feeble any longer to work, to allow them to perish from neglect. A visit to one of these negro properties is a melancholy sight. There stands the once elegant mansion-house, now fast decaying, and from which a plank or a post is tern whenever wanted; the gardens are gone, and the orchards cut down for firewood; the doors and windows of the boiling-house swing on broken hinges; and the wild fig-tree, with its long air roots, grows vigorously on the crumbling brick

fortune to remunerate them. They are often reviled as absentees; but it is only justice to remember that, had not the bulk of their property been invested in England, it must have perished in the universal distress; and that, so far from exhausting the wealth of Guiana, they alone have saved her from bankruptcy. "It is not," says our author very justly, their actual presence so much as their countenance and capital which are re-work; everything denotes desolation; and the quired by the colony."

The next class are the "industrious, hardworking, practical men," abounding rather in energy and experience than capital, living on the spot, and acting as their own managers. To them an opportunity has been offered such as they never enjoyed before, in the abandonment and sale, at nominal prices, of large estates, which the former proprietors could no longer work with advantage. The purchase of such estates by such men used to be pointed out with triumph by the Manchester school as the sure means of regaining to Guiana her lost prosperity. But the experiment has not worked well. They had neither capital nor credit" to profit by their purchases, and the result may be told in one word-bankruptcy:

Dilapidated buildings, swampy lands, patched and jingling machinery, and laborers' wages in arrear, all plainly bespeak the hand-to-mouth system which prevails on their properties. The plain truth is, a poor man has no business with the sugar estate in Demarara; he might as well, on the strength of being able to purchase an old barn in Lancashire, consider himself qualified to set up as a Manchester manufacturer.

visitor turns away with a sigh, as he beholds a
herd of swine rooting beneath the clump of tam-
arind and palm trees, which mark the burial-
place of the former owners.
Impius hæc tam culta novalia, "niger" habebit?
Barbarus has segetes?
en, queis consevimus agros.
VIRGIL, Ecl. i.
The end of these estates is quickly accom-
plished; the sea breaks in, and out, through the
ill-kept sluices and neglected sea-dams, until an
equinoctial spring-tide, rough and high, over-
whelms the land, destroying every vestige of
cultivation. Disputes ensue, a land surveyor is
called in to divide the property, and allot to each
shareholder a separate and individual portion ;
compelling the several owners to keep up the
and the Legislature is petitioned to pass an act
dams and drainage, for their mutual benefit.

The one hope of the colony rests on Coolie immigration, which has succeeded better than even the authors of it anticipated. Large sums have been made by the immigrants, and each man who returns with his savings encourages others to go out. The Lucknow, which left for India in August, 1851, took back 250 coolies, with earnings amounting to and deficient in no quality of a laborer, save an aggregate of 4,000/. Docile, industrious, physical strength, the natives of the East the separaseem likely to replace the African races in the tion of cane-growing from the manufacture, and the establishment of central mills. But position which the latter have so long occuhere practical difficulties intervene, the solu- pied, as cultivators, under the English planter, of a tropical soil.

We believe this to be strictly true-and so it will be, until the one great reform of sugar-making be accomplished

tion of which we must leave to the "Landowner" and the blue-books. Last and lowest in the social gradation comes the emancipated slave, who sometimes holds lands individually, though more often in joint tenancy with others. Here is his portrait at full length, and not a shade blacker than the original:

MOUNT VERNON. We understand that Mr. John A. Washington, the proprietor of Mount Vernon, has disposed of that venerated mansion, with two hundred acres of the landed estate, to a company comprising Northern and Southern men, for the large sum of two hundred thousand dolThe black proprietor of a joint-stock estate lars. To what purpose the purchasers mean to never works with his own hands, although not apply the property, we have not heard; but we unacquainted with manual labor, for who ever are very glad to learn that the terms of sale saw a white gentleman with a shovel or a hoe? reserve to Congress the privilege of taking it. He is well aware that property has its privileges Another and an irrevocable condition of the sale as well as its duties; and, as he reads them, the is that the remains of General Washington are former consists in wearing a high stock and close-never, under any circumstances, to be removed fitting trousers tightly strapped over an "extra-from their present resting-place. We are insized" fancy cloth boot, in leading a life of perpetual semi-intoxication, and galloping about the country on a half-starved pony. The duties of his station are to pilfer from his neighbors on every occasion, to force his aged parents to labor on his land for a mere pittance, and, when too

formed that the purchasers offered a largely increased price to have the sale made absolute; but Mr. Washington replied that he would not for any sum that could be named place it out of the power of Congress to make Mount Vernon the property of the nation. — Nat. Intel.

Hearing from the pilot that lodgings were AM the youngest son of a landed proprietor very difficult indeed to be procured in the in Essex, and, although I have done nothing town, I resolved to be first of all our passenin Australia of which I need really be ashamed, gers in the field; and accordingly took my the conventional habits and old-established wife and children ashore in the first boat feelings of the mother country are still strong enough in me to cause me to give a fictitious name with the following brief narrative. I will, therefore, call myself Westbrook. As I write in the midst of dilemma and distress, what I have to say must necessarily be fragmentary.

It was shocking. The bedroom we were I invested one hundred pounds in a specu- shown into was filthy, very small, and with a lation in hams; one hundred pounds in boots very little window which had not been opened and shoes; and two hundred pounds in agri- to admit fresh air for a week at least. The cultural and mining tools, in which I felt I blankets were hideously dirty, displaying could not be wrong. After paying all my ostentatiously large dark blotches of grease, debts, with the passage-money, and outfit, &c., and net-work of dirty splashes, like foul of myself, my wife, and our three children, as mockeries of a map of the moon. cabin passengers, I found myself in possession two beds of this description; the room would of three hundred and fifteen pounds, a sum, not have held a third. In this place we had in addition to my ventures, which I believed some tea, and bread and butter, with fried to be ample, and far more than necessary meat-such stuff! Just as we were about for "a start" in the golden region of Australia.

to take possession of our wretched beds, in walked a man, with his wife carrying a child, I I pass over the voyage. A thousand things followed by the landlady, who announced should be said of the bad victualling, venti- them as the occupants of the other bed! lating, and general management of the ship, I began a vigorous remonstrance, but was but I must leave them to others. We arrived instantly stopped by the reminder that we CCCCLXXX. LIVING AGE. VOL. II. 18

some very dirty cold plum-pudding-and, | said a word in support of my objections, that being thoroughly fatigued, we all slept soundly I know of; for what they did say they spoke till daylight. I had intended to lie awake in Gaelic. The bricklayer smoked an hour all night, as a watch; but I dropped off and before he went to sleep. He said these things never once awoke. were nothing when you were used to them, with other vulgar remarks.

changed and the air became exceedingly cool, with more rain at night, which ran in a stream all round the trenches outside the tent.

In the morning I confessed to my wife that I had not sent my money to the bank, as she My wife went out soon after sunrise; and, had supposed, but that I had it all about me. by seven o'clock, brought a man with a dray to We agreed that I should instantly set off to the door, and had everything placed in it, myMelbourne, and lodge it in one of the banks. self included, and we went straight to Canvass I started accordingly. Many new arrivals, Town. She had agreed to purchase a tent, draymen, sailors, and horsemen, were going already set up, from some people who were the same way; so I had plenty of company, going to the Ovens. She had given her gold and the distance was only two miles. I passed watch for it. It was not a bad tent. By Canvass Town on the way. There were no these means I was got under shelter before tents between this and the large bridge over the heat of the day began. The heat was the Yarra, leading direct into the town. I terrible for some hours; after which the wind walked briskly forward. At this juncture three men came up to me, and, with horrible imprecations, demanded my money. I was utterly confounded. The bridge was not two hundred yards off, with people passing over it! The next moment I was knocked down from behind tumbled over a bank into the dust-and rolled in it, till nearly suffocated. When I recovered myself, a sailor-boy and a new arrival were helping me to rise. I was bleeding from a wound in the back of my head. Every bank-note and every sovereign I had was gone. A dray on its way to the beach took me back to the tent. My wife dressed my head, for no surgeon could be found. We heard in the afternoon that the police were galloping after the robbers; or rather galloping about to inquire which way they made off.

The people who owned the tent were obliged to strike it before the evening; and as my wife feared I could not safely be moved for a day or two, she bought a tarpaulin for six pairs of boots, and fastened it up between two trees. The weather, however, suddenly became so very cold, and the wind and dust were so distressing, that we agreed next day to go into a room in a cottage just finished, which one of the bricklayers proposed to us. We were to pay three of the best of the hams per week; and for two pairs of shoes a man agreed to carry our baggage there. The distance turned out to be about eighty yards.

Our baggage being got in, it was discovered that the cottage had only one room. Other luggage was then brought in, belonging to the bricklayer and his wife, and deposited on the floor. Before night, more baggage came in, and with it a Highlander and his family! Three married people and seven children were thus arranged to sleep in the same small room. My wife and I immediately insisted on our baggage being taken back to the trees, or, at any rate, placed outside; but a shower of rain now fell, which presently increased to a deluge, and we were compelled to submit to our fate. The Highlander and his wife never

The quiet of a few days restored me surprisingly. The rapidity of events had almost made us forget our ruinous loss. As for the villains, they had safely eluded the police. It became all the more necessary that I should do something. I began to look about ine. Of course, my first walk was round Canvass Town.

Canvass Town, as the name implies, is a town of tents; it is on the southern side of the Yarra, and about a quarter of a mile distant from Melbourne. At the time I write there are between six and seven hundred tents-perhaps more and the population amounts to five or six thousand souls. The tents are arranged in rows more or less regular, and with a squalid pleasantry some of them have been called after certain well known streets in England-Regent street, Bond street, Liverpool street; while many of the tents have assumed ostentatious titles of distinction.

We have the London Coffee Rooms, the European Dining Rooms, the Great Britain Stores, the Isle of Wight Tent, the Golden Lion Stores (such a lion!), the National Dining Rooms and Lodging Tent, Dover Cliff, Eldorado, the Coffee and Tea-Cake Depot. There are tailors, butchers, bakers,. shoemakers, ironmongers, blacksmiths, hardware and crockery stalls, tinmen. Almost every tent exhibits slops, books, cabin furniture or utensils, with other articles of which the owners have no need here. Nearly every second tent also sells ginger-beer, or lemonade There are two physicians' tents; who of course are at the same time surgeons, dentists, corn-cutters, and apothecaries. Young gentlemen of family and education drive water-carts about the streets," and sell wood (felled, and brought from a mile or two off in the bush); and O, ye classic groves, where the trees have fresh green leaves, of which there are no signs here in summer, how many Uni versity men does this strange collection of

tents, with all their gypsy-life appurtenances, when, like a sylph, she met me at the bottom contain? There are several besides myself; of the lawn of her father's garden, and promand some ladies also, besides my wife. It ised I must not think of all this, or I shall took me some days to learn these particulars; go mad. but how many days would it take to ascertain the amount of disappointment, privation, and misery which these frail walls conceal from view?

Within the canvass enclosures of a few feet are contained the perplexed energies, the blighted hopes and despondency of many a newly-arrived family. Some have tried the Diggings and failed, their utter ruin following in most cases as a matter of course, unless they possess bodily strength and health, and are ready to do the humblest work. This they may generally obtain, and contrive to live. Even tenting upon a piece of waste land is not gratuitous. We had to pay halfa-crown to the government for the first week, and five shillings for every week afterwards. There is a tent on the ground where a commissioner's clerk sits all day, to grant permits and to receive rents.

so many

We were disposing of our things by these means to a good advantage, and I was just getting a glimmering idea of turning it into a trade to support us, when the benevolent and inexplicable hand of the local government was protruded in the form of sundry police-men, who drove us all away from Rag Fair, and informed us that what we were doing was no longer allowed. It was alleged that Jews and other small shopkeepers from the town came there. A piece of ground had, however, been allotted instead by the government for this purpose, at a rent of one pound per week. Of this many of the "Jews and other small shopkeepers from the town" immediately availed themselves; but as for us poor people from Canvass Town, we were obliged to retire to our tents, and to exhibit our little stock as a traffic among each other.

I ought not to omit to state, that the govI have hardly the heart to revert to my ernment here intended to make some provision speculations, and still less to relate what my for the necessities of new arrivals, who had present position is, now that I have been nine no place to lay their heads; and, accordingly. weeks in Canvass Town. The hams that re-a range of wooden shed-like houses has been mained, and the boots and shoes erected on the South Yarra for this humane of each having been bartered in exchange for and considerate purpose, but (out comes the immediate necessaries-did not produce a needy hand again of our paternal authorities!) fourth part of what I had rationally expected, at a rent of two pounds five shillings for ten and which regular dealers easily obtained. days after which you and your family are They were sold by auction, and I afterwards turned out. found some of the auctioneers had an under- The immigrants, however, declined, for the standing with certain dealers, and knocked most part, this hospitable arrangement for down goods to them at a very early stage of "turning a penny ;" and, moving a few yards the proceeding. On one occasion, the refusal higher up, pitched tent after tent, till they to recognize a higher bidder was so palpable, rose to the humble dignity of Canvass Town. that, if I had been a descendant of the Tela- In vengeance, I suppose, for this successful monian Ajax, I should have been tempted to evasion, the five shillings a-week was laid on; assault Mr. Auctioneer severely. As for my and, as many of the people had placed old agricultural and mining tools, they were all boards and pieces of light plank and paling a sheer mistake; gold-digging tools being round the bottom or at the sides of their abundant in Melbourne; as, indeed, was all tents to keep out the weather, an order came common ironmongery. With respect to agri- one day that they were all to pull down their culture, as there were no laborers to be had, wood-work, and use no more boards, the implements were useless. I sold most of" permit" being only for tents. To this order

them at their value as old iron.

we have paid no sort of attention, and do not intend to do so. If our poor abodes are to be destroyed, somebody must be sent to destroy them, as we certainly shall not do it ourselves; and, whether these five or six thousand people will passively stand by while it is done remains to be seen.

At length, we were reduced to selling our clothes and other articles, like the rest of the unfortunates around us. This was effected at first by my going to a strip of waste ground near the wharf, which was called Rag Fair. I was even obliged to consent, on one or two occasions, when I was unwell from the ex- I have delayed to the last to mention it, posure to the heat, to allow my wife to go not being, in fact, quite determined whether there and to take her stand behind an open I would do so; but what I have already told box, with the contents spread out on the ground in front and around it, waiting for purchasers. Strange and sad work for a baronet's daughter! Had any evil witch hinted at such a thing when I saw her dancing in her father's ball-room, or on that moonlight night

of ourselves here renders it no such very great effort for me to say that I have been working on the roads. Fearing that we should come to want, I was most anxious to get some employment before reduced to absolute necessity, and I tried in vain to get some en