I waded into the pleasantly and invitingly cool water, but had
promptly to retreat from swarms of leeches which attacked my feet. The
scene was striking. Although the hum of busy humanity arose from
beneath, not an object was visible on the higher level, as I glanced
around to the far west and north, excepting the country's indigenous
features. There was not a human being, not even a sheep in sight. Around
this spot has since arisen the city of Ballarat, with fifty thousand
people, with streets, buildings, institutions, business (including an
extra busy Stock Exchange), equal to those of, at least, twice its
population at Home; while the lovely lake of that time has long been
fringed with residences and gardens, and its waters been the scene of
the regattas and other diversions of the leisure of the prosperous
citizens.
As I rode back on my horse to town--for Cobb and Co. had not yet
established their leather-hung stage drags, for which, in the
impossibility of others upon the unmade roads, we had reason to be
thankful--I mused over all I had seen, and long ere reaching home had
concluded that 10,000 pounds a day was being taken out of Ballarat.
Sundays excepted, that meant a product at the rate of over three
millions a year, into which, as one of its export items, the young
colony was already "precipitated" from a total export product of only a
trifle above a million the year before.
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