VICTORIA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 664, 13 December 1851, Page 3

VICTORIA.

(From the Maitland Mercury, Nov. 12.) Melbourne papers to the 31st ultimo have reached us. The weekly gold escort brought down 2337 ounces, being 1234 for Melbourne, and 1103 for Geelong. This makes a total of 8300 ounces by four escort coaches. Mr. Westgarth’s estimate that only one ounce in ten of the gold produced was sent down by the escort, exaggerated as we thought it, is out-heroded by the Geelong correspondent of the Argus, who estimates the proportion as only one in twenty-tnree. Two other persons, writing from Ballarat to the Argus, estimate the proportion as one in three ; while a Geelong auctioneer gives us his experience as to gold passing through his own hands, that about one-sixth of it had come down by the escort. We du net know that the exact proportion has ever been estimated in New South Wales, but we think it is about two in five. As the escort charge is the same, one per cent, in both colonies, it seems hardly credible that the proportion should really be widely different in Victoria, as although the distance of the mines there from Geelong or Melbourne is barely half that of our mines from Sydney, yet their roads have always been more unsafe as regards robberies, which would induce many to prefer the protection of the escort. The Argus direct correspondence leads to the conclusion that very mauy of those who went to Ballarat did very indifferently, the gold not being found deposited in any degree of regularity ; it is therefore probable that mauy of the tales of immense gains in a few days were partly correct. No particular instances are quoted in the papers before us. From Mount Alexander, however, reports of high success continue to reach Melbourne, one gentleman informing the Argus people that he had brought 371 ounces down for sale, obtained in about a week. The Governor bad returned from Mount Alexander, impressed, it was said, with a conviction of the extraordinary richness of those diggings, and it was stated the government intended to establish an escort from thence to Melbourne. The price ofgoldvariesfrosn£2 iSs.CU,

to £3 2s. 6d., as tested by the sales at auction. Information of serious disturbances at Balla- : .1 — 1... .k.. rai, efimijg iu tuuiuci, wcic- icjmicu uj «,uu Geelong correspondent of the Argus and he adds that his informants stated that the Commissioners and their men were afraid to interfere. But in the direct Ballarat correspondence of the Argus there is no such statement, and a direct correspondent of the Daily Netvs states that one man was stabbed in a row in a tent, hut not fatally, and that on the following day one of the Commissioners dispersed a crowd of men assembled at a prize fight, and apprehended the principals. Mount Alexander. —The very favourable accounts of the productiveness of these diggings have had the effect of withdrawing a large portion of the Ballarat pilgiims from the scene of their labours. We have seen some splendid specimens of the Mount Alexander gold, and all who have visited the locality speak of the facility (in comparison with the Buninyong gold field) with which the metal is to be obtained. But while we wish to furnish a true record of the success which has attended the exertions of many persons who have been induced to dig in the neighbourhood of Mount Alexander, it is by no means safe to say that the lottery is one which contains no blanks ; in every gold region failures have always been numerous, and the disappointed prospectors are too much in the habit of blaming the sanguine reports which the successful diggers have transmitted to their friends. It is beyond a doubt that at Mount Alexander gold exists abundantly ; but those who are about to try their hick in the locality would do well to remember the bitter disappointment that has attended even the steady and persevering exertions of many of the treasure-hunters who were sent away empty from Golden Point.— Argus, October 29.