THE Otago Daily Times. "Inveniam viam aut faciam" SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1861.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 8, 23 November 1861, Page 2

THE Otago Daily Times. " Inveniam viam aut faciam" SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1861.

Volumes might be written concerning the natural history of gold field rushes, their causes, effects, consequences, and results. Many of our readers, who have lived a lengthened while on the fields of Victoria, will think our remarks on the subject "twice told tales." Drawing on their own experience, they will deem they know as much about rushes as any one can teach them. Truly, perhaps, they may, but let them each put the question to himself, do they avail themselves of the knowledge gained by hard-bought experience. Nineteen out of twenty must answer that they do not; must admit that even when most doubting the stories of new rushes, and when feeling the least reason to put confidence in the tales they are told concerning them, even then their imaginations are so easily dazzled that, hoping against conviction, they will commit the wildest extravagancies, in the vague hope of seeing that come to pass which, in their inmost hearts they feel to be hopeless. They will endure miracles of hardship and fatigue, they will dare hunger and exposure, lo^s in the bush, in short, every evil, misery, and misfortune,, on the strength of rumours that fall to pieces as soon as they are sifted. The more often a person is duped by a worthies?, rush, the more credulous he appears to become. His proneness to believe seems to increase in the inverse ratio as the probabilities decrease, and stories the least likely to be true are most eagerly credited. ' AVhoever has been in Victoria will bear us out that we have not exaggerated the sketch we have drawn. The "farther off a rush is; and consequently the more va<*ue and uncorroborated the accounts concerning it, the more attraction it appears to possess. Scarcely a week passes in Victoria without half-a-dozen rushes of more or less magnitude. The purely local rush, which we may characterise as the movement from one part of a district to another, is generally little heard of outside the immediate locality, and yet, as a rule, these rushes are the most successful to, those engaged in them. Then comes a'rush to an entirely new gold field, and for one of this kind that turns out to be genuine, at least a dazen or a score .are utter failures. As instances of the various species we have enumerated, we. may give Epsom in the Bendigo district, worked .with great advantage, principally by Bendigo miners, living in the same locality. Tnen, under the next heading, we have^ amongst the ' successful rushes, all the new fields that have been opened .of late years • and amongst the .unsuccessful'we have num.bers of rushes the names of which even pass ; ay^into./Qrg_etfu]iness;, although the memory of the hardships, anxieties and" dissa^pointments entailed by them is not so easily to be shaken off. Some of the latter are purely

hoaxes got up in the spirit of mischief; but more commonly their originators have an ultimate end in view. One, if not the most remarkable, of totally unfounded and disastrous rushes in Victoria is that known as the Mount Hope. A large tract of sterile uninhabited land lying between Durham Ox and Swan Hill was the scene of the rush. What occasioned it, on what grounds it was based, wno was the promoter of it, are questions that have never been satisfactorily answered. Suffice it, that hundreds of miners, attracted by reports circulated no one knew how, explored the inhospitable Terick Terick Ranges, after the highest of which, Mount Hope, the rush was named, from end to end, and those who returned unscathed had to tell of adventures that, though brief in their duration, comprised years of suffering. The wandering over a vast stony plain in an intensely hot Australian sun, the endeavoringtopenetrate through large tracts of the thick whip stick scrub, the want of water, of food, of rest, combined to form a tale of suffering that words are inadequate-to convey. Strong, powerful men returned after an absence of a few days emaciated and worn out, years older in appearance. Many never returned, their names may be met with in that melancholy record; the column of enquiries after missing friends instituted by persons at home, after relatives of whom they have ceased to receive tidings. The whitening bones of the victims to the Mount Hope delusion have occasionally been found by those who have had to pass through the scrub that borders one side of the Terick Terick Ranges. We have named in last order, the rushes to entirely new gold countries, and these we say as a rule are failures. Gold may exist in limited quantities, but as a rule, a larger population is attracted than the capabilities of the field admit. Amongst the delusions of this kind, stand prominently forward the New England rush, in the Moreton Bay district, Port Curtis, the Kiandra, the Fingal, the Aeor, the Echuca, and most disastrous of all the rush to Callao. Some of these, the rushes to Aeor, Fingal, and Echuca were so limited in extent that little mischief arose from them The New England rush was a total failure, but entailing little mOre of hardship than the difficulties attending a long but not dangerous journey. The Kiandra rush proved remunerative to some, but to others its consequences were extremely unfortunate. The Port Curtis rush has passed into a proverb—" a second Port Curtis" is the approved phrase by which to define a gold field that has turned out a total failure. But of all rushes on record, none have ever proved more disastrous than that to. Callao.—Attracted by the reports got up, it is supposed by shipowners, of vast wealth in the interior of Peru, on the banks of some of the tributaries of the Amazon river, ship load after ship load of the flower of the Victorian Miners, loft Melbourne for the South American Eldorado. Arrived in Callao, they were received with utter amazement. The government either knew, or pretended to know nothing of the gold field reported to be so rich ; letters, purporting to come from which, had been so frequently seen by the deluded miners before they left Victoria. With the fatuous notions that always actuate persons who follow a rush, they determined that there was a gold field, and the ignorance of the government was ascribed to the desire to conceal it. They determined to penetrate to the interior—to the mighty Amazon. A band of several hundred doomed men commenced a journey, every step of which was laden with horrors. Exhausted with hunger and fatigue, the native fever found easy victims in them, and their patli was to be traced by the dead they left behind. Their very names unknown and unrecorded, their remains were left in the wild primeval forests. Few of the band ever returned to tell the fate of their dead companions. Those who did were assisted to leave the country by private sympathy.

Our remarks have not been made without an object. Otago is apparently destined to continue a gold producing country, and will be constantly subject to the disturbing influence of rushes from one point of the Province to the other. As we have said, those who have suffered most by rushes are the first to forget when a new rush occurs their former experience, and are the first to lend belief and aid in circulating the wonderous tales that produce it. Forgetting the inclemency of the climate and the difficulties of obtaining food in many parts of the interior of the Province ; it is to be feared that some of these baseless rushes will be allowed to occur, and we fear with disastrous results. The origin of a rush is frequently wrapped in obscurity. Diggers are apt to give an occult meaning to the simplest incident or remark. A single sentence to which a double construction can be given is sufficient to produce a rush, am\ whenever commenced the more mysterious the origin, the more blind is the general belief-in it. In the name of humanity, on-behalf of their own safety the miners should scrupulously abstain from lending themselves to any rushes about which they have not clear information. Otago is not like Australia, and the instances of disastrous rushes, which we have instanced may be outdone in deplorable consequences if the rush fever be allowed a permanent footing here. Miners should remember that it is not those who first arrive at a rush, that as a rule do best, and it is not always those who first start, who first arrive.- Again, the waste of time and expense in case a rush should prove worthless sriould be taken into account, and miners make up their minds not to be enticed away, until they have indisputable

information. They should reflect on the hardships they may subject themselves to in making a vain search after an illusory Gold Field, thej7 should remember that in a few days a life time of misery may be crowded. Oh who its dreary length shall date, Though in time's record nearly nought, It is eternity to thought.