THE SPECULATION MANIA IN VICTORIA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 258, 1 November 1871, Page 4

THE SPECULATION MANIA IN VICTORIA.

A special correspondent of the Melbourne Argus thus describes a Saturday night at Sandhurst : — Behind the Shamrock bar — where your contributor contemplates, between burly backs, a map. of the gold-fields pinned upon a screen — is a long dining-room, recently a concert hall. This room — larger than the dining-hall of the Criterion — is simply impassable. A succession of tables is crowded with a succession of diners. Waiters flit about distractedly. At the further end, where the stage was wont to be fixed, three women servants hopelessly endeavor to "wash up." Joints, bread, and vegatables are mingled together. Each one helps himself if he can, and pays 2s. 6d. The dinner no doubt would be excellent could one but get. at it, but despite the tremendous exertions of the proprietor, nothing but a custard-pudding and cheese is attainable. A writing-table near the entrance is covered with chequebooks and paper. Speculators must be wary even in their eating. Every minute ' some boy or man rushes in, ranges his eyes ovjer. the room, marks down his employer, and seizes him by the ear. Drawn from his dinner, by the magic whisper, Speculator leaps up, overturning his chair, and hurries to "■ the table. A brief note, a transfer of pieces of paper, and Speculator returns to find his unemptied plate removed, and a stranger occupying his seat. What matter 1 Lazarus and New Chums have rised 4§d., and Speculator has made £50. It is nearly half-past 8, and the exr citement may be considered to be at its height. An accident may. cause it to ebb or flow, but the steady pressure that is on now will probably last the evening. Groups of men sit, stand, or lounge at the tables. These groups are composed of Jhe most motley elements. Well-dressed ; brokers are, cheek by, jowl with working miners. Tobacconists, pawnbrokers, 'and hairdressers are to be Been here and there; . The room is free to all. Are they not speculators, 'and no diploma is needed for the profession of V money-getting ?' Few people are drinking-4et; your contributor here remark that amid all- the excitement he saw no one drunken— -but most people are smoking/ The game requires cinp' to keep one's head cool and pn,ejs Jb'raiji,, alert '-evident '* . '. The y mass" " is ,ev,e£ ', } slowly! shifting, .«& the, Aflame whispered imjurmer runs around. Indeed, this whispering! chawcteriwa the crqwd, rendering it diaw

tinct from other crowds composed of outwardly similar .elements. In'Tattersall's or the Albion, in Craig's Hotel on a racenigbt, or in Morton's on a settling day, may be seen assemblages of men apparently of like calibre to these. But in the Albiou and Craig's there would reign no such, bodeful murmurs. The listening speculator would hear hoarse voices shouting the odds, catch fierce oaths, and shudder at the echoes of indecent cursings. The hubbub arid" tumult of the auctionmart or the betting-room is utterly absent from this Saudhurst gathering. A grim hypocricy shuts men's lips. No one desires to appear eager, few deign to :seem interested. Each would have it thought that he alone holds the key to unlock the golden coffers, that he alone knows the " latest information," and possesses the stock much sought after. Like the foxgnawed Spartan, a speculator would let ruin bite him to the bone, and still smile on. Another difference between this crowd and that other vile jumbling of knaves and fools. An air of expectation arches every brow, turns every eye anxiously to the door. In times when knowledge is not only power but hard cash, men become familiar with such; an expression. The watchers at the cafe's of beleaguered Paris may have marked such a frown wrinkle the foreheads of the domino-players, as some one hot from the outposts entered. Those ■who on 'Change staked their fortune on the success of British arms, saw the same anxious knitting of the brows when the rumor of a defeat at Brussels thrilled the money market. Your contributor could, without violence to probability, imagine the murmuring multitude about him, men waiting for news of war or peace, watchers for "great, tidings," prisoners, who, tried at fortune's grand assize, hungered : for the verdict which should briDg them wealth and life, or poverty and extinction. The very silence was the acme of excitement. The nerves of each one were so highly slrung that no low note of vulgar interest could awake an echo from them. "Iniust go out," said one man, " this excitement makes me sick." "I am going to Melbourne tonight," said another, " that I may see a' sober man again ; we are all mad here or next door to it." In the streets — strangely yellow from the rushing rain — was the same state of public feeling. The people seemed either stunned or hysterically elevated. The Victoria was doubly thronged ; men sat, stood, smoked, and listened in corners, or listened in corners, or in masses, with the same air of agonised expectation. There was little drinking, and no merriment. The shops, open and lighted, were also thronged. No one seemed poor, all were comfortably dressed, all had money to spend and to spare. Raggedness and dirt — if raggedness exists in this wonderful golden city — had slunk away, had crawled into the bark cabins far out upon the flats, or camped beneath the young gum-trees that friuged the burrowed diggings. In the bootshops were miners buying boots, and paying for them with notes. One man, yellow and muddy from his day's work, came out of a toyshop bearing a toy- wind mi! ], a present doubtless for some baby whose fortune was waiting to be dug out of the hot mine yonder. Miners' ..wives — or such one might guess them — pushed their comely way through the crowd, intent on marketing. Not for them breathed : the fascinating whispers of shares aud stock. With the remorseless common sense of their sex — that common sense which .would scorn the prospect of an Eldorado to be purchased at the expense of the children's supper — they saw but the immediate wants of the household, and extracted from their speculative husbands' fingers the note already, in fancy, invested in Moonshines and IgEes Fatui, to buy with it beef and greens, for. a prosaic Sunday's dinner. So, with music sounding from distant windows, with the lights of csbs gleaming hither 'and thither through the wild wet night, with a maddening murmur of Golden Fleeces,New Chums, Avon dales, Tributes, Bonatis, Sadowas, Eurekas, Hustler's, Collmann and Tacchi's,,; Robin Hoods, Gr. V. Brookes, White and Black, two and three, four and six, eighteen, one! and nine, five pounds, two shillings, twopence three farthings, wealth, ruin, bankruptcy, speculation, and insanity, the hands of the. watch stole mercifully to 10 o'clock and a special train. Seated in a comfortable comer, with five gentlemen playing 100 on a spare cushion, your contributor reviewed the notes from which this sketch was compiled, and was ashamed to see how feeble a notion he had achieved of the marvellous picture at which he had -been so long staring. Exaggeration would be impossible in describing the scene; the description falls far short of the reality. r ' " Never," said an old Bendigonian, V didjXsee, such a Bight The wildest of the old tiojes were tame to this methodical madness."