Castlemaine a valuable seam of gold-bearing
earth. The fame of this place soon spread through all the colony; many
left Ballarat to seek it, and crowds of people hastened from Melbourne
and Geelong to share in the glittering prizes. In October, eight
thousand men had gathered in the district; in November, there were not
less than twenty-five thousand diggers at work, and three tons of gold
were waiting in the tent of the commissioner to be carried to Melbourne.
The road to Mount Alexander was crowded with men of all ranks and
conditions, pressing eagerly onward to be in time.

#9. Sandhurst.#--A few weeks later the glories both of Ballarat and of
Mount Alexander were dimmed for a time by the discovery of gold on the
Bendigo Creek, which seemed at first to be the richest of all the
goldfields. In the course of a few months nearly forty thousand persons
were scattered along the banks of the streamlet where the handsome
streets of Bendigo now stand.

In the month of May, 1852, there must have been close upon seventy
thousand men in the country between Buninyong and Bendigo, all engaged
in the same occupation. Melbourne and Geelong were silent and deserted;
for all classes were alike infected with the same excitement--lawyers,
doctors, clerks, merchants, labourers, mechanics, all were to be found
struggling through the miry ruts that served for a highway to Bendigo.
The sailors left the ships in the bay with scarcely a man to take care
of them; even the very policemen deserted, and the warders in the gaols
resigned in a body. The price of labour now became excessive, for no man
was willing to stay away from the diggings unless tempted by the offer
of four or five times the ordinary wage.

#10. Immigration.#--Meanwhile the news of these great discoveries had
travelled to Europe, so that, after the middle of 1852, ships began to
arrive freighted with thousands of men of all nations, who no sooner
landed in Melbourne than they started for the diggings. During this year
nearly one hundred thousand persons were thus brought into the country,
and the population was doubled at a bound. Next year ninety-two thousand
fresh arrivals landed, and Victoria thus became the most populous of
the colonies. During the two following years it received a further
accession of a hundred and fifty thousand; so that, in 1856, it
contained four hundred thousand inhabitants, or about five times the
number it possessed in 1850. The staple indust