TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 27, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3197, 27 September 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 27, 1881.

The following brief glance at the Australasian colonies is not without interest coming as it does from a London journal. Our contemporary says: —It is just thirty years ago since the discovery of gold followed what we may call the " mutton and damper" period, and when in the course of three feverish years the whole circumstances of Colonial life and Colonial trade underwent a radical change. Previously everything had depended upon the growth of wool and tallow, all other agricultural operations being for the supplying with the necessaries of life of

those who tended the sheep of herded the cattle and horses ; importations were for the consumption of the same people. Gold changed ail this. Multitudes came from many lauds to participate in the finding and appropriation of the precious metal; meat become for the time an important item ; flour and nearly every necessary aud luxury of life was imported, and the gold paid for nearly all. Not only did gold have a very marked effect upon trade, but it had also a significant influence upon the composition of the population—the people were no longer only English, Scotch, and Irish, but a strong admixture from German and American immigration, and, in a lesser degree, of Italian and French; and although the Australian communities still remain British, there has been a sufficient foreign element settled in the Colonies to give the Australian distinct characteristics, although this does not go to the extent of saying there is a different nationality to the English stock. The gold period in Australia lasted for ten years, during which period it was distinctly—say, from 1851 to 1861—the leading interest. Gold miniDg still goes on, but in a methodical, trading or manufacturing sort of way, taking its place among other producing interests. There was a five years' gold period in New Zealand from 1861 to 1866 very similar in its features and in its results to the state of things which bad previously come about in Australia. During the Gold period in both Australia and New Zealand trade increased rapidly, markets were subject to the greatest irregularity, fortunes were made and lost, and a general shaking up and settling dowu took place. Gradually, but steadily and certainly, another and a healthy change baa been developing both in Australia and New Zealand, which we may date from 1870, but the full experience of whi?h has only become patent during the last five years, and which has never become so increasingly evident as at the time we write. The Gold mining interest still exists, but, as we have already said, in a quiet, trading fashion. Wool continues to be the growing staple of production. Tallow, hides, and bones are also items of export from the Colonies, and copper still comes largely from South Australia; but to these is now added the valuable shipments of tio, the produce of New fcouth Wales, Queensland and Tasmania; and the greatest feature of all, and one which makes the Australian and New Zealand Colonies of interest to every man and woman who can read, is the enormous and growing export of wheat and other corn produce to the Mother country, a trade that seems bound to grow in extent, and to be a source of increasing prosperity to the Colonies. The rise and progress of the Australian and New Zealand Colonies to this point has been rapid, and is, we believe, solid and substantial. The produce of the Colonies is of a character that will always find a market, being of the necessaries and not of the luxuries of life. Trade has marked out channels for itself, as in the old country, but with a difference suited to the community that it is intended to supply ; and generally, Colonial business and Colonial interests seem to have eettled down on a firm and dependable basis.