Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/205

 The Jubilee ADELAIDE AND VICINITY 179 impulse. The farmers in 1886 reaped a fair harvest where dearth was predicted, and in that year little more was heard of bad times — the people as readily forgot what had been bad as at other times they forgot what had been good. The year 1886 began with distress and ended in jubilation. Prospects improved ; but there was another reason : On December 28 the Province attained its fiftieth birthday. On December 27 arrangements were made for bringing together as main of the pioneers as possible. The vast majority of the founders had disa])])eared, but a few remained. Hodder remarks that men who had shaken hands with Governor Hindmarsh in 1837, shook hands with Governor Robinson at this time. A crowded meeting of pioneers and old colonists was held in the Adelaide Town Hall in the evening, and events in the history of the Province were depicted in tableaux. Interesting relics were exhibited in the banqueting-hall, such as old newspapers, books, sketches. Colonel Light's sword, and Stuart's original diary. There were present several venerable men who were familiar with the great men of the thirties, who toiled among the founda- tion-builders, who prospered under Gawler and suffered under Grey, and who still toiled during the subsequent uphill struggles of the Province; men who "had built so strongly and well," writes Mark Twain of them, "and laid the foundations of their commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance; and had lived to .see the structure rise to such state and dignity, and hear themselves so praised for their honorable work." Jubilee Exhibition Buildings On the following day, Glenelg was the centre of popular rejoicings. Thousands [of people congregated on the shore, or near the rugged old gumtree, or about two rusty, [time-worn guns on the Colley Reserve which had frowned from the deck of the old Buffalo. [Among the assemblage were some who had heard the proclamation read beneath the gumtree [50 years before. That half-century was very potent. Hodder, instituting a comparison ► between the old and the new, said: — "The colonists remembered with pride that in 1836 .M2