Results of Gold-seeking
The question as to the probable continuation, increase, or diminution of the Supply of Gold is of the greatest interest; though nothing but the vaguest conjectures can be offered respecting it. Though gold be very generally distributed, it is extremely doubtful whether there be many places in which the deposits are so rich and so extensive as in California and Australia; and even in these the produce is either stationary, or has begun to decline. The myriads of adventurers that are attracted to prolific diggings can hardly fail, in no very lengthened period, to rifle the richest beds. And when this is done—when the excitement caused by the original discovery is worn off, and the great prizes in the gigantic lottery recur only at distant intervals,—then, unless some new and equally promising discoveries should be made, a serious check will be given to the gold-seeking mania. The process of quartz-crushing is believed to produce only moderate profits, and is not of a kind to collect crowds of competitors. The few fortunes that have been realized in California and Australia have not been made by the diggers, but by the merchants and others who have supplied their real or imaginary wants, or bought their gold-dust and nuggets on advantageous terms. Of those engaged on their own account in the search of gold, very few have retired from the pursuit with anything like a real competence. The great majority have hardly realized the wages current in the districts before the deposits were discovered; and the conviction seems to be everywhere gaining ground, that more is to be made by cultivating the surface of the earth than by digging in its bowels, or crushing its rocks.—J. R. Macculloch; Ency. Brit., 1859.