and other governmental machinery.
Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and
invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth.
It was well worked in London; and bishops, statesmen, and all ports of
people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began
to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the
sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea. The crowds continued to come,
prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was
prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A
village of sheet iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand, and
in these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on
costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots
were abundant, and this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways
conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been
accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the
world. The provincial government put up expensive buildings for its own
use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor
had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were
built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious
values--on the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during
four or five years. Then of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge
amount drawn the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored, the land
company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a
rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled to other
lands, leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude, where lately
had been a buzzing and populous hive of men.

Adelaide was indeed almost empty; its population had fallen to 3,000.
During two years or more the death-trance continued. Prospect of revival
there was none; hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the paralysis
had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper
mines were discovered, and the corpse got up and danced.

The wool production began to grow; grain-raising followed--followed so
vigorously, too, that four or five years after the copper discovery, this
little colony, which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly, and pay
hard prices for them--once $50 a barrel for flour--had become an exporter
of grain.

The prosperitie