to bitter disputes. New South Wales is said to have threatened to cut off the stream at the head, and Victoria claimed some credit for not intercepting the whole supply before it reached Adelaide. But of these things I shall have to speak in dealing with Federation as a whole.
The principal town through which the train passes on the way to Melbourne is Ballarat, where I broke my journey; famous in the gold-digging days, and contesting with the equally well-known Bendigo the honour of being the chief provincial centre of Victoria. It has a population of about 40,000. This place was in 1851 and the years immediately following one of the richest alluvial goldfields in Australia. It was here that the diggers took up arms to resist what they considered an unjust tax imposed upon them. The famous Eureka stockade was formed, which was carried by storm by the police and troops and forty or fifty miners were killed. The whole dispute really took its rise in the unnecessarily rough treatment meted out to the diggers by the police. All over the Anglo-Saxon world both police and wardens have learned to understand diggers better since then; and it is probable that the Ballarat riot, if handled properly, would have been no more serious than the manifestation which occurred at Kalgoorlie some two years ago. Peter Lalor, an Irishman, the leader of the insurgents, lost an arm in the fight. A price was put on his head, but he evaded arrest, and lived to become Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. A statue of him now stands in the main street of Ballarat. Ballarat has been a great gold producer from its discovery to the present time, and has produced, from first to last, over seventy-two millions sterling in gold. Its deep leads, or buried auriferous river-beds, are examples of cheap
