n the ordinary business of the colonies could
scarcely be carried on at any sacrifice--when some of the more perplexed
employers in the adjoining territory of New South Wales had urged
Governor Fitzroy to proclaim martial law and peremptorily prohibit
mining, 'in order that the inducement which seemed so irresistible to
persons to quit their ordinary occupations might be removed.' In the
country districts crops were left unreaped and sheep unshorn; in the
towns masters did their own work or paid excessively to have it half
done; while the harbours were filled with vessels whose crews had
deserted to join in the general scramble for gold. No one was content to
stand behind a counter all day and hear of nuggets being found
up-country which sold for over four thousand pounds. 'As well attempt to
stop the influx of the tide as stop the rush to the diggings,' was the
reply given by Fitzroy to his petitioners.

Ex-military and naval officers, professional men, convicts from Van
Diemen's Land, picturesque cut-throats from the Californian and Mexican
mines, Chinese, and many other varieties of the human species, rubbed
shoulders and lived generally in remarkable order and amity in the
crowded canvas cities of Turon, Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and Bendigo.
In 1852, the year before Kingsley's arrival, seventy thousand of them
were toiling in Victoria alone.

Such were the times and the people which gave the future novelist his
first practical experience of colonial life. The varied knowledge that
he accumulated, first of the gold-fields and later of pastoral life and
the towns, was the only reward of his five years' voluntary exile from
England. During his absence he never wrote to his parents, and they
thought him dead. His reticence as to his unsuccessful struggles was
continued when he returned home, and not relaxed in later life even to
his wife.

An interesting memoir by Mr. Clement Shorter, prefixed to a new edition
of Kingsley's novels, briefly describes his school-days and literary
career, but is almost wholly silent concerning the eventful years spent
in the colonies. There is a single reference to the period which
succeeded his gold-digging days, when want forced him to seek a less
precarious occupation. For a time, it seems, he was a mounted policeman
in New South Wales, until, 'compelled by duty to attend an execution, he
was so much affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust.' Then,
like many another unl