The Age of Gold by H.W. Brands

just for wool. Australia was the closest English-speaking country to California, and therefore was well positioned to supply the miners with all manner of provisions. As the Sydney
Herald
, which broke the gold story in Australia, put it, “We believe several persons are going to send provisions to California, and if they arrive there before shipments from the United States, immense profits will be made.”
    Yet even as the papers applauded the transport of goods to California, they did their best to discourage the transport of
people
. Archer wasn’t surprised, as preserving the population of Australia—in particular, that part of the Australian population that hadn’t been ordered to the penal colony by British magistrates—was a regular theme with local editors. Even before the news from California, people had been edging toward docks to escape the economic slump. Now many of those same people were willing to bet ten pounds—the price of steerage to San Francisco—that they’d do better hunting gold in California than hunting jobs in Australia. And the Australian papers were trying to keep them from going. The
Herald
made a habit of deriding life in the “diggins” and depicting Californians as sharps. The “Mormons,” the paper explained to readers wondering about these strange people involved in the gold discovery, “were originally of the sectknown as ‘Latter-day Saints,’ which sect flourishes wherever Anglo-Saxon gulls are found in sufficient numbers to swallow the egregious nonsense of fanatic humbugs who fatten upon their credulity.” The paper relayed satirical advice to aspiring gold-seekers:
    What class ought to go to the Diggins?
Persons who have nothing to lose but their lives.
    Things you should not take with you to the Diggins
. A love of comforts, a taste for civilization, a respect for other people’s throats, and a value for your own.
    Things you will find useful at the Diggins
. A revolving pistol, some knowledge of treating gun-shot wounds, a toleration of strange bedfellows.
    The sort of society you will meet with at the Diggins
. Those for whom the United States are not big enough; those for whom England is too hot; those who came to clean out the gold, and those who came to clean out the gold finders.
    What is the best thing to do when you get to the Diggins?
Go back home.
    How gold may be best extracted
. By supplying, at exorbitant prices, the wants of those who gather it.
    What will be the ultimate effect of the discovery of the Diggins?
To raise prices, to ruin fools, to demoralize a new country first, and settle it afterwards.
    The discouragement was lost on Tom Archer. He guessed that conditions in California couldn’t be any harder than conditions in the outback, and as for the alleged dangers from thieves and cutthroats, they might be just the thing to spice up a young man’s life. With a friend named Ned Hawkins, he prepared to head east. Settling affairs—to wit, selling his sheep in a slow market—required several weeks; had Archer been of a less phlegmatic temper he would have grown impatient, for gold-hunters were embarking from Sydney’s Circular Wharf by the thousands. Nor did he and Hawkins deny themselves a suitable leave-taking for their great adventure.Friends in Sydney joined the celebration, and for days and nights the pubs of the city did a lively business by them.
    With a light heart and a heavy head, Archer left Sydney on July 17, 1849. His vessel was the bark
Elizabeth Archer
of Liverpool, commanded by Charles Cobb and named, evidently, for no relation of Tom (at least he didn’t comment on the coincidence of names). Archer’s party consisted of himself, Hawkins, two other friends, and five servants: “my two Durandur black boys, Jackey Small and Davey… another black boy of Hawkins’, and two Chinamen, also his.” Besides Archer’s group, the ship carried more than a hundred argonauts, including one Edward Hargraves, whom none particularly noticed