Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/173

164 “I want to open an account with your bank; you may as well take the money now,” handing me a deposit consisting of notes, gold, and silver coin, which I transferred to my trousers pocket, at the same time making a memorandum of the transaction in my pocket-book. I bid Mr. K. “Good day,” and went on my way.

On another occasion, I gave a man on the beach, a deposit receipt on a leaf torn from my pocket-book. These and similar instances will show how implicitly anyone connected with banking was trusted in those days. Unfortunately, the converse would not always hold good. A favourite trick of the diggers was to endeavour to pass off gold from one part as having been obtained at another.

The assays of the different diggings varied immensely, and whilst some gold was worth £3 18s. per oz., that from other diggings might not be worth more than £3 12s. However, after a little practice one soon got used to these little tricks, and it was astonishing with what ease one could “place” any particular parcel of gold brought in.

I hardly think, however, that many of our colonials would have exhibited the same amount of gullibility as is shown in the following extract from the Bankers’ Magazine:—

“The London Banker and the Irish Mountain.—The flourishing seaport of Sligo, on the north-western coast of Ireland, is celebrated for the boldness and beauty of its scenery. A short distance from the town there is a perpendicular or slightly sloping mountain, called Ben Bulben, better known in Ireland than in England. About half a century ago a trader in Sligo, more remarkable for enterprise than integrity, having exhausted all the legitimate and ordinary means of raising money, conceived the idea of floating fictitious acceptances, and with this object he forwarded to his English banker for discount several bills of exchange drawn on and accepted by Ben Bulben and Co. The London banker not being acquainted with the acceptors, wrote to his Irish correspondent for his confidential opinion of the firm. The latter, well known for his humour, and treating the inquiry as a joke, replied as follows:—“The parties inquired about are long resident in this locality, and are looked up to as the most extensive landholders in this district, possessing within their own limits the varied resources of rich pasture, turbary, and inexhaustible supply of mineral wealth and an unrivalled water power. In character, Ben, the principal of the partnership, is what we call here a stiff-necked sort of fellow, and I have heard it said that if his cap were on he would not take it off to royalty. Although he is constantly imbibing mountain dew—a term often used to express illicit spirits—his steadiness is undoubted; and as to his stability, it cannot be questioned—as in fact he is the principal of the chain of mountains which run through this and the adjoining counties.’ This description,