Book Description

Excerpt from An American Merchant in Europe, Asia and Australia: A Series of Letters From Java, Singapore, China, Bengal, Egypt, and the Holy Land Etc Christendom could be found among the cargoes; None but those who will take the trouble to look Over the statistics at the customs will understand the extent of Australian Speculation in 1853 and 1854. One hundred and fifty millions Of dollars worth of imports in two years time, for a population of scarcely souls l I was one of the first Americans on the spot, and living through what the colonist call the good and bad times, and having had some forty thousand tons Of Shipping to my own address, I have been in a good position to see something of the extent to which our wants were overestimated, and the consequent embarrass ment of such misjudged calculations. We have gone through the commercial revolution which every young and Old country experiences, at some time in its history and when the accounts of the three hundred and fifty firms who have taken some twen ty-five or thirty millions of dollars through the Insolvent Court are squared, a few of the Australian houses will do a large and profitable business. The bird will rise from its ashes, and the country and colony will Start ahead afresh, stimulated by the new blood which slowly and surely is uprooting the prejudices Of the old settlers, who looked upon reform or enterprise as a crime of which only Americans were guilty. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.