on, be unable to
cross some of the streets without a plank being placed from the middle
of the road to the pathway, or the alternative of walking in water up to
the knees.

Our party, on returning to the ship the day after our arrival, witnessed
the French-leave-taking of all her crew, who, during the absence of the
Captain, jumped overboard, and were quickly picked up and landed by the
various boats about. This desertion of the ships by the sailors is an
every-day occurrence; the diggings themselves, or the large amount they
could obtain for the run home from another master, offer too many
temptations. Consequently, our passengers had the amusement of hauling
up from the hold their different goods and chattels; and so great was
the confusion, that fully a week elapsed before they were all got to
shore. Meanwhile, we were getting initiated into colonial prices--money
did, indeed, take to itself wings and fly away. Fire-arms were at a
premium; one instance will suffice--my brother sold a six-barrelled
revolver for which he had given sixty shillings at Baker's, in Fleet
Street, for sixteen pounds, and the parting with it at that price was
looked upon as a great favour. Imagine boots, and they were very
second-rate ones, at four pounds a pair. One of our between-deck
passengers who had speculated with a small capital of forty pounds in
boots and cutlery, told me afterwards that he had disposed of them the
same evening he landed at a net profit of ninety pounds--no trifling
addition to a poor man's purse. Labour was at a very high price,
carpenters, boot and shoe makers, tailors, wheelwrights, joiners,
smiths, glaziers, and, in fact, all useful trades, were earning from
twenty to thirty shillings a day--the very men working on the roads
could get eleven shillings per diem, and many a gentleman in this
disarranged state of affairs, was glad to fling old habits aside and
turn his hand to whatever came readiest. I knew one in particular, whose
brother is at this moment serving as a Colonel in the army in India, a
man more fitted for a gay London life than a residence in the Colonies.
The diggings were too dirty and uncivilized for his taste, his capital
was quickly dwindling away beneath the expenses of the comfortable life
he led at one of the best hotels in town, so he turned to what as a boy
he had learnt as an amusement, and obtained an addition to his income,
of more than four hundred pounds a year as house carpenter. In