shown, that a large number of men who rush upon the gold field to pick up a fortune, like all sanguine people, take up quickly with despair, and come away after a few weeks of bad success. Of the large number of people who will be induced by their gold to emigrate into the Australian colonies, many will try the gold fields and abandon them, many will find their health or their acquired habits unsuited to the rough work of the diggings, and the “Home of the Gold Miners”—as one sees it advertised in Sydney papers, “weighing only twelve pounds—nine feet square by eight feet high, for thirty-five shillings.” Such men and others will be more ready to spread about the towns and through the pastures. In a year or two there will be in Australia labor willing to employ itself as readily upon the fields as upon the gold, while the work will proceed at the gold fields steadily enough.