The Hillyars and the Burtons by Henry Kingsley

THE following are some extracts from the leader of the Palmerston Sentinel a short time after the affair of the sale: "Athenaeus, in his 'Deipnosophists, ' tells us that the ancient Carians used, at the annual festivals of Venus, to crown with rosemary the luckiest man of his year in front of the principal temple. For public ceremonies of this kind we are not wholly unprovided. Rome had her Forum, Athens her Areopagus, Corinth her Sisipheum; so Palmerston has her Government Block. Let Mr. James Burton, the Port Romilly blacksmith, be carried up there; let him be crowned with a wreath of Kennedya; for assuredly such fortunes as his, scarce ever befell one of the Audax Iapeti genus before. A discovery has transpired, in the fertile and salubrious district of Port Romilly, which promises to elevate Palmerston into one of the principal commercial emporiums of the civilized globe. The bullock's-hide of Dido which first traced the walls of the future Carthage will in future go down to posterity with the theodolite of Captain Snig, the gallant and intelligent engineer officer who first traced the streets of Palmerston; and the venerable and vivacious statesman whose name it bears must be content to share futurity with the city to which he stood in loco parentis. 'Oh, si angulus iste!' have we been exclaiming, ever since the foundation of the colony. We have been blessed with fertile lands, with full-fed rivers, with boundless forests, with numberless flocks and herds. We have made a material progress greater than that of any nation in ancient or modern times. One thing had been denied to us. One thing made us jealous of South Australia, to which colony we are in all other respects, physical and moral, so vastly superior. We wanted mineral wealth,--and we have got it. Yes. It may be attempted to be denied, but it is true. A Cornish miner, named Trevittick, has discovered that the whole of the Cape Wilberforce mountain is in an eminent degree cupriferous. In Burnt Hut Gully, purchased last week for twelve hundred and eighty pounds by Mr. James Burton, an enormous outcrop of pure metal itself takes place, similar to those on Lake Superior. On the next lot, Morepark Gully, bought at the same time, for the same price, by the Hon. Mr. Dawson, a small quarry, which has been opened, exhibits a mass of blue and green carbonates, eighteen feet thick. Negotiations are being attempted to be gone into for the purchase of Mr. Burton's claims, and his payment in shares, but without success hitherto. Mr. Trevittick considers that, as soon as he can get to work, he will raise a matter of four thousand tons of ore, of one kind and another, the first year."

So said the Sentinel. Mr. O'Callaghan of the Mohawk knew that the Sentinel would have a lot of classical allusions, and determined to have a bit of Latin of his own; but his first classical gentleman had gone to cricket-match, and so he had to do it himself, which was exceedingly awkward. However, he came of one of the bravest families of the bravest nation in the world, and, on the Galway fox-hunting rule of "either over it or through it," went at it manfully, seeing the hateful Mr. Dawson beyond, and savagely thirsting for his blood. His style, the intelligent reader will observe, if it is without the polish of that of Mr. Dickson of the Sentinel, is not wanting in a certain vigor of its own,--