Description
Second Hand, First Edition
One of the most colourful of the many American merchants and miners who flocked to the Australian goldmines in the 1850s, George Francis Train, was and is still the epitome of the “wide awake” and enterprising merchant to many Australians.
Variously described by observers as a ‘modern Don Quixote’; as one ‘who might have built the Pyramids or been confined in a straight-jacket for eccentricities, according to the age he lived in’; and as ‘a magazine with the fire constantly at the fuse – a Vesuvius constantly erupting’, the author of these Letters writes as he lived – flamboyantly, individually and entertainingly.
At only twenty-four, Train while in Melbourne conducted a lucrative commission business, acted as agent for the famous White Star Line of Liverpool, threw himself into community affairs, and visited Geelong and the surrounding goldfields, Sydney, and Tasmania. As the Argus wrote on his departure, ‘it would be difficult to trace the full effect of his example in vitalizing our whole commercial system’.
The ships which fetched thousands of immigrants from Europe and America and also for a time helped feed, clothe, and house the influx are very much part of Train’s scene. A Yankee Merchant in Gold Rush Australia, carefully edited by Dr. E. Daniel and Annette Potts, presents a fascinating facet of the gold rush, for as many fortunes were made and lost in the countinghouse as on the diggings.
Hardcover, 204pp, 1970.
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