“That was more than fifty years ago,” said he.  “And here I am, yet.”

As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him to me, and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke.  I spoke of the previous conversation and said there something very pathetic about this half century of exile, and that I wished the L200 scheme had succeeded.

“With him?  Oh, it did.  It’s not so sad a case.  He is modest, and he left out some of the particulars.  The lad reached South Australia just in time to help discover the Burra-Burra copper mines.  They turned out L700,000 in the first three years.  Up to now they have yielded L120,000,000.  He has had his share.  Before that boy had been in the country two years he could have gone home and bought a village; he could go now and buy a city, I think.  No, there is nothing very pathetic about his case.  He and his copper arrived at just a handy time to save South Australia.  It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land boom a while before.”  There it is again; picturesque history —­Australia’s specialty.  In 1829 South Australia hadn’t a white man in it.  In 1836 the British Parliament erected it—­still a solitude—­into a Province, and gave it a governor and other governmental machinery.  Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth.  It was well worked in London; and bishops, statesmen, and all ports of people made a rush for the land company’s shares.  Immigrants soon began to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea.  The crowds continued to come, prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions.  A village of sheet iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand, and in these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots were abundant, and this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the world.  The provincial government put up expensive buildings for its own use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor.  The governor had a guard, and maintained a court.  Roads, wharves, and hospitals were built.  All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious values—­on the boom’s moonshine, in fact.  This went on handsomely during four or five years.  Then of a sudden came a smash.  Bills for a huge amount drawn the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored, the land company’s credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled to other lands, leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude, where lately had been a buzzing and populous hive of men.