EARLY MELBOURNE AND VICTORIA

BY

WILLIAM WESTGARTH. 

(PLATE: EDWARD HENTY. Died August 14th 1878. George Robertson & Co. Lith. )

(PLATE: JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER. Died September 4th 1869. George Robertson & Co. Lith. )

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

OF

EARLY MELBOURNE AND VICTORIA

BY

WILLIAM WESTGARTH. 

"Oh, call back yesterday, bid time return. "--Richard II. 

"A story of the mount and plain, The lake, the river, and the sea;A voice that wakes to life againAn age-long slumbering melody. "--GEORGE GORDON McCRAE. 

"Ah! who has ever journeyed, on a glorious summer night, Through the weird Australian bushland, without feelings of delight?The dense untrodden forest, in the moonlight cold and pale, Brings before our wondering eyes again the dreams of fairy tale. "--A. PATCHETT MARTIN. 

"The genius of Australia now uprearsHer youthful form, like hope without hope's fears;While o'er her head our Cross, with loveliest rays, Heralds the brightness of her future years. "--R. H. HORNE. 

CONTENTS. 

AN INTRODUCTORY MEDLEY. 

MR. FROUDE'S "OCEANA". 

NEW ZEALAND. 

UNITY OF THE EMPIRE. 

EARLY PORT PHILLIP. 

MY FIRST NIGHT ASHORE. 

INDIGENOUS FEATURES AROUND MELBOURNE. 

THE ABORIGINAL NATIVES IN AND ABOUT TOWN. 

EARLY CIVILIZING DIFFICULTIES. 

"THE BEACH" (NOW PORT MELBOURNE). 

EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-1851. 

THE MELBOURNE CORPORATION, 1842. 

EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE. 

THE EARLY SQUATTING TIMES. 

EARLY WESTERN VICTORIA ("AUSTRALIA FELIX"). 

SOME NAMES OF MARK IN THE EARLY YEARS. 

THE HENTY FAMILY, AND THE FOUNDATION OF VICTORIA. 

SOME INTERJECTA IN RE BATMAN, PIONEER OF THE PORT PHILLIP SETTLEMENT. 

JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER, FATHER OF MELBOURNE. 

JAMES SIMPSON, FIRST MAGISTRATE OF "THE SETTLEMENT". 

DAVID CHARTERIS McARTHUR, FATHER OF VICTORIAN BANKING. 

CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C. B. 

SIR JOHN O'SHANASSY. 

WILLIAM KERR, FOUNDER OF "THE ARGUS". 

WILLIAM NICHOLSON. 

CHARLES HOTSON EBDEN, ESQUIRE. 

EDWARD WILSON, CHIEF PROPRIETOR OF "THE ARGUS", "THE TIMES" OF THESOUTH. 

EARLY SOCIETY: WAYS, MEANS, AND MANNERS. 

"GOVERNMENT HOUSE". 

CHEAP LIVING. 

RELIGIOUS INTERESTS. 

THE GERMAN IMMIGRATION. 

THE GERMAN PRINCE. 

BLACK THURSDAY. 

EARLY VICTORIA, FROM 1851. 

EARLY BALLARAT. 

MOUNT ALEXANDER AND BENDIGO. 

EARLY VICTORIAN LEGISLATION. 

POSTCRIPT. 

MELBOURNE IN 1888. 

ALBURY. 

SYDNEY. 

BRISBANE. 

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY MELBOURNE AND VICTORIA. 

AN INTRODUCTORY MEDLEY. 

"Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. "--Othello. 

I had long looked forward to one more visit to Victoria, perhaps thelast I should expect to make, and the opportunity of the opening of thegreat Centenary Exhibition at Melbourne on 1st August of this year wastoo good to be lost. Accordingly, having been able to arrange businessmatters for so long a holiday, I took passage, with my wife anddaughter, by the good steamship "Coptic" of the "Shaw, Savill NewZealand Line, " as it is curtly put. She was to land us at Hobart about27th July, in good time, we hoped, to get across by the Launceston boatfor the Exhibition opening, and she bids fair, at this moment, to keepher engagement. We would have taken the directer route, with its greaternumber and variety of objects, via Suez and Colombo, but we feared thesun-blaze of the ill-omened Red Sea in summer. We purpose, however, toreturn that way towards the coming winter. 

More than thirty-one years have elapsed since I left Melbourne, after aresidence there of seventeen years, broken, however, by two intermediatevisits "Home. " I think with wondering enjoyment of what I am to see inthe colony and its capital after such an interval. Previously, when Ireturned after only a year or two's absence, I was wont to mark withastonishment all that had been done in that comparatively brief time. Iam thankful to Mr. Froude, whose delightful work, "Oceana, " I could readto all full enjoyment during the leisure and quiet of the voyage, forsomewhat preparing me for what I have to see, for I must infer from hisgraphic accounts, especially of interior progress--while already threemore years have since elapsed--that even my most sanguine anticipationswill be exceeded. Our great Scottish poet and novelist has finelysaid:--

"Lives there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said--This is my own, my native land?"

But is there not a formidable rival to the force of this sentiment inthat with which one clings to the land where so many of the mostvigorous years of life have been actively spent? And a land, besides, ofsurpassing sunny beauty and of rare romance. Business calls are usuallyheld to be imperative, even if they send us, willing or unwilling, to"Ultima Thule or the Pole. " Accordingly, my later lot has been to returnto the older, and not to continue in the newer, part of the commonempire. But, at any rate, that rather enhances the enjoyment of thisre-visit. 

According to the usual custom, I now write my introduction last of all. I have most pleasantly occupied several hours of the complete leisure ofeach day in writing these "Recollections, " and now, as we get withinalmost hours of our destination, I am putting this last hand to mylabours. I cannot hope that their light sketchiness can go for much, save with those who, familiar with the great Melbourne and Victoria ofto-day, may enjoy the comparison of the small things of a retrospectextending to almost half a century, and all but to the birth of thecolony. 

The voyage has been extremely pleasant, with a good and well-foundvessel, fairly fast as the briskly competitive speed of these days goes, and above all with a head in Captain Burton who has proved first-classin every requirement. He has just complimented us by saying that we arethe best behaved lot of passengers he ever took. That was due verygreatly to himself; and I think that all of us are well able toreciprocate his compliment by regarding him as the best of captains. Officers and crew also have been, to our view at least, faultless; butthen, again, all that so much depends upon the captain. 

Touching the important matter of speed, let me say a little. Allimportant it is, indeed, in this age of fast progress. When I firstsailed for Australia, in 1840, we were, I think, 141 days on the way. Nor was that a very inordinate passage then. This time I expect, withinthat interval, to go and return, besides having nearly two and a halfmonths to spare--a space of time which now, with rails and fast steamerseverywhere, will enable me to visit all South-Eastern Australasia, including even New Zealand. Of course, that means hardly more than "tosee, " but still that is better than not to see at all, those wonderfulparts of our empire. 

But yet again, on this point of speed, our "Coptic's" daily run averagedrather under 300 nautical miles. In justice to the good ship, we shouldcredit her with rather more, for during the latter half of the voyageshe was meeting or anticipating the sun by six or seven degrees oflongitude daily, and thus clipping about half an hour off each day. Butturn now to the latest like exploit between Liverpool and New York--thecase, I think, of the s. S. "Umbria", whose unprecedented record is of455 to 503 miles daily. Granting this to be subject to abatement forrunning this time away from the sun, and thus prolonging the day, thereis enough of difference to give us, at this speed, the hope of a threeweeks' Australian service by the straightest available line. It hasalready been effected to Adelaide in 29 days. We Australians must hopethat ere long Melbourne and Sydney, together with all about them, willweigh, with ourselves at least, as heavily as New York. The coalquestion is, of course, an awful difficulty for three weeks instead offive to six days, but not, we hope, insuperable. Our "Coptic" burns butfifty tons a day, but the New York liners require three hundred. 

When a man has passed seventy-three, as I have done, he may be excusedin doubting his chance of yet another Australian visit. But while he hasbeen waiting these many years, he has seen such vast improvement ininter-communication facilities of every kind, as to establish, he mightsay, a complete counterbalance to the increasing infirmities of years. Imagine, therefore, the Australian liner of the next few years to be agreat and comfortable hotel, as though one went for three weeks' freshsea air to Brighton or Bournemouth, with the additional charm that, onquitting your pleasant marine apartments, you stepped out uponAustralia. 

This brings up yet another subject. When attending, four years ago, thevery successful and most interesting meeting of the British Associationat Montreal, I was very curious as to the possible prospect, now thatthis body had made so good a first outside step, of a like meeting inAustralia. But, not very long after, an invitation to the Associationwas actually sent from Melbourne. The year asked for had beenpre-engaged for Home. My distinguished friend, Mr. Service, told me, when on his late Home visit, that no doubt the invitation would goagain. I may usefully mention here that the Association is usuallyengaged, or as good as engaged, two clear years in advance, so that thethird year, at least, in advance should be dealt with for Melbourne. This besides would afford sufficient notice for the busy men of allclasses and all vocations at Home to arrange conveniently for thenecessarily long absence. I do not doubt of complete success. Indeed, itis such a further chance as that which might tempt even the oldest of usinto visiting the far-off but bright and sunny South. 

MR. FROUDE'S "OCEANA. "

I feel that my introductory medley would still be incomplete if I didnot allude, somewhat more than I have already done, to Mr. Froude'srecently published "Oceana, " a work which, in its vigour and highliterary style, marks quite an era in its Australian field. I hadregretted before embarking that, from the pressure of other things, myacquaintance with it had been limited to the reading of many reviews andthe hearing of much criticism. But I have been well compensated by aperusal during the peace and ample leisure of this long voyage. I mustconfine my remarks to two points only, which, however, are amongst themost prominent in the book. These are--first, the terms in which he hasalluded to the present condition of New Zealand; and, second, hisardently loyal remarks, so often repeated, upon that rising question ofthe day, the political unity of the empire--a subject which had beenadvanced at the time into a most significant importance to theAustralian colonies by the apparent imminence of war with Russia. 

NEW ZEALAND. 

I am not inclined to repeat the scolding which, it is understood, myzealous friend, Sir Francis Bell, Agent-General for New Zealand, underhis high sense of duty, administered to the brilliant author of "Oceana"for this sole dark spot of his book. I see no sufficient cause. On thecontrary, he has given us such a charming account of the aspects andprospects of this, the most magnificent of our colonies--for I agreewith him in believing that it is to be "the future home of the greatestnation of the Pacific"--that certain loose or inaccurate words addressedto him about the finances, and which he had deemed worth recording, maywell be expected to have in comparison the most evanescent effect. "Onegentleman, " he says, "amused me considerably with his views, " the saidviews being to the effect that New Zealand would be ready, when thefinal pressure came, to repudiate her heavy public debt. Another equallyvivacious informant stated that, besides the 32 million pounds ofcolonial borrowing, "the municipal debts were at least as much more asthe national debt. " Now this is six times overstated for municipal andharbour debts together. No doubt the actual case is bad enough, for NewZealand has far over-borrowed. But as to repudiation, there is not ahint or notion of it in any responsible quarter whatever, any more thanwith regard to our British Consols, although the colony is, for thetime, in the extremity of a depression, ever recurrent in such young, fast-going societies, caused by a continuous subsiding of previoustoo-speculative values. To this I may add, in reference to the smallerissues of colonial municipalities, that of the very great number ofthese, New Zealand's included, brought for many years past upon theLondon market, there is not, in my recollection, as a matter of my ownbusiness, one single instance of default, as to either principal orinterest, if we except the sole and quite special and temporary case, above thirty years ago, of the city of Hamilton, in Upper Canada. 

UNITY OF THE EMPIRE. 

This question has been in a course of rapid clearing during the last fewyears, and the successful establishment of the Imperial FederationLeague has given an orderly procedure in every way promising. The objectaimed at is, that the empire shall have that political binding whichwill give to it the maximum of power and influence possible under allits circumstances. Above fifteen years ago some few of us--very few theythen were--first seriously raised this question at Home in the RoyalColonial Institute. We had the smallest of audiences then. It ismarvellous to look back now upon that indifference. I recollect thatabout ten years ago, when the movement was just beginning to lookserious to those outside of us, a leading Paris paper devoted an articleto the subject, remarking that if Great Britain persevered so as tounite her empire as sought, the balance of the world's power would be soseriously disturbed as to call for an international reconsideration ofthat subject. 

The progress as yet has been chiefly negative, but it has been great. Modes entertained at first have been discarded. This may be said ofsuperseding the present Imperial Parliament by a pro re nata FederalAssembly; and it may be equally said of an influx of proportionatecolonial representatives into the Home House. Councils of colonialambassadors, agents-general, and so on, have, I think, definitely gonethe same way. These are chiefly Home views, for Home is at lengtharoused as well as the colonies to their common question; and thesummons by the Secretary for the Colonies of the Colonial Conferencewhich sat in London two years ago marks alike the most prominent andmost promising feature in the movement. 

Mr. Froude has given, most usefully, the views of the colonists. Let ustake Mr. Dalley's, which is also that of most others, namely, that thenascent but increasing colonial navies should be all under one imperialcommand--that is, be a part of the British navy. There is one morestep--namely, to dispose of all colonial military force in the samecommon-sense way, and then we have a politically united empire. But weare "constitutional" or representative in our polity, so that somethingelse is still wanted. In short, the unity of the empire requires twothings. First, that all its force be under one executive, and, next, that the colonies be proportionately represented in that executive. TheCabinet seems to me the adaptable body we can operate upon to this end. That body would then be actually, as well as legally, the empire'sexecutive. Nothing should--nothing need--prevent the attainment of thisgrand end. The tariff bugbear concerns only commerce, and need notarrest nor even interfere with the empire's political unity. All othermatters of the common interest can be leisurely settled by mutualconsent, as the empire, in its united state, sails along the great oceanof the future. The mother will then, in emergency, have the sure call ofher children; while every colony, even to the very smallest, will knowthat in case of need the whole empire is at its back. When the rest ofthe world knows that fact, it will thenceforth probably not trouble ourempire either about international rearrangements or anything else. 

EARLY PORT PHILLIP. 

"Should auld acquaintance be forgotAnd the days o' lang syne. "--Burns. 

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder. "--Haynes Bayly. 

Entering Port Phillip on the morning of the 13th December, 1840, we werewafted quickly up to the anchorage of Hobson's Bay on the wings of astrong southerly breeze, whose cool, and even cold, temperature was tomost of us an unexpected enjoyment in the middle of an Australiansummer. A small boat came to us at the anchorage containing Mr. And Mrs. D. C. McArthur and others who had friends or relations on board, and whotold us that for some days there had been excessive heat and a hot wind, which had now reacted in this southerly blast, to go on probably intoheavy rain, the country being excessively dry. 

MY FIRST NIGHT ASHORE. 

"The Hut on the Flat. "--James Henry. 

"How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude. "--Cowper. 

The rain did follow at night to the full as predicted. I had engaged toaccompany a young friend that evening to spend the next day, Sunday, athis "country seat" on Richmond Flat, where he had constructed, mostlywith his own hands, a sort of hut or wigwam, under an unchallengedsquattage. Being engaged in a store for long hours on Saturday night, itwas past eleven ere we started. The rain had begun to pour, and thenight was pitch dark. We got into Collins-street, but had muchdifficulty in keeping its lines where there were not post-and-railfences round the vacant allotments. Only three years had elapsed sinceMelbourne had been named and officially laid out, and, excepting thevery centre, there were still wide intervals between the houses oneither side even of Collins-street. After floundering helplessly aboutin the foundation-cutting of a new house, which was already full ofwater, but happily only a few inches deep, we at length emerged upon theopen of the present Fitzroy Gardens, where for a little time we couldkeep to the bush track only by trying the ground with our feet or ourfingers. But in spite of all care we soon lost the road, and wanderedabout in the pouring rain for the rest of the night. We were young andstrong, and as the rain did not chill us, we were in but littlediscomfort. A beauteous sunny morning broke upon us, with a deliciousfragrance from the refreshed ground. We found ourselves near the Yarra, between the present busy Hawthorn and Studley Park. Solitude and quietreigned around us, excepting the enchanting "ting ting" of the bellbird. We stripped ourselves, wrung our drenched clothes, and spread themto dry in the sun, and then plunged into the dark, deep still Yarra forour morning bath, afterwards duly reaching my friend's country seat. 

INDIGENOUS FEATURES AROUND MELBOURNE. 

"There are more things in heaven and earthThan are dreamt of in our philosophy. "--Hamlet

These features form an interesting retrospect of early Melbourne. Theyhave nearly all disappeared since with the growth of town andpopulation. Some who preceded me saw the kangaroo sporting over the siteof Melbourne--a pleasure I never enjoyed, as the timid creatures fledalmost at once with the first colonizing inroad. I have spoken of thelittle bell bird, which, piping its pretty monotone, flitted in thoseearlier years amongst the acacias on the banks of the Yarra close toMelbourne, but which has taken its departure to far distances many ayear ago. The gorgeous black cockatoo was another of our early company, now also long since departed. For a very few years after my arrival theystill hovered about Melbourne, and I recollect gazing in admiration at acluster of six of them perched upon a large gum-tree near the town, uponthe Flemington-road. The platypus, also, was quite plentiful, especiallyin the Merri Creek. Visiting, about 1843, my friend Dr. Drummond, whohad a house and garden at the nearest angle of the creek, about twomiles from town, we adjourned to a "waterhole" at the foot of thegarden, on the chance of seeing a platypus, and sure enough, after avery few minutes, one rose before us in the middle of the pool. 

THE ABORIGINAL NATIVES IN AND ABOUT TOWN. 

"Oh I see the monstrousness of manWhen he looks out in an ungrateful shape. "--Timon of Athens. 

The natives still strolled into Melbourne at the time of my arrival, andfor a couple of years or so after; but they were prohibited about thetime of the institution of the corporation, as their non-conformity inattire--to speak in a decent way--their temptations from offers of drinkby thoughtless colonists, and their inveterate begging, began soon tomake them a public nuisance. But aboriginal ways did not die at once. The virtues or integrity of native life, as Strzelecki would phrase it, struggled and survived for some few further years the strong upsettingtide of colonial life. 

Returning one night, about 1843, from dining with Mr. William Locke, anold colonial merchant, at his pretty cottage and gardens on the MerriCreek, between four and five miles out by the Sydney-road, I divergedwestwards from the purely bush track which as yet constituted that mainhighway of the future Victoria. My object was to escape the swampyvicinities of Brunswick, a village about three miles out of town, consisting for a number of years of three small brick cottages, adventurously rather than profitably built by an early speculator. Withfirm footing and under a bright moon, I had a pleasant walk through whatis now the beautiful Royal Park, when, judging that I must be nearingMelbourne, I perceived quite a number of lights ahead. There were as yetno public lights to scattered little Melbourne in those early days, although the new corporation, elected the year before, had got to workby this time. So, what could it all be? I was not long in suspense. Itcould only be a native encampment, and I was soon in its midst. Thenatives at a distance, especially in the far western direction, werestill at times hostile, but all those who lived near town were alreadyquite peaceful, so that I had no hesitation in now entering theirencampment. I was most cordially received and shown over the differentwigwams, each of which had its fire burning. I was taken specially toone occupied by a poor fellow who, under native war laws, had had hiskidney-fat wrenched out and eaten by his foes. He showed me the wound, which, however, had now healed up. But he himself had never recovered, being sadly weak and death-like, as one who had but little more to dowith this busy world. 

The last great native demonstration near Melbourne, and, indeed, so faras I can recollect, the last of its kind within the colony, took placeabout a mile north-east of the town, in the middle of 1844. This was agrand corrobboree, arranged for amongst themselves by surroundingtribes, including the still considerable tribe of the River Goulburn. This was, as it were, one last aboriginal defiance, hurled in despairfrom the expiring native cause against the too-victorious colonialinvasion. We of the town had heard of the proposed exhibition, and many, including myself, went out to see it. There were present seven hundredaborigines of all ages and both sexes. The performances were chiefly bythe younger men, in bands of fifties, for the respective tribes, whilethe females, in lines by themselves, beat the time, and gave what theyno doubt considered to be music. 

EARLY CIVILIZING DIFFICULTIES. 

"He loves his own barn betterThan he loves our house. "--First Part Henry IV. 

Up to that time, and for some time longer, the religious conversion ofthese natives was regarded as hopeless, so deeply "bred in blood andbone" was aboriginal character. Consequently all the earlier missionswere abandoned in utter despair, with only one exception, that of theMoravians, which, in faith and duty continuing the work, was at lengthrewarded with success. Naturally some few, especially amongst the young, were less severely "native" than the rest, and these were more or lessgained. But the change came with the next generation, "born in thepurple" of surrounding colonial life. The blood and bone had beenpartially neutralized, and this is still more the result of yet anothergeneration that has followed, so that, in spite of the black skin, themissionary now deals with natures much more amenable to his teachings. 

A remarkable illustration of aboriginal tenacity, which, however, I amquoting only from memory, occurred in South Australia. Two aboriginalchildren, separated from babyhood from aboriginal life, were trained andeducated like colonists. For the earlier years little difference wasnoticed, but as they advanced into boyhood some restlessness becameevident. When, on one occasion, a native tribe, presumably their own, happened to be near Adelaide, these children, who had either seen themor heard of them, made their escape at the earliest opportunity, and, having reached the native camp, at once threw off the habiliments ofcivilization, and never after showed any disposition to return to theconditions they had so summarily rejected. 

"THE BEACH" (NOW PORT MELBOURNE). 

"Thinking of the days that are no more. "--Tennyson. 

At the time of my arrival, all Melbourne-bound passengers were put outby their respective ships' boats upon that part of the northern beach ofPort Phillip that was nearest to Melbourne, whence, in straggling lines, as they best could in hot winds, they trod a bush track of their ownmaking, which, about a mile and a half long, brought them to a punt orlittle boat just above "The Falls, " where the owner made a good livingat 3 pence a head for the half-minute's passage. This debarkation placegot to be called, par excellence, "The Beach. " It consisted already oftwo public-houses, kept respectively by Liardet and Lingham. Both wererespectable people in their way, but the first was also a character. Ofgood family connection, he had enjoyed a life of endless adventure, which, however, had never seemed any more to elevate him by fortune thanto depress him by its reverse. He was a kind of roving Garibaldi, minus, indeed, the hero's war-paint and the Italian unity, but with all hisfrankness and indomitable resource. Having a family of active youngsons, he secured the boating of "the Beach" as well as the other thing. But his untold riches of experience seemed never to condescend todevelop into riches of mere money--and perhaps without one pang ofregret to his versatile and resourceful mind. 

This Beach was a sterile spot, afterwards fittingly called Sandridge, and presented so little inducement to occupancy that these twopublic-houses were the whole of it till well on to the days of gold. Then The Beach awoke to its destinies. When the Melbourne and Hobson'sBay railway was projected, in 1852, there were already a good fewhouses, mostly wooden, straggling along either side of the original bushtrack. Then arose the respectable suburb of Sandridge, to be finallysuperseded by the municipality of Port Melbourne, which, with its mayorand corporation, can now enter the London market with its own loanissues. 

The only other indigenous feature of this somewhat featureless Beachwhich I recollect was a little virulently salt lagoon, situated incomplete isolation near the Bay, and only some hundred yards on theright-hand side of the track to Melbourne. We all knew it was there, butit had extremely few visitors, owing to its unapproachable surroundingof bushes, and its bad repute from a countless guard of huge andferocious mosquitos. Without outlet for its extra-briny waters, and inits desolate solitude, it might have aspired to be a sort of tiny DeadSea. With the advance of Sandridge this evil-omened southern Avernuscame in for better consideration, and by 1854, with a cutting into theBay, it had become a ready-made boat haven. The Melbourne maps now showme that it must have reached still higher destinies. 

EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-51. 

"Will Fortune never come with both hands full?"--Second Part Henry IV. 

"The weakest go to the wall. "--Romeo and Juliet. 

But "it's better to scheme than to slumber. "--J. Brunton Stephens, Queensland. 

"Sweet are the uses of adversity. "--As You Like It. 

When Fawkner, in August, 1835, following Batman's example of theprevious May, organized and sent forth his party from Launceston toexplore and colonize Port Phillip, his instruction was that they shouldsquat down for a home only where there was adequate fresh water. When, in their cruising about to that end, the party entered the Yarra at theBay's head, ascended its roundabout course, and found ample water todrink above "the Falls, " they at once disembarked there, and there inconsequence arose Melbourne. Fawkner, following in October, confirmedthe choice, and with his characteristic energy commenced the work ofcolonization. The immediate needs decide many things "for better, forworse. " A good many have since thought that this has been a costly andinconvenient site for the colony's capital, and that that ofWilliamstown, with its healthful level, like New York, might have beenbetter, and, still better than either, Geelong, with its beautifulready-made harbour, its immediate background of rich soil, and itsdirect access to all the superior capabilities of the west andnorth-west. But there Melbourne is, and in spite of all obstacles it isalready the prominent city of the Southern Hemisphere, and Fawkner isjustly its father. When Melbourne's father died, now a good many yearsago, and with not a few of the admitted honours and merits of a long, laborious, and useful life, I sent authority to friends there tosubscribe for me to the inevitable monument. But my offered money wasnever demanded, and therefore I fear that the living busy tide of such ahost of sons has crowded out the memory of the dead parent. 

A vision of earliest Melbourne rises before me. Allotment speculatorswere bound, within moderate time, to construct a "dwelling" on theirpurchase, and in some cases these were made with honest intention, as inthe two adjacent half-acres of Mr. James Smith and Mr. Skene Craig inwest Collins-street. But in most cases these coerced structures wereonly shams, which disappeared right early. The only "buildings" on agood many sections, that are now central and almost priceless, werepost-and-rail fences, somewhat dilapidated at places by our license ofjumping over them for a short diagonal to adjacent streets. 

Let me try to recall the Melbourne of 1840, as it looked in that year, the year of my arrival. In the first place I must protest against themeagre view given some years ago in the "Illustrated London News", froma sketch by Mossman, an early colonist of my acquaintance, and copiedinto the lively and pleasant volume of my esteemed friend, Miss IsabellaBird (now Mrs. Bishop). It may be true as far as it goes, but it is onlythe Western Market square, which had hardly one-thirtieth part of thatyear's Melbourne. At the close of 1840 there were between three and fourthousand of population, although perhaps one-fourth of these, who hadbeen recently shot out of emigrant ships, were merely waiting foremployment or settlement. The whole District had about nine thousand. Curiously enough, Melbourne (including suburbs) has always had aboutone-third of the total colonial population, while Sydney and Adelaiderespectively have been much the same. But this naturally comes of a vastinterior behind, which has practically only the one outlet. In NewZealand, on the other hand, the long strip of land, with the sea near toevery part, calls into being a number of small capitals. The latter arethe immediate facilities; but, in the other case, the ultimate creationof a surpassingly great city, with all its powerful concentration ofresource, seems on the whole the more promising for a country's advancein all the interests of human life. The latest returns for the end oflast year (1887) give 392, 000 people to Melbourne, in a total for thecolony of 1, 033, 000. 

Taking central Collins-street, which was then, and I suppose is still, the chief seat of business, and beginning with "The Shakespeare, " at themarket corner, where originally Fawkner opened the first public-house, and proceeding eastwards to Swanston-street, there was a good sprinklingof brick-built offices, stores, and shops, including Kerr and Holmes, instationery; Drummond's grocery (wooden), Turnbull, Orr and Co. , Forsyth's druggery, the Imperial Inn, Pittman, Dinwoodie's saddlery, Townend's corner (wooden), George James's wine office and house, and theill-fortuned Port Phillip Bank. Returning by the other side were Hood, chemist; Cashmore, draper; Carson, shoemaker; J. M. Chisholm and theBenjamins, soft goods; the hardware shop of William Witton, a leadingWesleyan, his Wesleyan Church, and the Bank of Australasia, whichtowered up, prince of the small squad. To the far east, on the southside, was our worthy Dr. Howitt's good house and garden. On the otherside were some few small brick dwellings. One was occupied byDeputy-Assistant Commissary General Erskine. In another was Dr. Hobson, whose untimely death was an early grief to our small society, unable tospare such lives. He was the friend and correspondent of Professor Owen, and supplied the Prince of Science with curious data of the strange, andthen but scantily known, Australian fauna, from the platypus, at thehead of modern wonders, back to the earliest marsupialdom of the fossilworld. 

The Reverend Alexander Morison's Independent Church and adjacent mansecame next. The Scots Church, lower down, of which the Reverend JamesForbes was minister, was then being built. Not till the next year wasthe creditably large Mechanics' Institute begun. A good story is told ofit, characteristic of the earlier flourish of the times. Mr. P. W. Welsh, then the leading merchant, had offered to subscribe so largely that thecommittee took offence at such vain presumption, and limitedsubscriptions to more modest sums. 

Returning to the market place, and taking its eastern side, was a smallnest of early merchants--E. M. Sayers, whose stores my firm bought eightyears later; Watson and Wight; Were Brothers, whose senior, thewell-known Mr. Jonathan Binns Were, was always, under all fortunes, aprominent and influential merchant and citizen; W. And H. Barnes andCo. , and perhaps one or two more. But as the buildings are not given inMossman's sketch, they probably belong to the end of the year, orpossibly tide over into 1841. Towards the foot of the market slope thefirst Custom House was being built, and of that dismal, dark-brownindurated sandstone, of which other places--St. James's Church, the oldgaol, etc. --were also built, because it was so near at hand. 

Sweeping now round to the west side we come to the good store andresidence belonging to J. F. Strachan, of Geelong, and managed by F. Nodin, who was quite a character of the time, with his bustling form, and face ever full of business, whether business were full or not. Hewould always accept his bills in red ink, and, as the joke goes, thebills being good, the Nodin manner was supposed to help even thenon-Nodin bills through at the "Australasia. " At the corner opposite theShakespeare was the Melbourne Auction Company, where I first met my mostworthy old friend, George Sinclair Brodie, so well known for ten yearsafter as the leading Melbourne auctioneer, or rather "broker, " for thatis nearer the home equivalent. He was the salesman, while a genial andamusing good fellow, John Carey, from Guernsey, was manager. The companyhad just paid 20 per cent dividend--the first as well as the last inthat way. In the jolly days up to that time every buyer got credit, andthere was plenty of business; but when the times changed the creditbills were not met, and so the poor M. A. C. , which had as usualguaranteed them, got cleaned out. 

Down Collins-street once more, we pass the primitive wooden cottageresidence of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, whose family of fine daughters werealready all married--Mrs. D. S. Campbell, Mrs. R. Russell, Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Hutton--excepting the youngest, then a school-girl, afterwardsmarried to Nantes, of Geelong, D. S. Campbell's partner. Then came Craigand Broadfoot's stores, and Alison and Knight's flour mills. At the endwas pretty green Batman's Hill, which has since been remorselesslysacrificed for the great railway terminus. Batman's original woodenhouse on the southern slope was, after his early death, occupied as theGovernment offices by Mr. La Trobe, and this homely tenement did suchhigh duties for no small subsequent term. Down hereabout was also aconspicuous line of five little wooden cottages, called Roach-terrace, after Captain Roach, another very early colonist, which were each let at5 pounds a week, although they would not have brought half that money bythe year at home. Returning on the other side was St. James's Church, incharge of the Reverend Mr. Thomson, of most sociable memory, within itsample open area, and, further on, the notorious Lamb Inn. 

For the rest of Melbourne of 1840 I must be content with one generalsketch. Manton's Mills had arisen at the lower end of "the wharf, " suchas it then was. Flinders-street had as yet but little in it. JamesJackson, afterwards Jackson, Rae and Company, was already there. Aboutthe middle was the cottage of P. W. Welsh, prior to his removing to SouthYarra; and there, as the story goes again, Mrs. Welsh gave her "FiveHundred Pound Party, " but having unfortunately omitted Arden, the editorof the "Gazette", in the invitations, he was left free to denounce sobad an example of extravagance. Bourke-street had an incongruousgrouping, including the well-known Kirk's Bazaar, and the superbcottage, for its time, of Mr. Carrington, the solicitor; and in LittleBourke-street was Mr. Condell's brewery. At the far east end was Mr. Porter's good cottage, and further on, Mr. La Trobe's bijou residence, in its pretty grounds, which, although only of wood and of the smallestdimensions, he stuck to until his final leave in 1854. The lanes, orLittle Flinders and Collins streets, were already fairly filled, as theland there was much cheaper. In the former were Heap and Grice'soffices, and the Adelphi Hotel, approaching the Lamb Inn in noisyrepute. The latter had Bells and Buchanan, the Post-Office under D. Kelsh, and, where Elizabeth-street crossed, G. Lovell and Company andCampbell and Woolley. The Catholic Church in Lonsdale-street was underconstruction, and on the western brow was Mr. Abrahams's good house, with his two pretty girl children, one of whom was in succession Mrs. Pike, Mrs. Gray, and Mrs. Williams, and is still alive, with acreditable total of family. Beyond was the trackless bush, excepting thebush tracks to Sydney, and in the Flemington and Keilor direction. Butoutside the town were already several suburbs, of which Collingwood wasthe largest, having the residences of John Hunter Patterson and otherleading early colonists. 

I used to traverse not a few dreary empty allotments in the hot summersun to reach the stores of my friend the Honourable James Graham, whosedwelling and business place in Russell, by Bourke street, seemed thenquite far out of the village, but is since in the very heart of thegreat city. The course of values in the colony, early and late, is wellillustrated by this example. The allotment originally belonged to ourfriend in common, S. A. Donaldson, of Sydney, who had bought for somenominal price at the Government sale in 1837. He bought many other lotsthereabout, and towards Collingwood, further east and north; and afterthe gold discoveries, he told me pathetically, oftener than once, thathis impatience to sell had lost him the status and happiness--whateverthe latter might be--of a millionaire. Donaldson had let this place, with its house, stores, etc. , good as these things went then, to Graham, at 500 pounds a year. This was about 1838-9, when everything in businessways was rolling jollily upwards. But some few years afterwards thelandlord's attorneys, William Ryrie and myself, had to reduce the rentto either 100 or 50 pounds--I think the latter. Some years later, Grahampurchased at 2, 000 pounds, and it is understood has lately resold atsomething approaching a quarter of a million. As these matters are alllocally so well known, I feel that, as with wills at Doctor's Commons, Itread upon no toes in such useful illustrations. 

I arrived just to witness the last glories of the famous champagnelunches, which prefaced the auction sales of these early days, andrepeatedly I saw in his element Charles Williams, the earliest of histrade. If such lunches cost 40 pounds, which was given me as a moderateaverage, who suffered, argued their justifiers, if the exhilaration theyproduced gave 400 pounds more to the net proceeds? The brisk liquorappreciably blew up the prices, as the same lots, cut up and rearranged, would come again and yet again under the hammer. Many a bullock-droverwould pull up on passing the auction room or tent, and quaff off half abottle to the good health of all concerned in such liberality. Onerespectable old colonist was said to have almost lived on those lunchesin the dear early times, so regularly did he encourage and patronizethem. The bidding public were regaled before the sale, but theauctioneer and his clients after--a plan which made very much the betterbusiness, as might have been seen by the effects in either case. Williams began with 4, 000 pounds a year profits, which I dare say wenton to the rate of 10, 000 pounds for the brief term. He was justfinishing what, for those times, was a fine villa on the Yarra-bank, beyond Richmond, when the rapidly receding tide left him, as well asmany others, stranded. 

Great gum-tree stumps were grievously prevalent, alike in Melbournestreets and allotments. Swanston-street was special in this way, andthey long flourished upon allotments about where the city hall at firststood. One huge stump, just touching the Collins-street line where theCriterion Hotel was afterwards built, long held defiant existence, thewooden building of the time having deviated to go round it. When atlength the lot came to be sold by Mr. James Purves, a well-known earlyallotment-monger, whom I recollect on this occasion descanting on thefuture prospects of so central a site, the buyer had the toolong-endured enemy attacked and extirpated. 

THE MELBOURNE CORPORATION, 1842. 

"When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy winter's field. "--Shakespeare, Sonnet 2. 

The corporation arose towards the end of 1842, and then the anti-stumpwarfare began. My friend Henry Condell, like so many other early birds aTasmanian (a Vandemonian was the ill-omened name at that time), was thefirst mayor. The times were bad, and the shilling rating caused a growl, but the new body held its way. John Charles King, an Ulster man, and ofgood abilities, was the first town clerk. His successor, William Kerr, had greater abilities, but not equal method and activity. Both werestrong Orangemen--a feeling, however, for which this colonial ground wasnot favourable. 

The bane and bottomless deep for the corporation's narrow budget wasElizabeth-street, where a little "casual" called "The Williams, " of amile's length, from the hardly perceptible hollows of the present RoyalPark, played sad havoc at times with the unmade street. It had scoopedout a course throughout, almost warranting the title of a gully, and atTownend's corner we needed a good long plank by way of a bridge. At theupper end of the street was a nest of deep channels which damaged dailyfor years the springs and vehicles of the citizens. The more knowing ofus who lived northwards dodged these evils by a particular roundaboutvia Swanston-street. Up almost to gold diggings and VictorianParliaments did the great Sydney-road begin thus inauspiciously, andhardly less pertinaciously disconcerting was the Brunswick swamp, threemiles further on. Melbourne missed a great chance in filling up with astreet this troublesome, and, as a street, unhealthy hollow. Dr. Howittused to tell me he never could cure a patient, resident there, who hadbecome seriously unwell. A reservation of the natural grass andgum-trees between Queen and Swanston streets would have redeemedMelbourne up to the first rank of urban scenic effect, and the riotousWilliams might, with entire usefulness, have subsided into a successionof ornamental lakes and fish ponds. 

EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE. 

"Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness. "--Cowper. 

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. "-Gray. 

In 1844 I lived in a little cottage at South Yarra, on the Dandenong orGardiner's Creek-road, then only a bush track, although considerablytrodden. I had not many neighbours. Mr. Jackson, at the far end, hadbought Toorak, but not yet built upon it; and the near end was graced byMr. R. H. Browne's pretty villa, in its ample grounds, sold shortlybefore to Major Davidson, and constituting the palace of its time alongthe road. There was a trackless forest opposite us, and more than once Imissed my way in trying to make a straight cut to the present St. Kilda. One Sunday morning I made a discovery--a small sheet of water, glittering in the sunshine, and I long gazed admiringly on the countlessinsects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nordeep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasionafterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only aswamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way inPrahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort of centralreserve of the ever-rising Prahran. But still later it was drained offand turned about its business, as either a profitless nuisance, or a toocostly ornamentation: sic transit, etc. 

The following year, 1845, in which my worthy old friend Alfred Rossjoined me in business in the Market-square, then a place of the verysmallest pretensions compared to now, I rented, with him, the allotmentnext beyond the Major's. It had been vacant since its previous occupancythree years before by Mr. P. W. Welsh, already spoken of--one of theearliest and largest, best known, and least fortunate of Melbourne'searly merchants. That the bad times that had brought many of us to theground had then not quite passed, although they had by this timeevidently "bottomed, " may be judged by the fact that we got a fairlyhabitable large cottage, with twenty-five picturesque acres, and theremains, such as they were, of a garden, for 30 pounds a year. Fiveyears earlier some thousands a year would have been needed to live insuch a place. Eight years later it was worth, for mere site value, probably 30, 000 pounds. I am afraid to say what it may now be worth. Probably most of it is long ago "cut up" into streets and town lots, like "Major Davidson's paddock" alongside, which, consisting of sometwelve acres next the Dandenong-road, realized in 1854, under golddiscovery stimulus, no less than 17, 000 pounds. Such are a few specimensof colonial ups and downs!

Here, too, we made acquaintance, pleasant and long protracted, with ourneighbours, the gallant Major--since Colonel--Davidson, his quiet andamiable wife, and "Missie, " as she was called, their only child, then ofseven years, but in due time a surpassingly accomplished young lady, whowas married to the son of Colonel Anderson, and still survives inLondon. She has confessed to me since that she used then to look up tome with great awe and regard--not merely, I hope, because I was so muchthe senior. 

Only one other incident here. One dark night, towards the fall ofsummer, detained by business longer than usual, we lost our way as wewalked home, distance hardly two miles. After some "dandering" about, inorder to strike the corner of Major Davidson's fence, which was as goodto us as at home, we caught glimpse of a light, which in that place weknew must be a stranger. Then, as we approached, there were figures andvoices. Who should this be but old Liardet from The Beach, with asection of his family, who, having an outing in Melbourne, had, likeourselves, stayed too late, and were now hopelessly at sea, and far outof their track in groping their way back. They offered us a share ofquarters, as it seemed useless to try the pathless forest any longer. But we were too sure of our whereabouts to give up the game so easily, and after some more perambulating we struck the fence. 

In spite of the attractions and economies of Tempe--for that, I think, was the name it ambitiously held--we quitted South Yarra within the sameyear for a still greater bargain and temptation in the oppositedirection, where I had just then the chance of picking up, "at an oldsong, " the pretty cottage previously occupied by Mr. Locke, on the MerriCreek, four miles north by the Sydney-road. Besides the presentablecottage, there was a large, well-stocked garden, at enacre cultivationfield, and a small natural park (vulgarly, paddock), in all 46 acres, for 50 pounds, plus 300 pounds of inevitable mortgage. I called itMaryfield, after my parental home in Edinburgh, and revelled in grapes, plums, and peaches, and much other country happiness. When a host ofvisitors, on a bright summer day, would rather strain the narrow larder, I used to divert the party into the garden, where they could completetheir meal, although at times with inconvenient demand, from the malesection at least, upon the brandy. When, in 1854, I re-sold "the lot" toMr. David Moore, under the heavy temptation of 6, 000 pounds, he took thewarrantable liberty of a slight nominal alteration to Moorefield, whileat the same time he erased the poor old cottage for something moreaccordant with great golden Victoria. 

In this case I had a rather striking illustration of the oldland-transfer and other law costs incubus from which my late friend SirR. R. Torrens has so effectually relieved these colonies; and that, too, as I believe, owing to the multiplied transactions, without any realdetriment to our many legal friends. Pounds were pounds in thoseeconomy-needing times, and as the Savings Bank had, after a thoroughoverhaul, accepted the title before giving its loan, I declared myselfperfectly satisfied to proceed at once to the conveyance. But no, thatwas impossible. The courtesies, the practice, the established rights, inshort, of ancient custom required all to be done over again, in attestedcopies of title, draughts of title as to defects for counsel's opinion, and so on, even if all the paper and verbiage were to go straight to thewaste-basket; and thus a not over convenient bill of about 70 pounds wasrolled up. But I must at the same time bear in mind that this heavy dragapplied to all landed property, restricting business in it and reducingits value. Had Torrens's Act been then in action, I could not possibly, with the resulting higher value of land, have secured my bargain at thefifty pounds, probably not even at fifty plus the seventy. 

THE EARLY SQUATTING TIMES. 

"Our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. "--As You Like It. 

The title "Victoria" did not come to us until, on 1st July, 1851, webloomed into an independent colony, having succeeded, after a good dealof struggle and contention, in getting separated from our mother, NewSouth Wales, who complimented us by being very loath, and even angry, that so very promising a child should be detached from her. We had begunas the Southern or Port Phillip District of that spacious colony, whichhad already dropped South Australia, and eight years afterwards was tolose yet another arm in Queensland. 

I recall with interest and pleasure some early trips into the interior, when it was in a very different condition from now, when the indigenousreigned almost uninvaded throughout, and when aboriginal natives were inmany places as plentiful as colonists. For some years squatting life wasthe predominant or rather all but the sole feature of the interiorbeyond Melbourne. The little capital was at first always called "thesettlement"--a distinctive title, however, which was just expiring whenI arrived. But, for some years after, the term "settler" always meant asquatter, and not a farmer, as might be supposed, with his "settled" orfee-simple home. 

My first trip to the interior was, towards the end of 1841, to the sheepstation of my old friend Sam Jackson, situated on the Deep Creek, seventeen miles northward from Melbourne. There I first tasted damperand saw the novelties of squatting life. Samuel, and his brotherWilliam, nicknamed for some reason "The General, " were of the veryearliest from "over the straits, " William having been one of the partyorganized and sent over in August, 1835, by Fawkner. Sam followed soonafter, and they "took up" this station on the Deep Creek, under thenatural impression that to be so near "the settlement" must be anadvantage. They soon found it otherwise for more than one reason. Theconstant tramp of sheep passing over their "run" to go beyond themexposed their ground to infection, especially from scab. And they wereexposed in another way hardly less costly and far more annoying; forevery "traveller, " whether bond fide or not, claimed quarters at theJacksons', and made the sheep disappear of a hungry morning withmarvellous rapidity, and at a time when, with the demand for live stockto fill up the empty country, their value had risen to 40 shillings eachand upwards. "The General" had mainly to sustain this attack, as hisbrother was generally in Melbourne practising professionally as anarchitect, and was engaged at that very time in building the Scots'Church in Collins-street. Naturally enough, he would fain have turnedsomewhat the flank of this invading host; but, without being successful, his efforts only got him the name of "Hungry Jackson. "

Later on, I met further variety of early squatting life in a trip to theWerribee Plains, where some friends, the Pinkertons from Glasgow, andMr. James Sceales, late merchant and Chief Magistrate of Leith, hadtheir respective stations. On those vast plains, extending westwards 30to 40 miles, from Melbourne to the Anakies, or Station Peak, the slightand scattered squatting invasion had hardly disturbed anywhere theindigenous features. Thus over a vast solitude we revelled in much ofspecially Australian scenery, particularly that of tortuous and deeplyexcavated "creeks, " with their chains of ponds or waterholes, therunning stream mostly dried up--indeed sometimes for whole yearstogether--but all characterized, more or less, by irresistible rushesafter heavy rains, sweeping all before them, including not seldom thesheep, and even the homestead, of the incautious or inexperiencedsettler. I have a striking contrast in store when I revisit thoseplains, which now resound to the traffic of road and railway, and to thebusy hum of many towns and villages and of farming and gardening life. 

As early as 1842, I paid a pleasant visit to pretty little Geelong, andthence on to beautiful and diversified, but then almost empty, Colac, meeting, at either one or other place, Mr. Duncan Hoyle and his twosisters; the Messrs. Hardie, of Leith, who were then or after thehusbands respectively of these ladies; Messrs. Hugh and Andrew Murray, and Mr. Augustus Morris, of Colac, who entertained us hospitably at "thehuts"--as station homesteads were then humbly designated--and who pouredout upon us interminable colonial experiences in a clear, penetratingvoice from which there was no escape. But we did not wish to escape, andso we enjoyed everything. 

Mr. Morris, who is now a prominent and useful man in Sydney, came earlyfrom "across the Straits" with the tide, and settled here, and aftersome few years, passed through rather trying times, which were notperhaps quite so profitable as he expected, he was induced to "sell out"to the famous Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who, arriving unexpectedly just beforethis time from London in his fine yacht, had descended upon quiet, plodding Melbourne like a Dives of unfathomable wealth. He had made ahasty run up to Colac, seen and appreciated Morris, bought him out, andleft him in charge of this first of many purchases of the great"Australian Wool Company, " or whatever other title was to suit the greatschemes of this busy head which had turned up amongst us. Mr. Boyd'smain idea of buying up squatting property during the reaction sure tofollow the early speculation excitement of 1837 to 1840 was no badbusiness project, or at all unskilfully formed. He gave Morris 7shillings a head for his sheep. But the fall went on continuously into1844, so that Boyd effected large purchases at rates as low, in somecases, in the Sydney district, as even one shilling a head, besidescattle and horses at relatively the same. The result, however, was sadand terrible. It was confusion and failure, and mainly for this simplereason--that human nature, left practically uncontrolled, will nevergive the due care and attention to interests which are only those ofother people. 

He had got up a bank specially for the supply of all the needed fundsfor his grand schemes, thus securing, as he put it, an independentlylarge business for that institution. The chief shareholders knew, ormight have known, the character of their prospects. They all expectedunusual profits under the circumstances, and might possibly have gotthem. Under this pleasant result they would have credited chiefly theirown sagacious courage. But instead they realized most severe loss, andthen, with angry unanimity, they condemned, and would have prosecuted, Boyd. Wrath fell upon the younger brother, Mark, who had stayed at home, and who, I think, had honestly but vainly striven to keep anintelligible reckoning out of the confusing advices of his senior'svarious and huge money-absorbing speculations. There was a saduncertainty about Mr. Boyd's ending. The local representatives, for thetime, of the Royal Bank of Australia had closed accounts with him in thebest way they could, allowing him to leave Sydney with his yacht andseveral friends. He visited the Californian diggings, and afterwardstook a cruise among the Pacific Islands. He landed on one of them, asthough for some shooting, but was never either seen or heard of more. 

Another pleasant trip about this time was to Yering, the Ryries'station, situated nearly half-way up to the cool mountainous sources ofthe River Yarra. This had already been made a charming home to anycontented mind, satisfied to fall back upon country resources. It was acattle station, for, in the thickly wooded hills, hollows, and flatsabout sheep could not live--at least, to any purpose--and the homesteadhad the importance of a little straggling street, with the main dwellingat the top, as the end of a cul-de-sac, and the dairy and what not inmarshalled line below. We revelled in pastoral abundance. I wanderedinto the adjacent woods, experiencing the sense of overpowering grandeuramidst their vast solitudes, with the gum-trees rising straight above mewith colossal stems, not seldom 300 feet and more in height, and 100feet, or even much more, from the ground without a branch. When this"redgum" has elbow room, it expands in all variety of form, attaining infavouring circumstances vast dimensions, as in one example met with inthe Dandenong Ranges, which measured 480 feet in height. But in thisYering case, crowded as they were impoverishingly together upon flats ofthe river, they did not bulk out into such dimensions, but they shot upside by side, straight as arrows, rivals en route to the clouds. Sadchanges came to Yering's happy and hospitable owners since, for, likemany others, they had to "realize" in the bad times, and to quit a mostpleasant home. But Yering itself has thriven, and has since advancedinto a great wine-producing district, whose wines Mr. De Castella, itslater owner, has made to carry prizes even at European Exhibitions. 

EARLY WESTERN VICTORIA ("AUSTRALIA FELIX"). 

"Oh! 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine. "--Love's Labour Lost. 

"He makes a July day short as December. "--Winter's Tale. 

But my chief excursions, which have left a pleasantly vivid recollectionof early colonizing life, were made to the far west--the one in 1844, right through to the Glenelg; the other the year after, to thenewly-founded township of Warrnambool. The first of these was undertakenpartly on business in the interests of the Boyd stations lately formedabout Eumerella, a place of evil repute then as to the native hostility. I had previously chanced to "chum" with Boyd's Port Phillip manager, Mr. Robert Fennell, a young fellow as well-looked, gentlemanly, and pleasantas anyone could meet with, and with whom I both officed and housed tomutual satisfaction for two years, until his marriage with a daughter ofJohn Batman. And thus I came in for some few of the many Boydcommissions that were flying freely about in those years, and which werenot at all unacceptable to any of us in that time of small things. Iafterwards, as I have pleasure in recording, received the hospitalitiesof the great commission-maker in his generously open house at Sydney. 

Once more, in passing westwards, I was at Colac. It was the month ofJune (midwinter), but the country, with its lake, was not the lessbeautiful in the universal green. Excepting the partial post-and-railbarricade of my friend William Robertson's 5, 000 acres of purchasedland, there was nothing all around but free and open squatting. On everyside was the hardly yet disturbed indigenous aspect. Pelicans flewaloft, tall "adjutants" stalked about here and there, and cockatoosscreeched everywhere. One of the curious green knolls, so common there, was so thickly covered with the yellow-crested white cockatoo as to givethe look of a cap of snow. 

Leaving Morris's huts, I made for another Boyd station, in the famousfar west Eumerella district. There were many beauties around, for I hadentered Mitchell's "Australia Felix"--its extreme borders, to be sure, but the most beautiful of it all. My nag was more than ever "in clover, "and we wandered on through marvels upon marvels of remarkable and richlyfertile country. The country was all but empty as I now coursed throughit, but no amount of colonization could much alter its most strikingscenery, geological and general. I had some sense of awe and mystery asI gazed down into a sort of "Dead Sea" depths at the southern end ofsalt, salt Korangamite, and then up at the abruptly towering "StonyRises, " capped by volcanic Porndon in my near vicinity. I passed theManifolds', where a sprinkling of fat cattle left hardly an impressionon the superabounding grass. 

Eumerella, or rather the Boyd fragment of that large, rich, and variedcattle area, was in charge of a versatile youth of the name of Craufurd, of a good Scotch family, whom, to the great amusement of my friendFennell, I re-christened as Squire Hopeless, owing to his utternonconformability to the monotonies of civilized life. I wassufficiently versed in geology to be aware of the wonders around me, sowe were soon off over the Stony Rises to Mount Eeles, only a few milesaway, which, like another Porndon, raised its not lofty butmysterious-looking head to arouse our curiosity. We were guided latterlyby a well-beaten native track, for this seemed a favourite walk of theaborigines. Our trip was not without danger, for the aboriginalrelations had been anything but of that peacefulness which characterizedthe Melbourne vicinities; but we made up a station detachment under aremarkably fine strong young fellow called Wells, of Tasmanian birth, and equal, in an emergency, to six or a dozen natives for his own share. We saw nothing of natives, however, and were rewarded with wonders ofgeology. The little Mount Eeles cone surmounted, we looked far down intoa vast crater of miles in circuit, whose sharp-ridged, angry, unsettled-looking sides could barely convince us that we looked upon anextinct volcano. Hardly did its aspect reach the solid quiet of theVesuvian interior, as described by some scanty classic records, prior tothe grand, sudden, entirely unexpected outburst of the Pompeiianeruption. Let the crowds of the future Pompeiis and Herculaneums ofVictoria look out, for their Vesuvius may some day play havoc, withsimilar treachery. 

We were introduced early to old Gorrie and his nephew McGregor, twodoughty Scots, famous--and too famous--in the native hostilities of thelast year or two--indeed, ever since these fine runs were taken up. Theaboriginal of so fine a country was, at any rate, a primus inter paresof his race, and no way to be despised. The white invaders sufferedheavily, in property at least, if not much in their own lives, at thehands of the invaded. Which side was in fault would have been a hardknot to unravel, and probably few on either side troubled themselvesmuch to undo it. Old Gorrie was ever in the thick of war, and duty andinclination went cordially together. He was a cool and terrible shot, and had a terribly long and forcibly arguing rifle. The story goes that, when a couple of pursued marauders had escaped from one covert, and inwild terror were making for another, he quietly waited till they chancedto come in line, and then sent one bullet through both. But he had hiscautious and adroit way of telling his doings, as he described to ushow, in the turmoil of pursuit, "the gun gaed aff" and "some puircraturs fell. " He had good need, for the authorities had been thoroughlyaroused by the occasional atrocities that were sure to arise out of thestrong mutual antipathies of the case; and on one occasion, for whatseemed a signal case of this kind, involving the massacre of unresistingwomen as well as men, five colonists were arrested and brought to trial, and would certainly have "swung for it" had there not been someinadequacy of direct evidence. 

The next station, Dunmore, was already quite famed for its patternhomestead. I entered its hospitable doorway with a sense of comfort andof the climax of possible squatting attainments such as had never beenapproached before. "Campbell, McKnight, and Irvine, " "brither Scots"all, and all of them at home at the time, were of the best company, classic or otherwise, alike to one another and to all visitors. Janet, from the kitchen, too, sent us the best oatcakes and other Scotch fare. I always fancy now that such cooks must be called Janet, from livelyremembrance of the savoury hotch-potch and sheeps' head of another Janetat old Robert Sutherland's, at Egham. 

Thence I reached "Burchetts', of the Emus, " less finished, indeed, buthardly less attractive. They were business clients of my pleasant oldfriend Charles Barnes, whose name I gave as my pass, with, however, butlittle need in those open-door days. This was a sheep station, as it wasa drier locality, the other stations having been more suited for cattle. We sat joyously chatting in the bright midwinter sunshine. The air wasredolent of humour, for which the Burchetts had a name. One of them wasrather deaf--indeed very deaf, but when he did pick up the currentsubject, he seldom failed to contribute good sauce. With regret Iremounted next morning, for with business finished in this direction, Iwas resolved to push on to the Glenelg, as I wished to see throughVictoria westwards while I had the opportunity. So I turned my steednorth for the Wannon. 

I struck a little southern tributary of that pretty grass-banked river, and saw a noteworthy as well as a quite Australian sight. Some recentslight rains had just set the tiny creek in motion, and it was now inthe act of filling up a previously quite dry waterhole. I watched thetiny stream till it filled up this hole, and then saw it duly into thenext, only a couple of hundred yards off. There was a long succession ofthese holes before it, generally so precisely rounded and scooped out asto give the idea of human intervention, only that the human beings werenowhere visible there as yet. Then I came down upon the Wannon, incontinuous admiration of the rolling hills on either side, grass-coveredto the very tops. One part of the Wannon vale here is remarkable for thedeep, almost blood-redness of its rich soil, a hue which seemed to comefrom the similarly coloured stone and rock all about. Here I suddenlycame upon a grand spectacle--the falls of the Wannon, which Chevalier'shighly artistic brush has immortalized, along with almost countlessother Australian beauty. The river plunges over a far-projecting floordirect into a volcanic crater, which, although very much less in itsdimensions, was as unmistakable in its character as that of Mount Eeles. The only thing I had to regret as absent from the scene, but a mostimportant factor, was water, for, as far as I recollect, not one dropwas visible over the edge. At flood seasons the spectacle must be grandindeed. 

As evening drew on, causing me to be on the alert for quarters, I espieda rather pretentious homestead, cosily placed in a natural shelterhalf-way up the hillside. This proved to be Mr. Edward Henty's. He wasnot at home, but Mrs. Henty happily was. Young, ladylike, beautiful, shereceived me with that high courtesy which sets one at once at ease bythe flattering impression that in these squatting solitudes it is ratherthe visited than the visitors who are the obliged parties. Ten yearslater I, with my wife, called upon her in Melbourne to renew this earlyacquaintance. She was then, of course, ten years older, but hardly lesscharming. Thirty-four more years have since elapsed, and yet I muststill hope to meet her once more in that country which has become sogreat, and which is, in so special a sense, her own. 

I reached the Glenelg, which, however, I found to be, at or near theWannon junction, hardly better than a big, irregular, ugly ditch. Howcurious!--for not far off, above or below, I might have found great deepwaterholes and picturesque water stretches as sketched by Mitchell. Itook all for granted, and turned back homewards. 

I struck a little north towards Victoria Range, and passed one of mynights with a solitary shepherd in an out-hut, so far and away from allcompanionable life but that of his sheep that I could well realize, inthis extreme case, the dolorous side of squatting. My breakfast was atin of tea without milk, and a hunch of damper of my host's ownbaking--not altogether rejectable in the keen fresh air when one hadnothing else. A sheep could not be killed for two, even if the businesscould afford it. On I went, merrily withal, for it was the heyday ofyouth and strength, making steadily eastwards for the southern extremityof the Grampians, which rose in grand outline before me, forty milesaway. Neither station nor human being came in my road afterwards till Ireached and was rounding Mount Sturgeon, upon whose rocky summit thesetting sun already glinted. I was now upon a good, broad bush track, which must lead to some station. But when? This small side-track to theleft looks as though a hut at least were nearer, and so I diverged intoit. Mile after mile I trotted, as well as the rough track would permit, and when night fell, and for long after, I still pegged away. A dozenmiles right up, within the outer sierra, towards Mount William, broughtme at last to an open glade, where some small piles of "split stuff"showed me at once my mistake. Dodging about till day, thus giving restto my horse, I soon regained my road, and after an hour's further ride, reached Dr. Martin's sheep station, where a pleasant young fellow, Byassby name, who had lost an arm in wars of some kind, and was then incharge, ministered to my wants, and allowed me to take well-nigh thelargest breakfast on record in those parts. 

I must not continue in such detail with the rest of my western tours'incidents, especially as the second was mostly over the same ground asthe first. I dilly reached my last Boyd station, in the pretty andvaried Pyrenees district--a sheep station, then under charge of myfriend James M. Hamilton. Here the hospitalities were equal, but all therest sadly below The Gums, and an infinity underneath Dunmore. ButHamilton promised us compensation in a visit to the more comfortableresidence of a squatting neighbour, Mr. John Allen. The master was notat home, but the mistress received us with squatting welcome. She was ayoung South Australian wife, charming alike in person and manners, andsurrounded by a little troop of children, some with the stamp of her ownbeauty. She died not long afterwards, prematurely cut down, alas! likemany another bright flower in the world's great garden. 

Next year, 1845, I reached Warrnambool, just then commencing its urbanlife with a few straggling small white houses, along the edge of itspretty semicircular bay. I had passed Mounts Noorat and Shadwell, occupied respectively by Mr. Neil Black and Captain Webster, both earlycolonists, and was once more in raptures with the spectacle of almostcontinuously rich soil. I also came upon several round, deep, andmysterious-looking lakes, one of which, with its waters far below me, Idescended to examine with no slight sensation of awe. I was told ofbeautiful and grand coast scenes towards the east and Cape Otway; butthe ways were of Nature's uninviting hardness, and I apprehended a maindifficulty of the Glenmutchkin Railway kind, from want of house or humanbeing to help dependent humanity. I turned, however, the opposite way, to rising Belfast and Port Fairy, and wandered about through the Alisonand Knight, and Rutledge and other acres; amongst cockatoos, as thesmall farmers were there called, observing a soil of unsurpassablerichness, the potatoes and other products, the former particularly, being the finest in the world. The striking new feature of this journeyseemed to me the picturesque and beautiful River Hopkins--beautiful inall but its name! Why give such starched, hard, dot-and-go-one names, when there are Eumerella, Wannon, Doutagalla, Modewarra, Yarra Yarra, and countless other such natural and genial modulations to be had of thenatives for the asking?

The year following, when my dear old friends, Mr. And Mrs. A. M. McCrae, had betaken themselves from hard lines of law to the pleasant variety ofan Arthur Seat cattle station--pleasant to their town visitors atleast--I oftener than once looked in upon them from Melbourne. They hadthe life and adornment of a large family of pretty curly-headed youngboys and girls, some of them with the aristocratic fine black hair andcream-white skin of their accomplished mother. McCrae and I galloped thethirty miles interval, and while crossing and watering at theever-running Cannonook half way, and admiring the varied, almostpark-like vistas among the three gentle hill rises of the bay's easterncoast, we would marvel at the stupidity of Collins in 1803 in abandoningsuch a country. To be sure he chanced to squat on the least inviting ofits varied areas, and this benevolent excuse we confirmed by a rideacross country one day to inspect the spot. All we could see was whatseemed the remnant of a small fireplace. The "cups and saucers" countrywe passed over on the way might be interesting geologically, and evenartistically; but on any dry, hot summer day the look around might notbe enlivening to a new arrival. None the less, Sorrento has since arisenthere--a considerable, lively, and pretty watering-place, as I hear, forwhich the colony's good friend, Mr. George Coppin, has provided, amongstother benefits to it, a regular steam communication. This steam routeincludes another like wonder of progress, Queenscliff, which, at thetime I speak of, only possessed a lighthouse, but is now a breezy andlively crowded and fashionable retreat from the great dusty city ofbusiness and cares to the north. 

SOME NAMES OF MARK IN THE EARLY YEARS. 

"Some are born great; some achieve greatness, And some have greatness thrust upon them. "--Twelfth Night. 

Before endeavouring to give a sketch of our early society and its waysand means, I am fain to pick out a few prominent persons as they flittedbefore me at the time and have stuck to my recollection since. Althoughthey might not all have been in an equal degree interesting, good orgreat in themselves, they were yet men of mark, closely associated invarious ways with our early colonial life, and, like a busy dentist, much in the mouth of their public. By all right and reason, the first ofthese prominent personages is the brotherhood group of the Messrs. Henty. 

THE HENTY FAMILY, AND THE FOUNDATION OF VICTORIA. 

"Let the end try the man. "--2nd Part Henry IV. 

"Great world! Victoria brings thee meat and corn and wine, With richly veined woods, and glittering gold from mine, Fairy web of silken thread, soft thick snowy fleece;Wide room for smiling homes of industry and peace. "--Mrs. H. N. Baker. 

The founder of to-day's great colony of Victoria was Mr. Edward Henty, who landed at Portland Bay from Launceston, with live stock and stores, for the purpose of settlement, on the 19th November, 1834. But in regardto that notable event I prefer to speak of "The Henty Family, " because, in their colonizing efforts they seem to have acted so much with mutualfamily purpose and in mutual help, and because there was a preparatorywork in which the family were all more or less engaged, all leading upto this settlement at Portland, a site which had been selected aftermore than two years of previous adventurous excursions and observationsalong the coasts of Western Victoria and of South Australia. 

The successful settlement of the noble Port Phillip Harbour thefollowing year by Batman and Fawkner caused such general attention andsuch a tide of colonization, that remote Portland was comparativelyoverlooked. For many years, therefore, much less was heard of the Hentysthan of those who had merely followed their steps. In fact, there can bebut little doubt that these latter were first aroused to the colonizingof the vast areas, the all but terra incognita, across the Straits bythe vigorous example set by the Henty family almost from the moment oftheir arrival in Launceston in 1831, and by the reports which theybrought back from time to time of the lands of promise they were openingto public notice in South-Eastern Australia. But now that rail andtelegraph have virtually abolished distance, and familiarized thecentral colonists with the value and beauty of the earliest occupiedWestern areas--the Australia Felix of Mitchell--the Messrs. Henty'sposition has passed more to the front, and their priority beenuniversally acknowledged. 

I was not personally very intimate with any of the Henty family, otherwise I might have had more to say in this sketch. But I have metmost of the brothers repeatedly, and frequently I met James, theMelbourne merchant, who was the eldest, and also William, the lawyer andex-Premier of Tasmania, a most amiable and gentlemanly man, who latterlyresided at Home, where he died, and who often attended the lectures anddiscussions at the Royal Colonial Institute of London. Both of thesebrothers were rather grave and quiet, while Edward and Stephen wereenergetic and lively even beyond most colonists. Francis, now the onlysurvivor of the large family, I met only once, about forty-three yearsago, in the Western District. He was then a handsome and rather slimyoung man, not of the Henty mould, which was rather of the full JohnBull kind, as "Punch" gives him, minus the obesity. But if I may creditthe Melbourne "Illustrateds" in a recent likeness of the last of theVictorian founders, he must have consented, in later life, to drop moreinto the family mould. They were a family of eight sons and onedaughter. Seven of the sons emigrated with their father. They were allmen of mark, above average in mind and physique--men of a presence, whowould have been prominent in any society; altogether, in numbers, inappearance, in circumstances, and in events, quite a remarkable family. 

As I am not writing for history, so as to study completeness in myaccount, but only of personal observations and recollections, I shallnot do more than give a very slight sketch of the emigratory particularsof this family, and my excuse is that these data are so far personal ashaving been told me direct by one or other of the family. The story isstriking, and our descendants may look back with surpassing interest tothe Romulus and Remus of a future Rome which, in the possibilities ofmodern progress, may exceed that of the past. The father, Mr. ThomasHenty, of Sussex, England, took the resolution to emigrate, with hisfamily, to the "Swan River, " as the present Western Australia was thencalled. In 1829 he sent his eldest and two younger sons there, withsuitable servants and supplies, intending to follow with the rest. Thesepioneers declared against the Swan, and advised their father to go toLaunceston instead, to which place they themselves also went. Arrivedall there in 1831, a new disappointment awaited the family. No grant ofland could be had, as in the case of the Swan, where they had 84, 000acres. This grant system had been abolished only a fortnight beforetheir arrival. They had now to rent their farms, and the prospects, therefore, were discouraging. They were unable even to effect anexchange for their Swan River grant. 

This disappointment led to a search, begun in 1832, under the lead ofEdward, the second son, who twice traversed the seas between Portlandand Spencer Gulf, examining the aspect and promise of the country. Theresult was always in favour of Portland, where he landed on oneoccasion, confirming all impressions by actual inspection ashore. He, therefore, resolved on a settlement here. In his second expedition hetook his father with him, as the latter had expressed the wish to seefor himself the Swan River grant before finally abandoning it. Theparty, having reached the Swan, found that what they had got was "sand, not land, " and so it was finally given up. 

Edward, who was the prime adventurer of the party, now got ready tosettle at Portland Bay. He chartered a small schooner, "The Thistle", loading her with stores and live stock, and with selections of seed, fruit trees, vegetables, etc. , part of them bought from Fawkner, who hadthen a market garden on Windmill Hill, near Launceston, besides keepingthe Cornwall Hotel there; and with these he sailed in October, 1834. Intwo days they were within twenty-five miles of their destination, when astorm drove them back to King's Island. Six times successively they werethus driven back, losing a good many of their live stock, and it wasonly after thirty-four days that they effected their landing. The workof colonization began at once. "The Thistle" returned to Launceston forfresh supplies and additional colonists, and returned this second timewith Francis Henty, the youngest of the family, who landed at Portlandon 13th December, within twenty-four days of his brother. Edward wasthen twenty-four years of age, and his brother only eighteen. This isthe brief but momentous story of the founding of Victoria. 

Mr. Francis Henty has given a most amusing account of the meetingbetween his party and that of Major (afterwards Sir Thomas) Mitchell, who, in exploring "Australia Felix, " in 1836, came, in great surprise, upon the Henty settlement at Portland. The story reads now like thehighest romance of adventurous exploration. The Mitchell intruders, fivein number, were at once regarded as bushrangers, and a defence promptlyorganized. The fire-arms were limited to an old musket, which was loadedto the very muzzle, to be ready for a grand discharge. Then as to theMitchell party, even after they were relieved of their first fears, forthey too had taken the others to be "no better than they should be, "they exercised a measure of reserve, as though doubtful of their newfriends' respectability. Mutual suspicions, however, being at lastdismissed, the travellers were supplied with the stores they muchwanted, and, in return, they gave such a favourable account of thepastures of the Wannon Valley as to induce Mr. Edward Henty subsequentlyto remove a part of the flocks there, and to establish the homesteadwhere, as I have already stated, I enjoyed in my Western Victoriantravels the squatting hospitalities. 

Let me add just one more incident of the Henty family, one personal tomyself, but in quite a different direction from the above. Once, on aspecial occasion, I met the banker, Charles, who had stuck to hisprofession at Launceston, instead of adventuring across the Straits withhis brothers. Besides his quiet banking vocation, he was, I think, theportliest of the family, which may be the explanation. The occasion wasa public dinner to the Anti-Transportation League delegation, sent fromMelbourne, in 1852, to stir up the cause at the Van Diemen's Landfountain head of the common evil, and of which delegation my latelydeceased old friend Lauchlan Mackinnon and myself were regarded as theheads. Mackinnon, like many another such vigorous Highlander, as he thenwas, could never take a subject of deep interest to himself quietly. Wehad had a sample of him already at Hobart, where the feeling as to ourmission was by no means clear, both from the natural touchiness ofconvict connection or descent, and from that still considerable sectionof colonial employers and traders who thought that the ledger and itsprofit and loss account had at least an equal right to be heard in thequestion as any other so-called higher interest. The ground, slipperyenough at Hobart, was supposed to be still more treacherous atLaunceston. Had not Edward Wilson, of the thoroughly MackinnonizedMelbourne "Argus", been but a little before nearly mobbed by the furiousAnti-Antis of this place, to his utter surprise and astonishment at hisown importance, and been only saved, in life or limb perhaps, by oldJock Sinclair, who was timely on the spot, and who dexterously led him, by a roundabout, to safety within the departing steamer for Melbourne?In short, a row was more than half expected from the Mackinnon speech, and as this was undesirable, for good reasons to all sides of Launcestonsociety, Mr. Henty resolved to prevent it, and did so most successfullyby a very adroit but not unworthy trick. He took occasion to speak justbefore the Mackinnon avalanche was to come on. Introducing Mackinnon andcommending his straightforward honesty in this matter, and so on, hesaid that some such people could not take even a good cause inmoderation; but that these defects, if he might so call them, were moreeasily seen than remedied, and that all kindly consideration must bemade in the case. I fear I am not literal as to the identical words, although I heard them, but I have given the purport. Poor Mackinnon, ashe afterwards laughingly pleaded, what could he do under the cold doucheof such a wet blanket? He made the smallest and quietest speech of hislife upon a great and stirring subject. 

SOME INTERJECTA IN RE BATMAN, PIONEER OF THE PORT PHILLIP SETTLEMENT. 

Mr. Edward Henty, from Launceston, first entered the future Victoria in1834 by her remote portal, Portland Bay, and thus became the founder ofthe colony. In the following year, John Batman, of Hobart, sailing fromthe same stirring little Launceston, entered by the central and granderportal of the Port Phillip Heads, and was thus the pioneer of PortPhillip settlement; for we must really turn blundering Collins, with hisabortive doings in 1803-4, out of the running. I never saw Batman, as hedied the year before my arrival, so that, according to my rule, I havenothing to say of him. But I must mention an incident occurring shortlybefore my date, and characteristic of the times, namely, the rafflingfor Batman's old and well smoke-begrimed pipe. This was at the famousLamb Inn, a little wooden edifice on the north side of WestCollins-street, opposite the Market-square, and fronting a small cliffwhich the street levelling there had left for future disposal. Therewere thirty tickets at a pound each, and the fortunate winner was tocompensate the disappointed by standing champagne all round. I was oncein the Lamb Inn ere its glories had quite expired, as might be inferredfrom a charge of 4 shillings for a bottle of cider, for which I hadcalled in support of the house, and to while away time in waiting for afriend. I had to share it with two others who happened to be in theroom, the waiter having promptly filled the three tumblers he hadbrought, without even "Robert's" professional stereotype of "by yourleave, " the tumblers, too, being as promptly emptied without anyceremonious bother about acknowledgment. The Lamb Inn lived a briefspace longer, but utterly bereft of its old position in the revels andextravagance of every kind of the young settlement, and was finallylevelled out of existence in company with the "cliff" at its back. 

But I have to do also with nearer and dearer connections of Batman thanhis tobacco pipe. I have to record the marriage, during 1844, of two ofhis daughters, the elder, already a widow, Mrs. McKinney, to my pleasantfriend Fennell, as I have previously mentioned, and, happily, resultingin a family of descendants to the Port Phillip founder, and the youngerto one of the two squatter brothers Collyer. The latter event, whichcame off at the hospitable and comfortable homestead of old John Aitkenof that ilk (I mean of Mount Aitken), was a grand gala time to a verywide circle. Guests, by the score together, trooped up from town andcountry, headed, in the former direction, by Andrew Russell, then secondmayor of Melbourne, in succession to my friend Condell, and in thelatter by his cheery and ever-smiling uncle, Peter Inglis, of Ingliston, a great station homestead in the comparisons of those early times, andonce, as Peter liked to tell, taken for a town, perhaps in the gloaminghours, by a bush traveller when he inquired of one of the domestics, toher great amusement, the name of the street he had confusingly got into. Mrs. Aitken, as literally as by courtesy the good wife of the house, andthen in the full charm of her beauty and strong youth (now Mrs. Kaye, and sadly changed in both respects), went busily about, her young familyat her skirts, administering plenty and preserving order, while, towardsgenial eve, her good man occupied a quiet corner, indisputable king forthe nonce of the toddy race. The night accommodations were a difficulty, although not a few, like the host himself, were in no great want. I anda score or two of others turned into a wool loft, where a number oflittle mattresses, mostly of a pro re nata kind, were provided, into oneof which I was soon ensconced and fast asleep. But well on, as Iguessed, in the small hours we were all awoke by loud and burly noise inthe loft, proceeding, as we soon recognized, from two Anakims of theparty, Isaac Buchanan and John Porter, who seemed on the eve of astruggle for a Mace or Nolan belt. Porter had retired peacefully withme, but Buchanan had been vieing in the toddy corner with his host, andwhen inevitably knocked under--for the other had not yet been limited byhis doctor to that woman's wash, as he called it, sparkling moselle--hehad contrived to find the common loft. It is said, of unpractised topersat any rate, that, after an extra indulgence, they either see nothing orsee double. Whichever it was with Buchanan, he insisted on berthing forthe night in Porter's occupied nest, while the latter, after standingthe all-round chaff for a little, got savage and threatened war. Buchanan's sight getting by-and-by clearer, the remainder of the nightwas, happily, peace. But it was not for long, as almost with the dawnour host, alive as if nothing out of the usual had happened, woke us upwith the invitation to finish the champagne by way of refresher afterall the toils and toddy we had gone through. 

DR. THOMSON, OF GEELONG. 

This earliest amongst the early of Port Phillip, whose active formflitted about its shores ere the memorable year 1835 had expired, mighthave come in for a full separate sketch had I been thrown more with him, so as to have sufficient personal data. But, although I met him attimes, he lived at Geelong, fifty miles away from Melbourne. I have puthim under this sub-heading, in the Batman interjecta, because, as hisdaughter, Mrs. Henry Creswick, told me, it was Batman's representationsto him of the land of promise to the north that induced him to followthe early tide with his flocks and his family--the latter consisting ofhis wife and one only child, the daughter above alluded to. She stillsurvives, in her pleasant residence, situated in the fitly namedCreswick-street, Hawthorn. 

The doctor was one of the most active of the colonists, both politicallyand generally. He was chiefly concerned in establishing the GeelongCorporation, of which he was several times Mayor, and he was mostactively interested in the early representation of the district in theSydney Assembly. He sat there as one of the district members prior tothe "separation" session of 1851, and it was at his instance that theHouse made an exhaustive inquiry into the condition of the aboriginalnatives. In the separation session elections his party was outvoted bythe squatting or anti-democratic element; but none the less the formerin Geelong deputed the doctor to accompany the elected members, in orderto keep a watch upon their doings. The case had its comic aspect, but asthe doctor and I were on the same side of the politics of the day, hewas most useful to me in our common effort to secure a due share ofrepresentation for the mass of the people, as intended by the ImperialGovernment. The aim of the reigning regime was to continue their powerby means of an electoral distribution which was to secure a majority ofCrown nominees and Crown tenants in the two future sections of the oldcolony. 

The doctor, as I said, went over with the earliest from the Hobart sideof the island, quitting his land grant, which was the last under thatsystem, and was got for him by his friend Governor Arthur--a privilegefor which, as I have said, the Henty family arrived just too late. Amongst the live stock he took over was Miss Thomson's pony, which wasthe first of the equines landed at Port Phillip. Its owner was then avery young girl. She and her mother landed towards the end of 1835, andwere the first ladies of "the settlement. " The family pitched a tentalmost under a magnificent gum tree, whose stump, covered with ivy, still exists close to the Cathedral at Prince's Bridge. But shortlyafter several of the young men of the settlement, in order to providethem better accommodation, collected some boards and built them a hutlower down the river bank. With the two places the Thomsons were able todispense hospitalities, their guests including Messrs. Gellibrand andHesse, Mr. James Smith, and Mr. Mackillop. It used to be said that "thesettlement" was in the habit of going to tea with Mrs. Thomson. 

This brings us into 1836. The next year came the officials in chargefrom Sydney, who included Mr. R. S. Webb, as Collector of Customs, whosedaughter, Annie, was the first white child born in the settlement (with, however, some dispute as to a blacksmith's child having been the first), and who was afterwards married to my late friend, Colin Mackinnon, younger brother of the better known Lauchlan. Dr. Thomson used to readprayers to the little settlement in a rude structure upon the ground nowoccupied by St. James's Church. Afterwards he removed to Kardinia, Geelong, as his live stock had been landed there, and this place hefinally made his home. 

From these lively and mixed events of our early society, let me now turnto another subject, which is neither less lively nor less mixed than itspredecessors--the subject, namely, of:

JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER, FATHER OF MELBOURNE. 

"The force of his own merit makes his way. "--Henry VIII. 

"Well, I am, not fair; and therefore I pray the gods to make me honest. "--As You Like It. 

"He's honest, on mine honour. "--Henry VIII. 

"He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; forwhat his heart thinks, his tongue speaks. "--Much Ado About Nothing. 

"For now he lives in fame, though not in life. "--Richard III. 

If circumstances won't make a poet, as genius contemptuously asserts, nor make up for blood in a horse, as even the stable boy swears to, theyare at times marvellously effective in making, and, for the matter ofthat, also in unmaking men. So might we say with regard to thewell-known subject of this sketch, who, arriving amongst us with theearliest, and within the repellent surrounding of an evil repute, yetunder different surroundings and favouring circumstances outlived alltraducements, whether true or otherwise, and after a long, practical, and singularly useful career, died in the full regard of his adoptedcountry. The unanimity of dislike and moral depreciation with which hewas regarded by his Tasmanian fellows was not indeed without a certainshare of reason or excuse. That he was the son of a convict ought not, of course, to prejudice him in these Christian days, when the sins ofthe fathers are not to be visited upon the sons even to the firstgeneration. His father arrived with Collins's prisoner party, and theboy, John Pascoe, then eleven years old, was sent with his parent--fornot seldom were wives or children thus sent with the convicts, toameliorate by such a touch of nature the hard features of a society ofadult vice, much as Hogarth, in some of his masterpieces of the humanwoes or vices of his time, gives, in striking contrast, a foreground ofmaternal affection, or of children at play in the artless innocence oftheir looks and ways. 

But he was probably neither a pretty nor an interesting boy; for as aman he was of the very plainest, with a short figure, always negligently"put on, " a rough, mannerless way, and a voice husky and hoarse, although redeemed at times into an approach to commanding an audience, when he was strongly stirred in some exciting cause. Some people have nopatience to subdue natural antipathies in such cases, and these peoplewould, as well-known scripture (with some transposition of the idea)tells us, be apt to be most plentiful "in his own country. " But, again, Fawkner was himself a convict. Yes, but for what? Certainly if a man sonotorious in after life had committed any very disparaging crime it musthave been as notorious as his name. But I never heard anythingdistinctive beyond that he had, for something or other, passed under theCaudine Forks of the Van Diemen's Land Criminal Courts. Inevitably hisearly upbringing was in low associations, where, probably, ties offriendly feeling survived, as to which he might have said with the bardof Avon--"I am not of that feather to shake off my friend when he mustneed me" (Timon of Athens). My impression was that he had been convictedof harbouring, or aiding to escape, some who had broken the law, whatever more that may have meant, for, with his pluck, he was probablylittle troubled about niceties of fine feeling, and, thus accoutred, Providence dropped the man amongst altogether different circumstancesand associations in his new location. 

I had much to do with Fawkner, especially after he and I met in ouryoung colony's first Legislature, and after I sufficiently knew him, soas to allow for the rough exterior of his nature, I never had but oneopinion of the man. That opinion was, that throughout every condition ofthe considerable space of his later life, whether in health or sickness, strength or weakness, prosperity or adversity--for, at first at least, he, like many others, was not prosperous in golden-fleeced and goldenVictoria--he toiled, late and early, for what, in his honest judgment, was for the good of his colony; and with a singleness of purpose whichwas not excelled--was not, I think, equalled, to my knowledge atleast--by any other in that colony. 

He seemed to make an ascent under the exhilarating circumstances of hisnew and increasingly responsible position, and to have the consciousnessof a great mission, which nerved him to surmount all that was dubious inhis earlier career. Nor was he behind in less pretentious ways. I neveronce heard of any mean or over-reaching act of his, even in the smallestmatters. He once told me, in his prosperous days, with much becomingfeeling, and as an incident he could never forget, that when quitebroken in fortune, he had received, as unasked as unexpected, a mosttimely pecuniary help from Mr. Henry Moor, the well-known solicitor. Thetwo were, I think, at hearty variance across the political hedge; themore honour to both. 

We have seen that he showed pluck in his earlier life, even in badassociations; and he displayed the same under better auspices later on. His action with a certain gravely suspected Commissioner of Crown Landswas a good illustration. This high functionary, who, in thosepre-constitutional times, was practically an irresponsible Caesar over avast estate of dependent Crown tenants, whose interests might in anycase be seriously jeopardized by any unfairness, and who, therefore, like the wife of his prototype, should be even above suspicion, wasaccused by rumours, of no slight noise or breadth, of unfaithfulness tohis charge, and in the grossest and most mercenary of forms. Even withthe clearest case it was anything but assuring to attack such a man inthose days of authority. But Fawkner's bite was too deep for any laissezfaire cure, and so, nolens volens, the Commissioner had to defend orretrieve his character. The verdict of a farthing damages, at whichamount the jury estimated that character in the case, was completejustification to Fawkner, and laid the whole Province under lastingobligation to him for a most important public service. 

Another of his more prominent services was upon the first GoldCommission, 1854-5, summoned hastily together by the Governor, SirCharles Hotham, under the surprise, not unmixed with consternation, caused by the Ballarat riot, an incident which, in some of its aspects, such as the stockade structure, deserved rather the graver name ofrebellion. Already in his 63rd year, in broken health, and certainly theweakest physically of the membership, he was the most active of all, ever running full tilt into every abuse or fault or complaint that mighthelp to explain this unwonted, and, indeed, utterly purposeless andstupid incident of a British community. In my capacity as chairman, Iappreciated Fawkner's untiring, or more properly, unyielding spirit, andunder travelling fatigues, too, of no mean trial even to younger men. For the Colossus of Rhodes, as my energetic friend, Dr. (now SirFrancis) Murphy, was humorously called, on accepting, recently before, the charge of the rutty and miry ways of golden Victoria, had as yetmade but feeble progress in his most urgent mission. We learned enoughto explain, at least, if not to excuse the miners; and were thus guidedto a reconstruction of goldfields administration. This was chiefly inthat national element, hitherto utterly absent there, of localrepresentative institutions; and the change has since assured the futurefrom even John Bull's proverbial growling. General McArthur, with a fewtroops, promptly, but not without considerable bloodshed, ended the sadfarce. In view of the very exceptional features of an incident extremelyunlikely to occur again, Fawkner and most others of the commission weremost decided for a general condonance; and this was agreed to in thereport by all except the Official Commissioner, Mr. Wright, who, excusably enough, sided with his official superiors for a treason trial. But the jury, as might have been anticipated, acquitted the prisoners. One of their leaders, Mr. Peter Lalor, who lost one of his arms in thecause, has since been for many years Speaker of the Victorian Assembly, and as loyal to his Queen as he is genial to his many friends. 

When we wound up the Commission's inquiry at Castlemaine, and on themorning of a hot midsummer day embarked upon one of the springless "Cobband Co's" of the time, with the prospect of ten or twelve hours ofterrible jolting before us, poor old Fawkner seemed so much enfeebledthat I was in some doubt as to his being landed alive at Melbourne. But, game to the last, he rode uncomplainingly through all; and he lived evena goodly number of years after, but only to do more and more work. OldGeneral Anderson, of early colonial memory, had a habit, quite his own, of saying to the face of anyone whose conduct gave him satisfaction, andin his blunt soldierly way, "Sir, I have a great respect for you. " Suchan accrediting and not unacceptable declaration he addressed, timesmore, I think, than once, to Fawkner. Indeed, all classes of the colony, from the highest, in which the gallant colonel moved, to the humblest, now alike recognized the veteran who had so long and so well fought forthem all. When at last the spirit quitted the worn-out frame, and itswell-known form, possibly, even to the last, keeping up still, amongstsome few, the lingering dislike of the long past, was to be no more seenamongst us, there seemed but one impulse for the occasion, whichfittingly expressed itself in a funeral procession entirelyunprecedented in its every aspect. This was not less to the colony'shonour than to that of Fawkner. He died on 4th September, 1869. Not theleast impressive feature of the funeral, perhaps the most, was theremarkable prayer offered up at the grave by the Reverend Dr. Cairns. Victoria's most eloquent preacher, in giving the true setting to thelife and character of the man, thanked God, in the name of the colony, for such a life, the influence and example of which could not but be forgood to all who were to follow. He has fought bravely for the R. I. P. Ofthe tomb. He rests from his labours, and his works do follow him. 

JAMES SIMPSON, FIRST MAGISTRATE OF "THE SETTLEMENT. "

"He hath an excellent good name. "--Much Ado About Nothing. 

When "The Settlement" began, and when, like the pre-Judges time inIsrael, every man did as he pleased, the inevitable inconvenience ofthat ultra-radical paradise led the small community to seek out a maleDeborah, and, with one accord, they made choice of James Simpson, theirearly fellow-emigrant in the tide from Launceston. Had there been even amuch larger society, the choice would probably have been as surely thesame, for it would have been difficult indeed to find anyone, who, inthe grace and command of natural presence, exceeded this inaugurator ofauthority in Victoria. His figure, rather tall, shapely, well-developed, surmounted by a noble head, bald with age, just touching the venerable, and with a genial expression of face, which, however, never descended tolevity, although times without number to a smile or slight laugh, he saterect upon the bench, facile princeps, as though institutions were tobend to him, and not he to them. When we entered the little hut-likestructure in the middle of the Western Market area, so long Melbourne'sonly police-office, James Simpson seemed to us as much a part of itsfittings as the rude little bench itself; and it was a disappointmentnot to find him there, as the indispensable complement to the scene, even although better conduct in the community was to be inferred. How sostriking, so influence-wielding a man did not get or take a still moreleading position than he had was due, perhaps, to some indolence ofnature, to a rare and enviable contentment, or to a mixture of both. Hetook what fell in his way--magistracies, bank directorships, or whatelse, and lived unambitiously on his moderate but sufficient means, always in the front social position, and, of course, in universalrespect. And how, again, so quiet a spirit adventured across amongst thetag-rags of the earlier Launceston tide, unless indeed under somebenevolent inspiration and prescience about the magisterial needs, is amystery which, although I often conversed with him, I never happened tohear him explain. 

DAVID CHARTERIS McARTHUR, FATHER OF VICTORIAN BANKING. 

"A man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation. "--Love's Labour Lost. 

Almost as early a colonist as Simpson, his intimate friend, hiscolleague in the Melbourne branch of the Bank of Australasia, of whichhe was himself general manager, with Simpson as director, McArthur fitlyfollows the other in this list of early colonial prominents. To the dayof his death he held the first position, active or honorary, inVictorian banking. But he was even better known, or at least betterregarded, as, par excellence, "mine host" of the early community. Duringa long life, of which the later and much the larger half was spent inVictoria, there was none who entered more readily, constantly, oracceptably into the varied life of the community. His leisure, such ashe had, his means, his fellowship, were at their command. He wasgeniality personified. But he was a banker, and a banker has duties, andin the ups and downs of colonial business life, he was but too oftenreminded to that effect. It was quite a sight if you happened to witnessthe scene with a bank customer, to whom, as to "the state of hisaccount, " it was necessary to administer what Mac's countrymen call a"hearing. " Often he had to pity victims of circumstances in the suddenchanges of colonial commerce; but "the gods aboon can only ken" todiscriminate impartially in such cases, and duty to the bank must bedone. First, the humorous twinkle in the eye sensibly abated, but itstill lingered there, unless there must be still stronger stages of theordeal, to bring the business culprit to reason. But when the last gleamwent out, a storm was certainly imminent. The storm, however, swept paston the instant with the provocation. When that eye finally closed, averitable sunbeam of the colony went out with it. 

Mrs. McArthur, who still survives, went hand in hand with her husband. That they were an attached couple has the complementary illustration ofhis making her his full heir. As they had no family to divide cares andmeans, we must blame the less the surpassing hospitalities thatdistinguished them. McArthur had really no other fault, unless indeed wemust fall back on the general limitation which Adam Smith had to admiteven in the excellence of his departed friend Hume; for, after all, aman can be good or perfect only "so far as the nature of human frailtywill permit. "

CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C. B. , SUPERINTENDENT OF PORT PHILLIP, AND FIRSTLIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF VICTORIA. 

"However God or fortune cast my lot, There lives or dies... A loyal, just, and upright gentleman. "--Richard II. 

The more I saw of the subject of this sketch, over nearly all thefifteen years of his unusually prolonged and varied officiate, the moreI explained his case by the excusing consideration that he was where hewas without his own consent. He was naturally a quiet, amiable, unambitious man, full of official activity and ability, in a prescribedline, or under the instructions of superiors. Thus commended at Sydney, he accepted, as matter of course, or of duty, his appointment by theGovernor, in 1839, to the Superintendency of the Port Phillip community, a small body as yet, although making an ominously loud noise upon thefar southern skirts of the vast colonial expanse of which Sydney wasthen the official and business centre. The charge did not then seem tothreaten to be an anxiously large one, and in any case his inauguratoryoffice might hardly remove him from the accustomed instruction ofsuperiors. What he did not bargain for was that the child he went tonurse was to rush almost from the cradle into manhood; and the little"settlement" he began his reign with to be, ere he had done with it, themost notable, if not indeed actually the most important, colony of theempire. 

He was a Moravian Christian, of a well-known name in that excellentbody, and possessed of all its virtues; he was, besides, a well-educatedgentleman. The pure and happy home which he transferred to the new scenewas of priceless value to its society, and all the more so at a timewhen such virtuous homes, in such high quarters, were by no means overcommon thereabout. But with a natural shyness, and, in a socio-politicalsense, timidity of character, which in ordinary circumstances arefeelings leaning to the better side, he exemplified how a good man maynot always be a good ruler of men. The diffidence is often mistaken bythe ruled, and always disappointing; and in public affairs it is apt, asMr. La Trobe but too well illustrated, to take the inconvenient andinjurious form of personal indecision. 

He had not a particle of pride or selfishness, hardly even of thecommoner infirmity of vanity. He would, whenever possible, take aroundabout to escape observation, but if even the humblest colonistpersisted to address him, unrepelled by the evident tendency to "moveon, " he would be as frank and unceremonious as our Queen in a Highlandcottage. We regret that so righteously-stored a man should make a badGovernor; but so it was, none the less. 

There was comparatively little damage during the day of smaller things, prior to the gold. Still, even then, the characteristics told, in thereluctance to resolve upon action in any departure from the red tape ofthe beaten track, in a young settlement of men nearly all in theexuberant prime of life, and almost daily called upon, amongstAustralian peculiarities, to confront their novel circumstances. Forinstance, upon rumours, oft repeated, that there was good workable coalat Western Port, a party is formed, with capital in readiness, to givethe case a thorough testing; and they, as of course, apply to theGovernment to give them all those aids and concessions, or, at least, asufficiency of them, which could most easily have been given in thatquarter, for Mr. La Trobe was practically the Government. He referredthe matter to Mr. Crown-Solicitor Croke, to ascertain what might be thelegal impediments. Impediments, obstacles, difficulties! But who hadasked for them? The application had been for facilities. Of course, Mr. C. S. Croke, as instructed, and with all the facility of any lawyer worthhis salt, duly found the required impediments; and so the disturbingenemy was defeated, and the Government left at rest. 

But when the goldfields' grand drama of progress opened, when thousandspromptly flowed into Victoria from neighbouring colonies, and, a littlelater on, ten thousands from Home, this chariness of action, thisresolute irresolution, or, in Ollivier's description of his masterNapoleon, before he, in an unlucky moment, swayed over to his side, this"obstinate indecision, " proved sadly damaging to the colony, althoughindeed, under all the circumstances, it was hardly possible for anyobstacle whatever to arrest materially its marvellous growth. Of course, the interest of a colony, thus enviably favoured, was to settle as bestit could this throng of enterprising humanity over its vast and all butempty areas, and that could only have been done by prompt and adequateaccess to the land. But some current differences as to the bearing orrights of squatting leases gave the Governor--the Superintendent beingnow in that higher position--the too ready excuse for his infirmity ofindecision. Even the squatting difficulty, which could have been easilyremoved by a reserve of compensation for whatever of it might have beenreal, was only one part, perhaps not even the chief part, of thewretched case. Acres by the million, on either side, along the busyhighways, and around the many goldfield outbreaks, small and great, fromwhich the live stock, where there had been any, were now all drivenaway, might have been brought to market at once without real injury toany interest. The squatters, naturally enough, sided with the Governor, giving him an encouraging semblance of public principle; for did not theone-third of united Crown Officials and Crown Nominateds, plus the CrownTenants, in our first so-called representative Legislature, show, onthis question, a small majority for "the Crown?"

At last, when the public scandal of so grievous a spectacle made longerinaction impossible, when the disappointed and shiftless immigrantsbegan to beat a retreat from the inhospitable colony, the balancestreaming by thousands into "Canvastown, " or wandering helplesselsewhere, and mostly ruined by the cost of living--for a cabbage hadrisen to 5 shillings at the goldfields, and to 2 shillings and 6 pencein Melbourne--the Governor, by an adroit move, in the despair of theposition, referred the case "Home. " There common sense decided it atonce, or at least as quickly as might have been expected from theleisurely ways of the Colonial Office of those far-back times. But thedecision came, in very great measure, much too late. There had been inthe meantime a blazing fire of land speculation, which, unlike otherfires, had blazed all the more intensely from the want of fuel. Thesmall supply of land, and the fury of multitudinous demands, had drivenup prices to such absurd, and, the utilities considered, such impossibleheights, that the inevitable reaction had already begun, involvingnumbers of families in most sudden and unexpected loss, and not a few inruin. 

But Victoria easily recovered from and forgot this preliminary and badphysicking, and was soon to be seen galloping on its road of progress asif nothing to its damage could ever have happened. Full of work for theday, full of hope for the morrow, the busy colonists saluted cordiallythe departing Governor. For my part I do not grudge it to him, for hismotives and conduct were of the purest, and he was ever withal a rightgood Christian gentleman. 

SIR JOHN O'SHANASSY, PREMIER, AND FOREMOST PUBLIC MAN OF VICTORIA. 

"Altogether directed by an Irishman; a very valiant gentleman, i'faith. "--Henry V. 

One of O'Shanassy's oft-repeated jokes, told with the humorous twinkleof his eye, was that "All men are born free and equal, AND MUST REMAINSO. " He was wide as the poles asunder from the radical leveller, as thisjoke of his might help to show. Indeed, he was decidedly conservative, in a general socio-political sense of the word. While in strong sympathywith the mass of his countrymen, he might have limped at times alongsideeven of Parnell, to say nothing of Davitt and O'Donovan Rossa. He hadmore than O'Connell's dread to pass irretrievably outside the law, although he might not have scrupled to drive the proverbial carriage andsix through law's usual dubieties of expression, particularly in certainsections of the Victorian Education Acts. 

As one of the earliest Irish colonists from the old country, he soonrose to the leading position amongst his fellow-colonist Irishmen. Hisqualities, alike in physique and mind, easily gave him that position. His tall, massive form, with the imperturbable good-humored smile that, even when annoyed by an opponent, he could hardly dismiss from his face, except, perchance, by a blend of the sarcastic; his deliberate manner inspeaking, and his sonorous voice, gave him this surpassing influence. But in colonial public life, where he had to encounter greatercompetition and sharper criticism than in his own smaller Irish world, he lay under some disadvantages. Like his friend and occasionalopponent, Fawkner, he had an ungainly gait and rather mannerlessaddress; he had, too, a rich Clonmel brogue, and certainly he had notenjoyed an education at all commensurate with his great naturalendowments. But, all defects notwithstanding, he steadily rose inpolitical estimation, and for the simple reason that his views of publicaffairs were characteristic of the statesman more perhaps than those ofany others associated with him. 

He first entered public life in 1851, as one of the threerepresentatives for Melbourne in Victoria's first Parliament. But, doubtful perhaps, with his anti-radical temperament as to the ficklenessof large town populations, as well, possibly, as the dread of hisliability to get compromised by the over-zeal of supporters, he changedthe venue to the small semi-Irish town of Kilmore, where his seat wasalways secure, until, in his advancing years, he condescended to theless laborious sphere of the Upper House. 

I saw much of O'Shanassy at the outset of Victorian legislation, when heand I, in 1851-3, sat together as colleagues for Melbourne in the singlechamber of that inaugurative time, and afterwards when we wereassociated in the Goldfields Commission, 1854-5. Often I noticed theunerring bent of his mind towards the statesman's broad view of subjectsof political controversy. As a sincere Catholic he was sometimestrammelled as he ran with liberal Protestant majorities. In theeducation question, for instance, as already hinted, seeing thatVictoria stands amongst the most advanced in the rigid secularity of itsteaching, to the extent, at least, of what of instruction isprovided--and gratuitously provided--by public money. But in general hewas anxious to be reasonably accordant with public opinion--so much so, indeed, in that "profane" direction (as Gibbon might have phrased it) asnot to be quite reckonable with the extreme of the Jesuit orUltramontane section of his church. 

I recollect and record with pleasure one of the Goldfields Commissionincidents illustrative of O'Shanassy's high public qualities. We hadcompleted at Castlemaine, near the original Mount Alexander, ourconsiderable tour of goldflelds inspection; and as we sat round thetable of the only public room of the small hotel or public-house of theplace, the evidence completed, and all the proposed changes decided on, there remained yet one question. Our proposed chief pecuniary changeabolished the indiscriminate, and, to the many unsuccessful, mostoppressive charge of 30 shillings monthly license fee, and substituted ayearly fee or fine of only 20 shillings. And what was this, or thedocumentary receipt that represented it, to be called? Reduced as theamount was, it was still a tax, and any ingenuity that could dignify orotherwise reconcile a tax, was worthy of the best statecraft. Aschairman, and not having at the moment a suggestion of my own, I had toknock at the heads of my co-members. I turned to one, then another, andyet another, but without response. Even the original brain of Fawknersent forth no sign. At length I came to O'Shanassy, who happened to beat the far end of the table. He had been waiting his turn, and theanswer came promptly, "Call it the Miner's Right. " It was but one out ofmany instances of his statesmanlike turn. The Miner's Right, of course, it was called. The name passed on to many other goldflelds. I noticed itin British Columbia shortly after, with its new gold discoveries; forthe Commission's report had attracted much attention, owing to theforefront position which golden Victoria had already assumed in theworld. 

WILLIAM KERR, FOUNDER OF "THE ARGUS, " AND TOWN CLERK OF MELBOURNE. 

"I am in the place where I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth, and therefore the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list. "--"The Argus" motto. 

Another of O'Shanassy's oft-repeated jokes was a good story about Kerr, and always told with that stereotyped good temper which I fear thelatter, with his strong Orange antipathies, would, upon opportunity, have but grudgingly reciprocated. Two "brither Scots, " happening to meetone day in Melbourne, one of them, presumably not long arrived, "speered" of the other, "Did ye ken ane Weelum Kerr here aboot?" "WeelumKerr!" replied the other, in reproachful astonishment; "No ken WeelumKerr, the greatest man in a' the toon!" That a hard-headed, liberal-minded commonsense Scot, as Kerr was in most things, should havehad the Orange infirmity, may be excused, or at least explained, by thefact of his being of Stranraer, a Scotch town almost within hail ofUlster. That small, and not overmuch known place, has not been the leastamong the cities of Scotia in contributing heads and hands to thecolony's progress, including, besides Kerr and others, James HunterRoss, a leading Melbourne solicitor, and my good old friend Hugh LewisTaylor, who, ere well out of his teens, was made manager at Geelong, andis now manager in London, of the prosperous Bank of Victoria. 

Kerr had a high order of abilities in certain literary directions, whichmight have given him a much better position than he ever secured but forhis indolence and negligent want of method. He had also a bad physicalconstitution, which had probably much to do with the other defects. Perhaps it was his literary turn that led him first, in his new home, totry a stationery business, which, under the style of Kerr and Holmes, afterwards Kerr and Thompson, in Collins-street west, was, I think, theprecursor of that particular trade in little early Melbourne. But thathad to be given up, and after some looking about, with not overloadedmeans, he established the Melbourne "Argus". The preceding press effortshad, at my arrival, established three papers, which, by tolerant mutualarrangement in a bi-weekly issue respectively, gave the small public thealmost indispensable food of a daily paper. Almost at the beginning, Fawkner's practical hand supplied "The Patriot, " hand-written for thefirst eight or ten numbers, until type came from Launceston. This wassoon followed by "The Gazette" of George Arden, and that again by "TheHerald" of George Cavenagh. All three had, I think, the common prefix of"Port Phillip". "The Gazette", after a brief career, under its very ablebut rather erratic owner, went to the wall. "The Patriot", underBoursiquot, who had succeeded the overworked Fawkner, was, somewhatlater, bought up by the "Argus", under Wilson and Johnston, insuccession to Kerr. The Herald, when quitted after an excellent andtimely sale by its founder early in the gold times, was soon aftershipwrecked in the storm of vicissitude that characterized some of thefirst years of gold-digging. 

With the editorial pen Kerr was in his element, and his naturallycombative tendencies found their fitting expression in the motto headopted, and which still heads the paper, "I am in the place where I amdemanded of conscience to speak the truth, and therefore the truth Ispeak, impugn it whoso list. " But even the little "Argus" requiredmanagement, and Kerr was no manager. He was induced to sell it, and forno great sum--pounds going a long way in those times--to Mr. EdwardWilson, who thus laid the foundation of his subsequent great positionand fortunes. 

Kerr was fortunate after this in securing the town-clerkship ofMelbourne, in succession to Mr. John Charles King, the first clerk. TheCorporation was still hardly beyond infancy, and Kerr's natural legalacuteness was of great service at his new post, where reigned hepractically master, and was an authority far outside his officialsphere, and even in legislative difficulties of the young Parliament, for we are now entering into Victorian life, and the importance that wasfast being developed with the gold. 

But after a time the old besetting infirmity turned up here also, and ina rather serious form, as connected with irregularities in Corporationmoneys and accounts, which might have been compromising to any otherthan Kerr, with his well-known indifference to such vulgar good things. 

He had a remarkable resemblance, in more than one point of character andcircumstances, to his brother Scotchman, and fast friend till death, theReverend Dr. Lang, of Sydney; and had he possessed the physical vigour, not to say the stately proportions, of that most combatant of members ofthe church militant, he might have been his Victorian rival in a farmore prosperous and protracted career. In each there was a verycombative mind behind the mildest of manner. Besides the pulpit, Langsought successfully also the Legislature, where, somehow, clergymen arenot favourites. He was, in fact, in the first instance, one of ourmembers for Port Phillip, and it was chiefly to his efforts andabilities that separation from New South Wales was eventually concededfrom Home. In the elective contests we saw some of the peculiar talentwith which Lang fought his many political foes, when, with an inimitableblandness of address, and the softest of mellifluous language, he wouldbuild up a many-sided argument, patiently and leisurely, and at last, aswith the bitterly biting end of a stockman's long whip, flay theWentworths of opposition, who, with more noise than effect, were eversnapping at his heels. 

But, alas for the cause of human perfection! The Doctor, being on amission Home, and by no means for the first time, for the promotion ofthe emigration of Scotch Presbyterians to Australia (his great and notunworthy hobby), and being short of funds after raising in one directionall he could upon his bill of lading, horrible dictu! pledged elsewherefor the balance of his account a spare copy of the set, left with him intrust and confidence. Now was the day of vengeance for his foes, andthey duly essayed to take it. But the imperturbable Doctor was nottroubled with too thin a skin, especially in a matter which was totallydevoid of personal pecuniary advantage. The overdraft was, as heexpected, readily made up by the public. Nor did he sustain any greatmoral damage, even with his foes, as his indifference about money wastoo well known--first his own money, and after that other people's. 

Kerr was in a like plight, but a great deal more helplessly. If heescaped as to character with the many who knew him, yet of necessity helost his good post. He was succeeded by Mr. Fitzgibbon, who, more fitly, I doubt not, than Kerr, has held this important office ever since, aperiod of no less than thirty-two years. This serious loss of means andposition completed a breakdown that had probably begun before, so thatKerr was no longer able for first-class work. We may envy thisopportunity to his old opponent, O'Shanassy, who, in power at the time, generously found him a small appointment--a station upon one of therailways--which gave him, at least, a comfortable, and, in a social way, by no means ungenial home for the short remainder of his life. 

It was mainly at my good friend Kerr's urgent instance that I enteredpublic life, which was in 1850, for the representation of Melbourne atSydney. Doubtless he had his own aims quite as much as my interests inview, as he wanted the supposed good card, a Melbourne merchant, Scotchand Presbyterian like himself into the bargain, to play against theanti-Orange and Irish-cum-O'Shanassy party. I fear that his expectedhenchman was too cosmopolitan at times. But Kerr rendered me a moredirect service at the subsequent election for Melbourne in Victoria'sfirst Parliament, by bringing me in at the head of the poll, whichhappened in this way:--At the first count the poll stood thus:O'Shanassy, Westgarth, Johnston, Nicholson, the latter being out, muchto his own and his friends' astonishment, as there were only threeseats. Kerr, who was resolved O'Shanassy should not be declared first ifhe could help it, called for a scrutiny prior to declaration. He hadknowledge of a goodly scale of false voting on the Irish side, where, infact, there was a legion of busy Kerrs to my one, many of them havingvoted double, or, as with Sheridan's proposed yearly Parliaments, "oftener if need be. " One had voted nine times in succession atdifferent polling places. I fear Kerr was wrong, and that scrutinyshould have been applied for after declaration. But Kerr was the mostdogged of mortals when he had a mind and an object, was then in thezenith of his influence, and, best of all for his side, he was king ofthe position as town clerk. So he secured his purpose, and O'Shanassyand I changed positions. 

I have a better service than this, and of much more general interest, with which to conclude my present sketch. A year later, the second yearof the gold, during which it was estimated that fifteen millions of goldhad been washed out of the drifts, chiefly of Ballarat and Bendigo, thecolony was already flooded, and no wonder, by the convict element fromTasmania. To intensify this evil beyond all bearing, that colony'sGovernment, in view of relief from accumulating prisoners, had latelyenacted a "conditional pardon" system, the condition being that thecriminal was at liberty for all the world except to return Home, andforthwith, Her Majesty's pass in hand, he crossed to golden Victoria. Acry of despair arose there, for almost immediately the towns, goldfields, highways, and everywhere else where havoc was to be made, were the almost daily scenes of the most atrocious outrage. One forenoonword reached town that five ruffians, taking position on the St. Kilda-road, had stuck up and robbed some twenty of the merchants andtraders on their way to Melbourne, including my friend John G. Foxton. The Anti-Transportation League, then some years in existence, held agreat meeting, at which a large committee was appointed, and wasenjoined to find an effective mode of dealing with this novel form ofevil. I think that it was at my suggestion that each of the committeewas to write out his thoughts and bring the paper with him, so as tohave a basis for arriving at a prompt conclusion. Kerr was madeconvener, and he was not long in convening us. 

Only Kerr and myself responded! We may take a mitigated view of theothers, for everyone was busy over something in those days, manyembarrassingly so for want of servants, who had "bolted" to thediggings, while most of the committee had had legislation and incessantdeputations and public meetings to look after besides. As to myself, Ihad vainly tried to find fifteen consecutive minutes for the subject. When Mr. Kerr asked me for my paper, I excused myself by pleading thatit was so meagre that I would rather first hear his. Thereupon, in hisdeliberate way, he drew forth a sheet of foolscap, and read to me "TheConvicts Prevention Act. " Such it was, for, with a few comparativelyunimportant mitigations, secured by the ability and influence ofAttorney-General Stawell, the impatient Assembly, highly appreciatingand determined to have the measure, promptly passed it by a largemajority. This was Kerr's culminating public service, and I am the morepleased to have this opportunity to say so, as my name was rather undulyattached to the bill, from its having been committed to my charge. Hisprompt remedy, I doubt not, saved many a colonist, not only as to life, limb, and property, but from outrage in some cases worse than death. Hisscathing measure introduced, indeed, a new principle, for weunceremoniously clapped people into prison who held up to our courts theQueen's pardon. Her Majesty's representatives at Home did not at alllike it. The Home Government, indeed, refused to confirm the temporarilyenacted measure; but by that happy safety-valve understanding, which hasperhaps saved some explosions, it was renewed and re-renewed as long asrequired. The letter of imperial law was doubtless violated; but HerMajesty's Government first violated the spirit, by authorizing men unfitfor England to go to Victoria. 

WILLIAM NICHOLSON, MAYOR OF MELBOURNE, AND PREMIER OF THE COLONY. 

"An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not. "--As You Like It. 

In one of our colonial municipalities, which of them I have forgotten, as I heard my story so long ago, a working furniture-maker, who hadsecured an order from the Mayor for his official chair, was observed tobe at particular pains over its construction, and, on being asked thereason, replied that he intended some day to occupy it himself. If thesubject of this sketch had been of that particular trade, this wouldhave been a very likely story to fix upon him. Not that he was ofinordinate ambition; for, on the contrary, he looked quiet and contentedbeyond most around him. But he was always ready and willing to respondto the many opportunities of a new colony, and from his great naturalgifts usually able to do them justice. Nature had given him all shecould to make him a good and useful colonist; but there was one thing hehad not had from her, because not within her power, and that was theschool. He was probably not altogether uneducated; but he could not havehad many chances in that direction, otherwise the facility with which heeducated himself in life's practical work after he had reached manhoodwould have told for him as a schoolboy as well. In business, in publicspeaking and debating, and in public life in general, he tooksuccessfully a first part; but when he had to condescend to suchschooling products as writing and spelling, he made confessedly only abad second. But, again, a defect of this kind is much less of anobstacle in new colonies than in old societies, because for generationsin the former the hand is relatively more important to progress than thehead, and the man of work than the man of thought. In colonies men ofgreat natural parts, if ambitious, can usually take good positions evenif but little educated. At Home this is hardly possible, and theconsequent social distemper is there a danger to the State--a danger, however, which our Education Acts since 1870 must be steadily removing. 

I happened, on one occasion, to meet Nicholson's home employer inLiverpool. He had been foreman, if indeed so high as that, in awarehouse. When he told his employer that he had made up his mind to goto Port Phillip with his family, there was regret to part with so quietand trustworthy a servant, but, as he said to me, not the least ideathat the unpretending individual before him would, within a few years, take a position considerably in advance of his own. 

He set up a grocery shop in Melbourne, and was soon on the road tosuccess. Then he stood for the municipality, which was hardly yet out ofinfancy, was duly elected councillor, and in a very few years becameMayor of Melbourne. Then, gliding easily onwards and upwards, he enteredthe young colonial Legislature of 1851, as member for the MetropolitanCounty, North Bourke. He had previously, as I have told, triedunsuccessfully for the capital itself, getting some compensation, however, in the "next first. " But with all this rising importance he wasever the plain, unassuming William Nicholson, and when Mayor or M. L. C. Both he and his wife would be found in their shop as usual--so far, atleast, as the other crowding duties would permit. 

When he formed his first and very brief Ministry, under ConstitutionalGovernment, prior to my definitely leaving the colony in 1857, he did methe honour to invite me to a place in his "Cabinet, " if our youngcolonies may use that grand Imperial term, as his Commissioner ofCustoms. With regret I was compelled to decline; for, from experience afew years before, I had found that if a man has business of his ownwhich he must attend to he cannot possibly at the same time attend tothat of everybody else. 

Premiers came in thick and fast succession in those days, for there wasno small doing and undoing, and no little of general upturning when anexclusively representative Assembly took the place of the "Crown"system, in its preceding complete or subsequently still partialcondition. The Land Question was ever the chief difficulty, for, whereasin previous times the people had been directed to conform themselves toland laws, now the new fancy all was that the land laws should conformto the needs of the people. Ministries rose and fell mainly on thisquestion. When the second time Premier, I think in 1860, Nicholson lefthis name to a Land Act, as did O'Shanassy, Gavan Duffy, and others, andthere is a ringing of the changes even yet upon that fertile subject. 

William Nicholson has passed to his rest, and Burns might have fitlyawarded him his high palm, "An honest man's the noblest work of God. "

CHARLES HOTSON EBDEN, ESQUIRE. 

"But I thought there was more in him than I could think. "--Coriolanus. 

"Methinks there is much reason in his sayings. "--Julius Caesar. 

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. " The subject of this sketchmight put in a claim for at least something towards redeeming Jack'sdulness, for he had a few odd ways, and a fertile turn forepigrammatics, some of them not bad. He boasted of having BeauBrummell's antipathy to certain vegetables. During the early but briefallotment mania he said that he feared he was to become "disgustinglyrich, " one of his epi's which became a by-word, and scored him a decidedsuccess. When some colonist, hearing him called by the name of Ebden, asked him if he was related to "the great Mr. Ebden, " hishumorously-delivered response, to the effect that he was himself thathappy individual, scored him another, perhaps smaller, success. I haveoften seen him score yet another, which, perhaps, in his own view, wasnot at all the least of that sort of thing, when, after writing in arather neat and most distinct hand, the pen seemed suddenly underparalysis, and a sadly dilapidated signature was the result. He alwayssigned his name in that fanciful way. 

Ebden's name was so well known in the earlier years--indeed his gait andways, his sayings and doings were so marked throughout--that to omit himfrom my list would leave a decided blank. But if the man had consistedof these little oddnesses just alluded to, whether first class orsecond, little would have survived of him, as business-like John Bullfails to appreciate people who have no more solid backing than that. Underneath all this very gauzy surface, Ebden, as all who had hisintimacy were aware, was withal a man of ability and good common sense, and, what was practically more, he was reputed to rank high in the roleof success in the early allotment rig. Indeed, in the rapidfortune-making of that time, he contemplated a palatial residence forhimself upon an ample frontage to Collins-street, next above the Bank ofAustralasia. Two back offices had been built towards the full idea, butthe allotment game had already turned ere he got further, and there theincomplete work stood. The "offices" were readily sold or let, and fromintended sculleries or what not, rose to be the places of business oftwo early firms of solicitors--Meek and Clarke on the one side, andMontgomery and McCrae on the other. The spacious frontage remained longunbuilt upon, but it has since been taken as part of a "Temple"--not, however, of the gods, but of very different people--the lawyers. 

He and I were on opposite sides of the political hedge, at least in thetimes when we were together in public life, both in Sydney andMelbourne, during the pre-constitutional era. He belonged, almost beyondany others--the exceptions being perhaps limited to William Forlong andmy friend A. R. Cruikshank--to the anti-popular and pro-squatting party;although, subsequently, when there was the "fact accomplished, " and nohelp for it, he accepted "fully and cheerfully, " as his electionaddresses put it, the reigning democratic platform. But he was notunkindly withal, and he helped my comparative legislative inexperienceat Sydney, when we were both there to represent Melbourne and PortPhillip. He had done me a great favour also in making himself mostserviceable with the German immigration which I had started from Hamburgin 1849. He was quite a German scholar, having finished his education atCarlsruhe, a name which he transferred to his pastoral station in thePort Phillip District. 

Ebden, like most others in it, did not bring much out from the allotmentmob. When returned afterwards to represent the district along with me inSydney, I heard that a draft of cattle from the station was needed forexpenses. These were still the reactionary times of such small thingsfor all of us. But in after years he went on and prospered, and he leftbehind him what might have been called a large fortune in any placewhere there were not a W. J. T. Clarke and a Henry Miller, and perhapssome few others besides, in the rival category. 

EDWARD WILSON, CHIEF PROPRIETOR OF "THE ARGUS, " "THE TIMES" OF THESOUTH. 

"The good I stand on is my truth and honesty;I fear nothingWhat can be said against me. --Henry VIII. 

I was long and intimately acquainted with Wilson. He was a man of highqualities and noble longings, and scorned meanness of all kinds; and hehad, like his predecessor Kerr, some good and pungent literarypretensions, although he could not be placed on a level with Kerr whilethe latter enjoyed adequate health. But, on the other hand, he greatlymarred his influence by what might be called impetuous intemperatenessin his early press career. Indeed, "The Argus", in its later stages, must needs emerge, as in fact it did, from its chief owner's editing, ifit was to take the position of "The Times" of the South. He had a greatantipathy to indecision in public men, and he entered upon a furiouscrusade against the Superintendent and his surroundings, as the primecauses in the delay in "the unlocking of the lands. " Mr. La Trobe wasdubbed "the Hat and Feathers, " as though these trappings were the mostof him; and this vulgarity, excusable only under small "Eatanswill"conditions, passed into the great developments of the golden age. Someof us, who were doing our best in the same general direction, often hadto wish, with reference to Wilson, to be saved from our friends, whileMr. La Trobe, if affected at all, was only encouraged or scared intostill more decided indecision. 

Wilson was not much of a man of practical business. He was notsuccessful in his early life at home, where business is a harder ordeal, and with fewer of the "flukes" that cross the path in young colonies. Arriving in Melbourne shortly after myself, and in company with afriend, one of the brothers Kilburn, he squatted upon a small cattle runto the south-east, towards Dandenong. But as this did little beyondmerely keeping soul and body together, as things were all now subsidingfrom the riot of the earlier years, it was given up. Foregathering nextwith Mr. J. S. Johnston, they between them bought "The Argus" from Kerrfor a very small sum--I think under 300 pounds--and the paper thenstarted upon its successful career under the increased vigour andimproved method of its management. 

Although, as I have said, not a business man himself, Wilson wasfortunate in business partners--first Mr. Johnston, as above said, succeeded by my old friend James Gill, who, retiring, was replaced byLauchlan Mackinnon whose energy and application piloted the paperfinancially into its later grand position. He had latterly, besides, asurpassing business agent in my old friend James Rae, whose firm ofJackson, Rae and Co. Had retired comparatively early, after attainingthe mercantile headship of the colony; thus leaving the colonial fieldopen to other early friends, Fred. G. Dalgety and Fred. A. Du Croz, whohave since, as Dalgety, Du Croz and Co. , and Dalgety and Co. Limited, taken the first position in Australasian commerce. 

For some years Wilson took full charge of the editorial and generalliterary work, which, after the gold discoveries, was labour second tonone. In the sudden expansion of all colonial interests, there wasconstant fear for years together of falling short of adequate supply. Now it was type, again it would be paper, and, worst of all, it would attimes be the inadequacy of staff. The Australian press had at times tobe content with such dress of paper as could on emergency be had, andfor some time, as I recollect, one of the Sydney issues came out on teapaper from China. Wilson, as I have repeatedly seen him, would occupyhis corner in the comparatively large room into which the narrow oldpremises in Collins-street east had been latterly expanded. There mostof the work was done, he receiving, during nearly the whole night, newsand messages, correcting proofs, and passing instructions in his quietoff-hand, and, when needful, peremptory or commanding way, and, amidstthe ceaseless noise, writing or correcting leaders when possible. 

With the gold tide came at first such heavy expenses, much of them quiteunforeseen and unprepared for, that the press interest was run, ofnecessity, into heavy debt, where there was no adequate capital. It waseither this or to give up the game in those changing times; and thosewho had not the money or the credit went to the wall, to make room forothers less embarrassed. "The Argus" thus got heavily into debt to itsagents and bankers; but after 1854, which had been a most trying year ofinevitable reaction, there was gradual recovery, and eventually a duereward in commissions and interest to its supporters. 

The prosperity of "The Argus" about this time was unprecedented in theantipodes, and for a considerable interval the paper stood unrivalled, not only in Victoria but in Australasia, having at last surpassed, bothin circulation and in the profits of business contents, even thelong-established and highly respectable "Sydney Morning Herald", it wasallowed, and not unfairly, to be "The Times" of the Southern Hemisphere, for Wilson had retired in favour of more temperate editorship; and insupporting, and being supported by, the mercantile interests, and in theadoption generally of the Freetrade policy of the parent state, thepaper followed its northern prototype. 

But the clearing of the ground had left room for other and betteraccoutred rivals, and "The Age" arose to enter the lists with "TheArgus". The latter had taken up Freetrade and the "classes;" the formertook up Protection and the "masses;" so far, at least as these termsmight, as to either application, distinguish democratic Victoria'scondition. Protection had been quite in abeyance under the old regime, beyond at least, an occasional sigh from agricultural Geelong for higherprices for the farmer, "the mainstay of every country. " Even during theinterregnum of semi-constitutionalism, 1851-55, the tendency had beeneffectually checked, chiefly by the energy of the Collector of Customs, Mr. Cassell, then one of the Official Legislative Members, who, supported by the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, was bent upon a tariffof the Home kind, of half-a-dozen leading articles, with perfect freedomof exchange over the world for all products of the colony's labour. ButMr. Cassell, to universal regret, on general as on commercial grounds, died in November, 1853, leaving the colony a less obstructed road tothose restrictions which it has since seen fit to impose upon its ownindustry. "The Age", with remarkable ability and as remarkable success, has always advocated Protection. But at first, as my recollection goes, it was in that qualified way which is not necessarily against tradingfreedom, reasonably considered. I perfectly recall the late Mr. Syme'smain argument, or excuse, to the effect that the Western United States, for instance, should, on social considerations, restrict universalwheat-growing, even at economic loss. But if one may judge from somerecent Freetrade and Protection controversy as between Victoria and NewSouth Wales (see "Age" for April-May, 1887), all qualification seems nowdropped, and even direct economic advantage expected from Protection. 

None the less "The Age" gained upon "The Argus", and has, I understand, long surpassed it in that most prominent of all tests, the circulation. Perhaps in profits also. When I inquired lately of one of "The Argus"chiefs upon those delicate points, the reply was, that "The Argus" wasnot up to "The Age's" circulation, "but, further, deponent sayeth not. "This does not mean, however, the loss of position as the Southern"Times", for "the leading journal" is by no means at the head of theLondon press in point of circulation. Where it may be, however, when itcomes down from the aristocratic threepence to the common penny of itsbrethren remains to be seen; and I am told that all has long been inreadiness for the change when the fitting times arrives. And so, as "TheArgus" is still twopence to "The Age's" penny, inverted relations as tocirculation may some day not be impossible there also. The circulationof the daily "Age", by my last account, is close upon 70, 000, which isnot "a poor show for Kilmarnock, " in that sense of the joke. 

In 1858, Wilson quitted the colony "for good, " as the phrase is, followed by Mackinnon, and later on by their third and only otherpartner, Mr. Allan Spowers. "The Argus" was now an established principleof Victoria, and prosperity was assured. After a few more years ofeconomizing, until the business debt was finally cleared off, thepartners could enjoy to the full their great and well-merited fortunes. Wilson and Mackinnon took up palatial country residences--the one atfirst at Addington, ten miles from London, and later at the pleasant andclassic Hayes Place, the favourite abode of the great Chatham; the otherat Elfordleigh, in Devonshire; while Spowers lived chiefly in London, where, as the common favourite of both, he, with his genial temper, keptthe peace between his seniors, who, with an infirmity too common tohuman nature, were prone to disagree, for want, let us suppose, ofanything else to think about. 

Mackinnon, with his energetic mind, had been the most concerned inbuilding up the later stages of the "Argus" fortunes. Both Wilson and Ihad a high opinion of his qualities, as the following incident may show. He and I, as I have said in my sketch of the Henty family, wereanti-transportation delegates to Tasmania in 1852, and, proceeding bysteamer to Launceston, we had for fellow-passengers a considerable bodyof returned diggers, most of them with their bags of gold, and a goodproportion of them with expressions of face one would rather not meet ifbeyond call of the police. In short, a good sprinkling of returnedconvicts were of the number, with their "piles, " acquired possibly quiteas much by robbing as by digging. After a few hours at sea, a rumourreached the cabin that there had been a robbery, one of these ruffianshaving seized a bag of gold from one of the other digger passengers. Thethief had at once disappeared below and secured himself within asurrounding of his own chums, so that it was feared he might escape withhis booty, as no one seemed "game" to descend the fore companion ladderand encounter this sinister crowd below. Mackinnon at once took thecause in hand. Telling the robbed man to follow him, so as to helpidentification, he, without an instant's hesitation, descended theladder. A few of us followed, to support our gallant leader. "I want thethief, " he said; "he must restore the gold. You honest diggers are notto lose your earnings in this way. " So saying, he pressed forward intothe crowd, followed by his guide; and when at last the latter pointedout the culprit, he seized his arm and dragged him back to the ladder'sfoot, where he peremptorily ordered him to restore the stolen gold. Allthis was done in less time than I have taken to tell it. The thief, overwhelmed by the suddenness of the action, and still more, perhaps, bythe want of expected support from his "pals, " promptly brought out thegold; and thus ended a little drama highly illustrative of thosestirring times. 

On my return I mentioned this circumstance to Wilson, and we both agreedthat Mackinnon was just the man we were all looking for at that criticalperiod for the headship of the colony's police. Wilson was in full poweras owner and editor of the rising "Argus", while I was senior member forMelbourne; and between us we reckoned upon influencing the Government tomake at once this appointment, and in that view we went straight toCaptain Lonsdale, our Chief Secretary. We were just too late, for theappointment, as we learnt, had already been decided in favour of Mr. , afterwards Sir William, Mitchell. I do not doubt that this incident hadsomething to do with Wilson's subsequent invitation to Mackinnon to joinhim in the "Argus" interest. And here he worked so effectively as tomake Wilson just a trifle sensitive as to people thinking that the newhand did even more for the common cause than the old one. But, as thesaying has it, "Comparisons are odious. " They are, besides, quiteunnecessary, for both have proved themselves most worthy men, fightingtheir life's course valiantly and well, and that, too, with a raresuccess. 

There can, I hope, be no betrayal of confidence in repeating what rumourgave as to "Argus" fortunes. The net profits about this time--that is tosay, towards 1878, when Wilson died--were put at between 22, 000 and24, 000 pounds; but this, I believe, must have since very considerablyincreased. Wilson had the larger moiety; Spowers, who was the laterimportation, having a comparatively small interest. 

Wilson was now the country gentleman, able to live in almost princelystyle. With his amiable and highly-cultured sister, who lived latterlywith him, he kept a hospitable house, inviting the old colonists of hisacquaintance, as they came and went to and from the old country. He wasnot without faults of temper and impatience, increased probably by afeeling of physical weakness which denied him activities of mind andbody to the extent his ambition for life's utility would have preferred. His tall, well-developed form and commanding presence, backed by hisample means, placed him easily in a leading position. Now he would bepacing Hayes Place grounds with the frank and genial Archbishop Tait, who, on a visit to the parish, had dropped in with the Vicar, Mr. Reid. Again he would be a well-known and welcome figure at dinners, "athomes, " picnics, and what not, with the Darwins, Lubbocks, Farrs, andthe rest of the neighbourhood, scientific and otherwise, but the formerby preference. His chief trouble was a weak action of the heart, whichfor the last year or two kept him constantly in view of death. He calmlyregarded the prospect of the great change, put his affairs in order ashe wished, and awaited "the call of God. " He passed away with but slightsuffering in the beginning of 1878, before completing his 64th year. Hisremains were, by his own request, returned to the colony which, as healways insisted, he had served so long and so faithfully. His largemeans were left chiefly to various charitable and other usefulinstitutions in the colony. Besides larger legacies to his relations, twenty-six of his oldest colonial friends enjoy for life a bequest of100 pounds each per annum, and as these were the friends of the earlyand small times of Port Phillip, few of whom had prospered at all likehimself, the help is not unneeded in most cases. That all of theselegatees were of the other sex is explained by the fact that, havingbeen always a bachelor, he had an intense, although only a generaladmiration for the sex. Very many others will, over an indefinitefuture, have reason to bless the name of Edward Wilson. 

EARLY SOCIETY: WAYS, MEANS, AND MANNERS. 

"When rather from our acts we them deriveThan our fore-goers. "--All's Well that Ends Well. 

The salient defect, for more or less interval at first, in allcommencing colonial societies, is the disproportion of the femaleelement; and thus, in the sparseness of homes and families, we have thathardness of social feature, which illustrates how much better is the onesex with the "helpmeet" provided in the other. Early Port Phillip was noexception to this rule. Ladies and children were comparatively rareobjects. From Tasmania and elsewhere there were a good many "choicespirits" in more than one meaning of the words. There was a marvellousconsumption of brandy, among such unusual proportions of strong, venturous, rowdy adults; of tea and sugar, and butcher's meat also;giving altogether a statistical category worse than useless for accuratepurposes. Manners were rough, to use a mild term. The town was bad, andthe bush was worse. When a pious missionary of those early times, priorto adventuring into the interior, inquired of a squatter if the Sabbathwere observed in the bush, "Oh, yes, " was the prompt reply, "a cleanshirt and a shave. "

In such times a large family of ladies might have trodden the soilsomewhat as goddesses come down to the desolate habitations of men. Foursuch families of the earliest times, in particular, rise to myrecollection. They were those of Mr. Grylls and Mr. Clow, bothclergymen, the one of the Anglican, the other of the Presbyteriancommunion; of Mrs. Williamson, a widow lady from near Edinburgh; and ofMr. James Smith, Magistrate and Savings Bank manager, whose bustlingform, ever hurrying through our streets, was perhaps the best known ofthe place, and who, along with his friend and co-magistrate, Mr. Simpson, was as the coping stone of local respectability. That all ofthese fair young maidens, most of them remarkably attractive andpleasing, as I have reason to remember, were duly married, need hardly, under all the circumstances, be told, besides being attested to-day bywhole generations of consequences. 

Another feature of those early times, a lively and bright feature inmany respects, was the considerable number of young men, the youngersons of good families--and, for that matter, the elder sometimes alongwith the younger--who flocked out, in unusual proportion, I might say, and who infused into the somewhat rough social scene the charm of highculture and manners. Wild they doubtless were in instances not a few;but even that may not be without its side of charm, at least amongst theyounger votaries. Some few eventually returned "Home, " mostly those whohad been shipwrecked in the troubled sea of early-time speculation. Butmost of them have remained to take their various and full part incolonial society, not a few taking the very highest positions. Thus wehad the Stawells and Barrys, the Leslie Fosters, Sladens, Rusdens, oftown and neighbourhood, and the Campbells, McKnights, Irvines, ofsurrounding squatterdom. Most of these are long since the fathers offamilies, native Australians, including sons who not unfrequentlyfinished their education in the mother country--a dutiful deferencewhich Australia may surely not yet quarrel with. This habit is stillstrong, even to the third generation in Victoria, amongst her well-to-docolonists. The youths may not expect better training than from a Hearnor a McCoy, an Irving or a Pearson, on the colonial floor; but suchdiversion from rule will, in its occasional way, the better help to keepthe great scattering family united to their venerable mother--to keeptogether the elder and the younger Britain. 

Oxford and Cambridge in particular have, indeed, been quite run uponfrom Victoria, and those two venerable mothers of English universitylife can already command in and of that colony quite a small legion oftheir alumni--the Clarkes and "Loddon" Campbells, the Finlays and"Colac" Robertsons, the Websters and Westbys and Wilsons, who are nowthe young or the still vigorous life of their colony. If some few ofthese have remained permanently at Home, or if they pleasantly alternatetheir domicile by such facile means as the marvels of moderninter-communication afford them, yet all of them help, in more or lessdegree, to strengthen that tie between the mother and her adventurouscolonial offspring which we must hope is never to be broken. 

I have the less need to expand further this inspiring section of mysubject, seeing that I have been anticipated to some extent by a brotherauthor, who, under the pseudonym of "Rolf Boldrewood, " has presented tous, in lively and fitting style, a most charming picture of earlycolonial life, its pleasant hospitalities, plus the Attic salt of nosmall proportion of the bounteous tables. The disguise of name is notdifficult to penetrate. The author's father, residing in his prettyplace at Heidelberg, whose genial sun-browned face I pleasantly recall, was well known to me, as well, indeed, as to every other early colonist. His son's book has been my pleasant companion as I write up daily my"Recollections" in the little cabin of the good s. S. "Coptic", moreespecially as we both traversed much the same ground, and during thesame interesting early time, in Western Victoria. 

"GOVERNMENT HOUSE. "

"Old fashions please me best; I am not so niceTo change true rules for odd inventions. "--Taming of the Shrew. 

But perfection is never to be expected in human nature, and accordinglysome decided drawbacks were, reasonably I think, chargeable to this"good society" which, as I have just said, had beneficially helped thedawning colony. There was a tendency to separate from, and rather holdin undue depreciation, the trading and toiling masses who mainly madethe country. This tendency was fostered in the pre-representative days, when there were no political institutions to bring the mass of plain butprosperous society to the front. Of course, when these times came, thegame was soon up. But, while the preceding era lasted, a somewhatinvidious "aristocracy" gathered around the authorities, the mutualinstincts, born of the situation, inclining them to each other. Thisunited party got the name of "Government House. " It included most of thehighly educated, to whom it was a tempting status, and most of thesquatting Crown tenants, whether highly educated or otherwise; and itwas cordially open to "presentable" colonists in general, who, holdingits views--of course a sine qua non--were willing to enter it. The viewswere decidedly "pronounced, " and took practically the form of a decidedpreference for the status quo, or, at least, modified by the slightestpossible of political concession to those noisy, restless masses, who, with the local press generally on their side, ceaselessly kicked at allauthority. The political timidity and indecision of Mr. La Trobe, worthyman as he otherwise was, gave practically life and soul to thisanti-popular party, which laboured, more secretly perhaps than openly, to avert or modify, for the time being at least, the politicalconcession expected from the Imperial Parliament. Mr. La Trobe's viewevidently was, that if the colonials kicked so strongly when underbonds, how much more furiously must they kick when the bonds wereremoved. But, as reasonable persons might have predicted, and as waspromptly experienced, the colonists kicked because they were bound, andwhen unbound they did not kick at all. 

The same political feature, and even in more resolute form, had thendeveloped also at Sydney, where Mr. Wentworth led the "upper ten, " forthe protection of authority against levelling radicalism. He and hisparty, out-Heroding Herod, and being more governmental than theGovernment, seriously contemplated a limitation of the franchise to a 50pounds rental, and the institution of a Colonial Peerage, as a permanentslap in the face to the ugly Democracy. Had he carried his views, oreven some considerable approach to them, his influence with the party, and his bull-dog courage, would soon have put his colony into an uproar, and possibly even into civil war. But, thanks for once to his politicalextremes, the question was happily settled rather by being laughed outof court than by time-wasting argument. 

"Government House, " however, did secure, in both colonies, a certainmeasure of triumph. Authority in esse having the whip hand of authorityin posse, the one-third of nominees as against two-thirds elective were, by a disproportionately large representation purposely given to thesquatting districts, converted into a permanent majority of Crownnominees and Crown tenants. This was clearly an evasion of the intentionof the Imperial Parliament, which was that, by giving a decided majorityto the popular side, the colonies might be graduated into completeconstitutionalism. 

But, after all, this evasion lasted only for a very few years. Theseearly wranglings are now all but forgotten. But they are so only becausethe narrow views which gave them birth have been entirely defeated, andare all but exploded. In the progress of the colonies since, "themerits" have occupied the front, and the useful has taken the precedenceof the ornamental. The latter is not to be despised when in company withthe former; nor has it been, for not a few who were once on theanti-popular side have entered public life, and even secured the highestprizes. This necessitated a descent from cloudland to the solid groundof colonial society. The alternative was extinction, and wisely, in mostcases, the latter was not preferred. 

Another feature of this Sydney ultra party--a curious feature, indeed, to look back upon to-day--was its undisguised antipathy to theanti-transportation feeling then gathering force throughoutSouth-Eastern Australia, and even in Tasmania. The movement was highlyunfashionable, say even deeply vulgar, in the leading circle surroundingGovernment House. For those who had the infirmity of such puritanicalleanings there was an approach to the antipathy, plus contempt, of thesouthern slaver of the States for his northern abolitionist countryman. When my friend, Mr. (afterwards Sir) S. A. Donaldson introduced me, formy temporary stay, at the Australian Club, then the high quarters of theparty, he passed me a friendly hint to steer clear, at least when on thefloor of that "house, " of that delicate subject. 

This feeling was further and rather amusingly illustrated on oneoccasion during the "Separation Session, " at which I was the member forMelbourne, and present at the time. Mr. Henry Moor, the well-knownsolicitor, and one of the five district members, in replying to thecharge urged against us of the unfilial indifference or ingratitude ofPort Phillip in thus seeking separation, instanced for the contrary therecent event of the arrival from Melbourne of a deputation from theAnti-Transportation League, in order to help Sydney in promoting itsgood cause. The instant his drift was detected, the Speaker, Dr. (SirCharles) Nicholson, apprehensive, doubtless, of some undesirable sceneon that too sensational subject, rose to call peremptorily thehonourable member to order, and to the non-transgression of his propersubject. But all this injuriously exclusive faction had entirelydisappeared from that open and genial society of Sydney which welcomedMr. Froude three years ago, and which he describes so pleasantly. 

CHEAP LIVING. 

"All cheering Plenty, with his flowing horn, Led yellow Autumn, wreathed with nodding corn. "--Burns. 

After the first few years of disturbing land speculation, and a toogeneral extravagance of living, we settled down into a frugal folk, ofmoderate but steady prosperity, which lasted up to the generalunsettlement of everything by the gold. The general moderation, and thecheap and plenty time that characterized it, culminated in 1844, whenbread was 4 pence the 4-pound loaf, rich fresh butter 3 pence a pound, and beef and mutton 1 penny. A good managing lady, with whom I lodged inthat year, told me one day at dinner that a savoury dish we wereenjoying was a bullock's head, got for nothing from her butcher, andwith which she hoped to keep the house for yet two more days. Shortlybefore this, when my friend Fennell and I housed together at the westend of the town, we sent one day to the neighbouring slaughtering-place, where the custom was to sell by retail to the public the legs of muttonat 5 pence each, as they had comparatively so little of tallow forboiling down. We duly got one, cooked it, and found it very good. 

No doubt it was in very great measure because money was scarce and dearthat nearly everything was thus cheap. I recollect the sale by auctionat that time of a vacant half-acre allotment in central Collins-street, next to that on which Mr. George James, wine merchant, had very earlyerected his surpassing brick office and dwelling. After some slightcompetition, the allotment, put up, I think, at the upset price of 300pounds, was bought by Mr. Edmund Westby for 344 pounds. The amount isimpressed upon me, because I wondered at the time that anyone shouldthus throw away so much good money. But my friend Westby reckoned thefuture more accurately than I did, for within nine years after, thisprice was hardly the 500th part of the value. To cap the whole tale, thelot was, I think, in the hands of Government from having been abandonedby the original buyer, who had forfeited his deposit rather thancomplete his supposed bad bargain. 

According to my recollection, the first of our sober community to set upa carriage and pair was Mr. Henry Moor, above alluded to. Even HisHonour the Superintendent had no such luxury at that time. I rememberlooking upon that vehicle with a sense of awe, possibly not without envyat what was to most of us the entirely unattainable. I speak of the realHyde Park Corner article, and not the old "shandrydan" with which someremote squatter might at times have galloped into town, poising himselfwith practised and needed adroitness on nature's bush track, behind apair or more of the hundreds of nags on his run. I must except alsothose said anomalous early years, for I recollect sallying forth in 1841from my little lodging in Lonsdale-street, opposite the old gaol, thenbeing erected, to see Mr. John Hunter Patterson, a spirited colonist ofthe earliest times, drive his splendid four-in-hand through thetrackless bush into town from the direction of the Moonee Ponds. 

RELIGIOUS INTERESTS. 

Our small society, in its upward struggle, received a distinctly greatimpetus for good by the accession in 1848 of the first Lord Bishop ofthe colony, Dr. Charles Perry. He exhibited a rare energy in the causeof his Divine Master, and he frankly and genially sought and recognizedthat Master's Church far beyond the pale of the Bishop's own section ofit, so far at least as the rules of that section would permit. But thegood Bishop, liberal as he was in one direction, yet failed to reach thefull width of colonial sentiment in that respect, when he refused toreciprocate the courtesy visit of his Roman Catholic brother. He iscredited with having given his reason, namely, that, in his view, theRoman Church belonged to "the synagogue of Satan"--surely a veryventuresome assertion of so vast a part of Christianity and of the powerand civilization of the world. We might say at times of bishops, as isso often said of judges, that when they have to make any unusual orunexpected decision they had best not give the reasons. I witnessed avery different sense of duty, and one to which I must confess apreference when we were at Lugano, an inland town of Teneriffe, situateda few miles from Santa Cruz, where our good "Coptic" halted for sixhours to replenish her coal, thus permitting her passengers a shoreexcursion. A polite elderly gentleman, apparently the sole occupant ofthe Lugano hotel, whose decidedly clerical aspect, together with thatsimple white neckband which Catholics claim as solely their own, made usat once set him down as Roman, invited us to look through the inevitablecathedral, the only sight of the place. But we found our mistake when hetook occasion to allude to "our dear Roman Catholic brethren. " We thenadjudged him to be a broad-minded Anglican, which was correct, for, ashe afterwards told us, he was an ex-navy chaplain. 

THE GERMAN IMMIGRATION. 

"Go then forth, and fortune play uponThy prosperous helm. "--2nd part Henry IV. 

When I made my first Home trip, in 1847, I resolved to open, if Ipossibly could, German emigration to Port Phillip. Quite a number hadalready been settled, some from the earliest years, in South Australia, where their industry, frugality, sobriety, and general good conduct hadmade them excellent colonists. This favourable testimony was confirmedto me by correspondence on the subject with my late much-lamentedfriend, Alexander L. Elder, one of South Australia's earliest, mostesteemed, and most successful colonists. My first step on arrival was towrite to the "Commissioners of Emigration, " an officiate since dispensedwith, pointing out this South Australian success, and suggesting that acertain charge upon the Colonial Land Fund, authorized in special casesof emigrants--an aid of 18 pounds a head, I think--might be madeapplicable to German vinedressers emigrating to Port Phillip. In duecourse, I received a most cordial reply from the secretary, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Stephen Walcot, to the effect that Lord Grey, thenColonial Secretary, highly approved of the project, and that the aidasked for would be forthcoming for properly qualified Germanvinedressers. Armed with this letter, I went to Hamburg withintroductions to Messrs. John Caesar Godeffroy and Son, at that time thechief shipowners of the city. They were evidently well disposed, and hadbeen, I think, concerned in the previous out-flow to Adelaide, as theyreferred me to Mr. Edward Delius, of Bremen, who had been an agent inthe work. My visit to Delius resulted in my proceeding at once toSilesia, where I got as far as Liegnitz, whose gilded or tin-coveredminarets reminded me that I was approaching the fanciful or gorgeousEast. Here I met a number of the peasantry, all eager to hear aboutAustralia, friends of some of them being already there. Hearing that aMoravian headquarters was also there, I introduced myself, stating thatI was a subject of, and personally acquainted with, their brotherMoravian, Mr. La Trobe, our Superintendent. I found other La Trobesthere, his relatives or namesakes. Several of the body spoke goodEnglish, and so I got fairly on with the peasantry, explaining as to theclass entitled to the assistance in emigrating, and that to vinedressersonly would the aid apply, so as to enable the Messrs. Godeffroy to givethem a free passage. I left them with the understanding that they wouldmake up a party and communicate with Delius. 

About six months later I went again to Hamburg, this time to see thefirst party away. They were in a good deal of trouble, for most of them, in spite of all advice, had clung to old family lumber, things mostlyquite unsuited to Australia, and the carriage-cost of which drainedtheir narrow means at every stage. But, worst of all, the cholera wasthen raging in Hamburg, and it attacked several of the party during somefew days, while they waited, under such shelter as they could improvise, until the ship could take them. Delius and I visited them, to cheer themwith the near prospect of the sunshine and plenty of Australia. 

A rather motley crew was this first German party landed at Melbourne. Ifear they were not all vinedressers. But the difficulty was to get themto describe themselves as such, even when they were so. This was almostas hard upon them as for an Indian Brahmin to write himself down alow-caste Hindoo. Upon any pretence they would class themselves as ofsome trade, and one, who doubtless expected great things from it, entered himself, to the serious damage of our case, as "Doctor ofPhilosophy. " There was considerable difficulty and delay in getting thegrant. Mr. La Trobe helped us as much as he conscientiously could. Ofcourse, the said doctor had to be excluded, and others with him. Buteventually a substantial sum was handed to the shippers, sufficient toencourage them to continue the business. 

Several expeditions, larger or smaller, followed. I have no record oftheir total. One of their great delights was the superabundance of freshbeef and mutton. Our ever-active colonist, Dr. Thomson, of Geelong, whotook great interest in Germans, invited a party of them, just arrived, to Geelong, where he gave them a supper upon the grass around his prettyresidence, killing and roasting a large fat sheep, and serving outchops, and all the rest of it, ad libitum. One man was noticed to haveeaten a couple of pounds' weight right off, and no doubt he felt, inconsequence, like the boy in "Punch", just as though his jacket werebuttoned. My late esteemed friend, Mr. Otto Neuhauss, himself one of theemigrating throng, although not of the very first party, gave me, fromhis complete mastery of English, most material help in managing theiraffairs. I had afterwards the pleasant duty of recommending him to ourfirst Colonial Secretary, Captain Lonsdale, for a Justiceship of thePeace, to the great satisfaction and convenience of his co-emigrantcountrymen. I am under much like obligation also to Mr. Brahe, who longacted, and I hope still acts, as a solicitor amongst the Germans. 

But the grand prize for these Germans was the acquisition of land. Accordingly Captain Stanley Carr (then on a visit with the German Princeof Schleswig-Holstein) and myself took up, in trust for such Germans asdesired it, and had the means of payment, one of the square miles ofsurveyed land, as yet unapplied for, about twelve miles north ofMelbourne, which was divided amongst them in lots as agreed upon. Andthere they are to this day, a thriving community. When, in company withNeuhauss, my wife and I visited them in 1857, just before finallyquitting the colony, we found considerable progress in the form of ascattered village, with a little Lutheran church, and some show ofgardening and cultivation. They seemed delighted to stick to theirGerman speaking, and would not even try to speak English. One amusingfeature in the scramble as to allotments was that each tried, in mostcases, to get trees, stones, and rocks in preference to clear ground, asif so much additional wealth. The trees might have had value forfirewood, but in the other items they had probably more than theybargained for. We secured the land for them at a pound an acre, and thefact of their being so largely settled upon it raised its value at onceconsiderably. All the land thereabout has now risen to many times thisfirst cost. Many more Germans have since, as I understand, settled uponother land. 

The exact value of the German immigration to Australia may be to us adiffering estimate, but I think we mostly give it a decided welcome. Lord Grey, as I recollect, was attacked in Parliament by the politicalopposition for thus spending money on foreigners which might have bettergone to our own destitute, etc. , etc. And I myself was repeatedly soattacked, but always in a like merely political opposition way, whenanything is let fly at an opponent that will serve the momentarypurpose. In the heat of the O'Shanassy contest for Melbourne, forinstance, I was accused of having told the Silesian peasants that theywere wanted to set an example of sobriety to the drunken Irish. But Ieasily escaped from that noose by the rejoinder that, if I did sayanything of the kind, it must have been of my own countrymen, as anIrishman can never stand to a Highlander at whisky. The true point ofthe question is the denationalizing of our race, which is so seriouslythreatened, for example, by the import of Chinese. We know thatsomething of French, Flemish, Dutch, and Danish-Norse, along with aleading dash of German, all grafted on the old British stock, haveevolved the modern Englishman. Substantially, therefore, we are onlyreopening this useful manufacture, which was effectively begun forEngland fifteen centuries back. 

THE GERMAN PRINCE. 

"Come of a gentle, kind, and noble stock. "--Pericles. 

One of the pleasant incidents to vary our social life was the arrival in1850 of the young Prince of Schleswig-Holstein, to whom there occurred, during the German dynastic confusion that followed the revolutionaryyear 1848, an opportunity to see the world. Accompanied by his guardian, Captain Stanley Carr, he arrived by one of the Messrs. Godeffroy's shipsfrom Hamburg, having been swayed to some extent in selection of travelroute by the fact of German emigration to Port Phillip having commencedthe year before through the same firm. The Prince, who was then only ofthe age of nineteen, and of most amiable and ingenuous look, had thatcharm of the true politeness of his years, which left you the impressionthat he thought that everyone was to be preferred to himself. Ifunfortunate, in the chances of the struggle, in being dropped out of hisprincipality, he was afterwards compensated in another direction, fornot only is his younger brother our Queen's son-in-law, but one of hisdaughters is to-day Empress of Germany. What a reminder are such changesof the swift passing of time and of the crowd of portentous events inthese quick-speeding years. 

The Prince and his guardian landed, as it were, in my arms, by virtueboth of introductions from the Godeffroys, and of my position as virtualparental head of the German flock which had begun to stream into PortPhillip. Unacquainted myself with the language, I was ably anduntiringly helped, as I have said, by my late friend Mr. Neuhauss. ThePrince took the thin disguise of Lieutenant Groenwald, but I never heardthat name, except in Captain Carr's official intimation. We all calledhim the Prince, but he was equally courteous and unassuming whatever waywe addressed him. It was quite touching to see the harmony that existedbetween ward and guardian, the one looking up to his sage Mentor withthe trustful tractability of a child, the other reciprocating highregard out of the depths of that ultra-Tory sentiment with which longresidence within German Court vicinities, and perhaps a natural turn ofmind, had imbued him. We have been apprised of this still lingeringGerman high sentiment by hearing at times of the late EmperorFrederick's habit, when Crown Prince, of calling the Princess "wife, "and of asking, when looking for her, where his "wife" was--atransgression of court etiquette so appalling as well nigh to send thequeried parties off into a fit. There was another amusing illustrationfrom Captain Carr. He came to me once very considerably disconcerted bythe report of a public meeting the day before, at which he, obliviousfor the moment of the inevitable omnipresent English free press, hadoffered some remarks. The "Argus", under the undiscriminating democraticpen of Kerr, its editor, had reported that "Captain Stanley Carr hadtold the meeting that the King of Prussia had told him" so and so;whereas, as Carr sorrowfully complained, the proper expression shouldhave been that "an exalted personage in Prussia had led him tounderstand" so and so. But, added my friend, with manifest comfort, thedeparture from propriety was so flagrant that, if the report did happento reach the king's eyes, he would never believe it of him. 

Both distinguished visitors honoured me and two of my sisters, who hadby this time followed their brother to the land of promise, with a fewdays' residence at our cottage, with its garden so full of fruit, uponthe Merri Creek. When so many other invitations pressed, we were inhonour bound to this time-limitation. They were easily entertained withsuch few elegancies as we could then boast of. But we were bound also, even in mere good feeling to surrounding ambitious maidens, to get up aball in the Prince's honour. I had my task in discriminating thecomparative few of the fair hands that could possibly be placed in thatof the guest, for even a prince could not dance for ever, so as toovertake all. On the Prince's part every successive hand was acceptedwith equal readiness, and every favoured maiden was duly encouraged, ordiscouraged, by faultlessly impartial courtesy. 

BLACK THURSDAY. 

"Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire. "--Milton. 

The year 1851 had for us three memorable events: first, "BlackThursday, " on 6th February; second, the elevation of Port Phillipdistrict into the colony of Victoria, on 1st July; third, the discoveryof gold, which was practically and substantially that of Ballarat, during the third week of September. 

Black Thursday has been so much written about by others that I had bestconfine myself to my own experiences. I rode in to business, as usual, from my Merri Creek residence, 4 1/2 miles north of the city. Theweather had been unusually dry for some days with the hot wind from thenorth-west, or the direction of what we called Sturt's Desert, where hotwinds in summer, and almost as distinctly cold winds in midwinter, weremanufactured for us. The heat had been increasing daily, and this, as wecomforted ourselves, was surely the climax which was to bring theinevitable reversion of the southerly blast and the restoring rain, forit was felt as the hottest day in my recollection. In town we did nothear of much that day, although reports came from time to time ofsinister-looking signs from the surrounding interior, whence an unusualhaze or thick mist seemed to rise towards the cloudless sky. Some few, however, who were more active than others in their trading or gossipingmovements, became aware in the afternoon, or perhaps were favoured withthe news as a secret, that Dr. Thomson had ridden posthaste from Geelongto Alison and Knight, our early and leading millers and flour factors, to warn them that the whole country was in flames, with incalculabledestruction of cereals and other products; whereupon the said firm atonce raised the price of flour thirty per cent. The Doctor had certainlyearned a good fee on that occasion, and we must hope that he got it. 

I returned home as usual after the day's work. Nothing to alarm us hadeven made a near approach to Melbourne, as our trees were too park-likein their wide scatter, and our grass too much cropped off by hungryquadrupeds, to expose us to any danger. But feeling unusual oppressionfrom the singularly close heat, for I was attired in woollen clothing, not greatly under the winter woollen standard, and which, by the way, serves to confirm that our dry Australian clime is not to be measured ineffect, like most others, by mere height of the thermometer, I proceededto indulge myself, for the first time in my life, I think, with a second"refresher" of my shower-bath. Next morning accounts began to pour infrom all quarters of an awful havoc, in which, sad to say, life to nosmall extent was lost, as well as very much property. 

There has never been, throughout Australia, either before or since, sucha day as Victoria's Black Thursday, and most likely, or rather mostcertainly, it will never, to its frightful extent, occur again; forevery year, with the spread of occupation, brings its step in theaccumulation of protectives. Still these fires are a terrible andfrequent evil, and even if the towns and settlements are safe, thedestruction of the grand old forests is deplorable, and ere very manyyears will be, indeed, most sadly deplored. What between the uncheckedclearances of the fires, and the unchecked clearances on the part of thecolonists, I fear that those noble gum trees, the greatest and loftiesttrees probably in the world, so graphically described by Mr. Froude inhis recent Australian tour, will have but a poor chance. He describesalso, with equal life, those dangerous forest fires, which are soespecially frequent during the ever-recurring ordeals of drought, ofwhich he had a fair sample at the time of his visit. Only think of eightmiles of forest burnt in one fire which he witnessed, and such firesfrequent occurrences!

Let us in time take warning by the example of the States and Canada, where, in and around the more settled parts, the magnificent primevalforest has entirely disappeared, alike from areas still unused as fromthose brought into use. When I travelled by rail from Montreal toToronto, during the British Association's Session at the former in 1884, a very large part of the way was through the monotonous and utterlywearisome scene of a second growth of miscellaneous small trees andunderwood that had succeeded to the grand original. We were told of onesmall town which had become famous by its good taste or good fortune inhaving preserved in its midst one of the ancient monarchs. Well, whatcould be done to preserve Australian forests? We must not deprive thepeople of the use of these forests, for there they are for the purpose, as part of the country's wealth, and in quantity enough for all, discreetly dealt with. I would parcel out the forests, into greatclumps, marking off adequate passages between each, and only permittingfor the present the latter to be dealt with. With the gradual clearingof these intervals, the reserved portions, and the colony generally, might be freed, in great measure, from the risk of fires. 

EARLY VICTORIA, FROM 1851. 

"Gold! gold! gold!Bright and yellow, hard and cold. "--Hood. 

I am drawing near the end of what may be fairly considered as "EarlyMelbourne and Victoria. " Indeed, I might be challenged in going beyondthe memorable 1851, a year which ushers such momentous new features intothe colony. But considerably more than a generation has since passed;and, writing as I do for those who occupy to-day the old scene, I mayplead as my excuse their own view of the subject; for already theyregard the time I have come to as the real beginning of early Victoria, while the dim distances preceding are to them a kind of age before thedeluge, which ordinary memories fail to fathom. In keeping to personalrecollections I cannot, at the worst, be very protracted, for I quittedpublic life in 1853, and regretfully, under the calls of business, thecolony itself four years later. I must confine myself to some fewrecollections of the former brief but busy period--1851-3--of which, inits multifarious rush of political and general business, I might say inthe well-known words of the Roman poet, which have survived my classicrust "quorum pars magna fui, " provided I were allowed to greatly abate, or rather perhaps, in becoming modesty, altogether to delete, the thirdfactor of Virgil's sentence. 

The goldfields came upon us with almost the suddenness of the changes ofdreamland. We had had a slight graduation by the news, in the Maypreceding, from the sister colony, of a shepherd on Dr. Kerr's station, near Bathurst, having come upon a round hundredweight of nearly puregold. This luck, I presume, was mainly the result of the habit most ofus had begun to acquire of keeping our eyes upon the ground beneath us, in consequence of Hargreaves, on his return from California about thistime, having predicted gold, and subsequently fulfilled his prophecy bywashing out some of the precious metal in the Bathurst vicinities. Passing over trifling intermediate finds of gold, as at Anderson's Creekin August, Ballarat came suddenly upon us. 

The news reached town, I think, on 21st September. A week later a smallknot of us merchants, who had offices on the east side of theMarket-square--including our next door neighbours, Messrs. Watson andWight--were discussing what was to come of it all; for while part of ouremployees were off to visit the diggings on leave, the rest threatenedto follow--leave or no leave. The situation had a certain convenience inthe fact that almost all business was for the time at an end, exceptingthat of buying up spades and shovels, pitchers and pannikins, andanything to answer for a cradle. 

Instead of rising with the gold, houses and lands in Melbourne actuallyfell, and considerably too, in the first confusion, when multitudes wereselling off or letting at anything they could get, in order to be off tothe diggings. There came, however, a rapid recovery a few months after. My friend Mr. Henry Miller, sitting next me in the Legislature, told meone day that two owners of cottages, to whom he had lent 80 pounds each, upon their respective security, had begged him six months ago to takeover the said property in payment, and let them be off at once to thecommon goal of the day; that he had charitably done so, and that he hadjust resold these houses for 1, 000 pounds each. 

When the tide began its upward turn, a Mr. O'Farrell, a quietunpretending house agent and rent collector (one of whose sonsafterwards came to so bad an end), made promptly a large fortune bybuying up leases or fee-simples, and in an incredibly short timere-disposing of them at a great advance. 

EARLY BALLARAT. 

"All that glisters is not gold. "--Merchant of Venice. 

Let me begin upon early Ballarat by stating, what many may now haveforgotten, namely, that the original and native name was Balaarat, orBallaarat, which was the pronunciation then, and for some years after. But our English way is to put the emphasis on the first part of apolysyllabic word. I have long remarked this practice, comparing it withthat of races of inferior, or more or less barbarous condition, who, asin countless other examples in Australia, and still more strikingly inNew Zealand, and generally, I think, over the world, lay the emphasis onor towards the end of the word. What does it mean? I arrived at mysolution. The emphatic ending best preserves the whole word. Thebarbarous, with few ideas, give surpassing importance to words; whilethe civilized, under the crowd of ideas, disregard words except as merevehicles, and traverse them easiest by the early emphasis, to saynothing of dropping the after part entirely when troublesomely long. TheTuranian, or lowest class of language, as Professor Max Muller tells us, preserves its root-words for ever, tacking one to another, but neverlosing the full sound of each; while all sorts of word "jerry mandering"liberties go on in the highest class. I ventured to propound my theoryto my linguistic friend, Mr. Hyde Clarke; but he found so manydivergencies in Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and what not, that I wasdriven to a partial reconstruction. It was the busy as well as civilizedrace that scamped the words. The Greeks and Romans--that portion of themthat made society or the public opinion, and that consequently governedthe language--abhorred the vulgar hurry of business life, and thus gavetheir words a better chance of unmutilated life. I have not yet beendriven out of this final theory. 

With hardly anything else to do, it was as hardly possible to resist avisit, with nearly everybody else, to Ballarat. So I appeared there onthe 3rd October, and, as senior member for Melbourne in the colony'sfirst Parliament, and first President of the recently establishedChamber of Commerce, I was, of course, "a man in authority. " So, mounting a gum-tree stump, as the only available chair or pulpit, Iharangued the diggers, first upon the grand fortunes that had overtakenthe colony, and next upon their sadly wasteful ways with the littlestream that ran through the Ballarat valley. I fear I did not muchimpress my hearers on the latter point, for everyone did what was mostfor his immediate needs, whether or not he thus sacrificed his neighbourbelow him. Next I was conducted to Gold Point, which was just developingits quality in the "blue clay, " which had been struck at no great depthbelow the surface. I was let down into a big hole, the early parent ofshaft-sinking, given a spade, and directed to apply it to a place wherea digger's quick eye had detected one speck of gold. There was probably, he said, a string of gold behind it. And so it proved, for out of abouta pound weight of matrix which I removed on the corner of the spade, Ipicked out 7 shillings and 6 pence worth of gold. 

Then I retired from the crowd and the incessant noise of cradles, andascending from the valley to the high level plain, I came upon a smalllake, whose waters glittered peacefully in the warm sunshine of a brightspring day. A tiny streamlet was still running from the lake, andtrickling down the small semi-precipice towards the main rivulet, nowsadly muddy, which I had just left. So near was this edge to the lakethat I increased the stream by deepening its bed with my foot; but Irepented of this waste, and restored the block, because the approachingsummer must be thought for, and this natural reservoir was by no meansdeep. I waded into the pleasantly and invitingly cool water, but hadpromptly to retreat from swarms of leeches which attacked my feet. Thescene was striking. Although the hum of busy humanity arose frombeneath, not an object was visible on the higher level, as I glancedaround to the far west and north, excepting the country's indigenousfeatures. There was not a human being, not even a sheep in sight. Aroundthis spot has since arisen the city of Ballarat, with fifty thousandpeople, with streets, buildings, institutions, business (including anextra busy Stock Exchange), equal to those of, at least, twice itspopulation at Home; while the lovely lake of that time has long beenfringed with residences and gardens, and its waters been the scene ofthe regattas and other diversions of the leisure of the prosperouscitizens. 

As I rode back on my horse to town--for Cobb and Co. Had not yetestablished their leather-hung stage drags, for which, in theimpossibility of others upon the unmade roads, we had reason to bethankful--I mused over all I had seen, and long ere reaching home hadconcluded that 10, 000 pounds a day was being taken out of Ballarat. Sundays excepted, that meant a product at the rate of over threemillions a year, into which, as one of its export items, the youngcolony was already "precipitated" from a total export product of only atrifle above a million the year before. No one was prepared to creditsuch a statement. Indeed, unbelief on the point was prevalent until wellon into 1852, when Bendigo had been added to Ballarat, and whenMelbourne was seen to be full of gold, which the newly-instituted "goldbroker" was already practised, with critical eye as to quality, inweighing out by the hundred or the thousand ounces, and which diggers byhundreds were carrying away in their pockets, in most cases entirelyunrecorded, to Tasmania, Sydney, and Adelaide. There was hardly anyCustoms record at the first, and only a very partial one for a whileafter, until the diggers ceased thus to carry off the gold, upon findingthat the rival brokers gave them fair and full value. The yield of 1852was estimated at no less than fifteen millions. 

How the diggers, utterly inexperienced as they mostly then were, came sosuddenly upon such surpassingly rich drifts has never been, to my mindat least, satisfactorily explained, unless the case be summarilyaffiliated to those possibilities of throwing "sixes" in dozensuccessions, and such like. In no one year, since 1852, have theVictorian goldfields, although comparatively the most productive, yielded even a near approach to fifteen millions. 

MOUNT ALEXANDER AND BENDIGO. 

"Our fortune lies upon this jump. "--Antony and Cleopatra. 

The following year, about the same pleasant spring season, I made out asecond goldfields visit, in company with my late friend, Mr. W. M. Bell, senior partner of the early firm of Bells and Buchanan. This time I wentfurther inland, and in the more northerly direction of Mount Alexanderand Bendigo, as considerable regions around were then loosely called, and which are now represented respectively by the large municipalitiesof Castlemaine and Sandhurst. Vast changes had taken place in the colonysince my Ballarat visit. There had been, in the first place, arrivals inmultitudes, first from the surrounding colonies, and then from Home, and, in a lesser influx, from the Cape, America, and parts of Europe. The tide of such threatening dimensions from China was later on. Theroads, such as they were, were crowded with passengers; and withtraffic, chiefly in flour, to the starving diggers, the carriage ofwhich to Bendigo ran up to 100 pounds a ton. Indeed, such was the costof carriage that some of us estimated that a single year's total wouldequal the cost of making a railway. Of course the railway, draining thelabour market, could only itself have been at proportionate cost. Nevertheless, Mr. Trenchard, a Melbourne solicitor, projected "TheMelbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway, " an enterprisewhich, after some months' flutter of chequered life, expired for want ofsupport from the over-busy colonists, who had other far more immediatelypressing needs and chances for their money. 

The "gold escort" had been established by this time, with an armedguard, which at times included "native police, " a force which had beenthe best, if not the only, success as yet in our "civilizing" effortswith the aborigines. The art of digging had greatly advanced since myBallarat visit. At Bendigo I inspected the "White Hills, " where therewas already regular shaft-sinking to depths approaching 100 feet. TheWhite Hills were so-called from a large ejection, piled up in whitemounds of a light-coloured thick bed of the auriferous drifts, in whichunprecedented quantities of gold had been found. Descending one of theshafts, I was shown the chief source of this gold, namely, a thin seamof small quartz grit, hardly two inches in thickness, and of the whitequartz hue, excepting the lowest half inch, which was browned with iron. This lowest half inch had almost all the gold, and the very lowest partof it, where the iron-brown darkened almost to black, was literallycrowded with gold particles. The diggers now always looked for the mostgold where the quartz drift showed most of iron browning. Mr. Selwyn hadnot yet explained to us our Australian gold features and those gold"constants" of Murchison, which had to sustain so severe a shaking inAustralia. I scraped out gold grains with my nails, and a good many witha knife within a minute. When I told the claim owners, that here wasunlimited gold, and asked what they intended to do with it all, theypointed to the superincumbent mass of white stuff, which was eitherabsolutely sterile, or, what was practically the same, had insufficientgold to pay even a run through the wash when ejected. The case seemednot unlike that of the thin seams of flint nodules (say nuggets) whichcharacterize the thick chalk strata of South England, within which mostor all the silicious matter of the entire bed has been somehow broughttogether. I understood that this remarkable gold seam gave out not longafter, and that, thereupon, the marvellous yield of Bendigo wasseriously diminished. 

As we approached this already great and busy goldfield, when the hum ofits business life was just breaking upon our ears, but without any otherdisturbing intrusion to interfere with the universally indigenous scene, a large kangaroo--the "old man, " or largest species--started up amongstthe gum-tree underwood a little ahead of us, and bounded away inmagnificent style. But a day or two afterwards, as we were leavingBendigo, another feature of the colony, not indigenous and by no meansso pleasant was brought up to our minds to their considerable discomfortfor the moment. We were just clear of goldfields sounds and company, andinvolved in the utter solitude of the primeval bush, when we espied aparty approaching us on the road. They numbered five, all on horseback. Somehow, the circumstances considered, we had all, independently, concluded that there was no small chance of their being bushrangers; foralready the towns and goldfields--the latter, of course, mostly--swarmedwith these unmitigated ruffians, arrived chiefly from Tasmania. Wediscussed the chances--three, four, possibly even five to one in ourfavour--and considered what we should do in case even five to one failedus in the lot. What we COULD do was the practical question. We had also, I think, five of a party, and Bell was a huge, strong fellow, able for acouple of ordinary mortals; but what availed all that againstdesperadoes each doubly armed with revolver and rifle. We calmedourselves as best we could as we mutually approached; our salute wascordially returned, and then we found that we owed an ample apology forhaving for once so grievously mistaken honest men. 

Another goldfields feature was of the most pleasing and inspiringcharacter. In no goldfield we had then visited did we ever meet with somuch as one drunken person. With most laudable prescience, ourauthorities had prohibited the ingress of and the dealing in anyintoxicating drink on all proclaimed goldfields. The good order inconsequence was quite marvellous, and we seemed as if in some earthlyparadise, where mankind had, as with one consent, dropped the worst ofhuman vices and passions. But this was only so far as drink anddrunkenness were concerned; for rude circumstances made rude men, to sayno more of the pervading convict element. Nor were the goldfields freefrom "sly grog selling, " as it is called. Still, the difficulties put inthe way kept them thus sober. Of course, outside the goldfields' limitsthere was drunken riot enough, intensified, no doubt, by the enforcedsobriety within. Troops of diggers, or their employees, with theirpockets full of gold, would start for town, or for the nearest "public, "there to run up a score till the whole "pile" had vanished. We were toldof one country hotel called "The Porcupine, " whose keeper was making40, 000 pounds a year of net profit. These riotous crowds, at eachpublic-house, indulged in such shocking excesses of language and conductas to make mere drunkenness the very innocence of the case. But withal Iconfess to a greatly disappointed feeling when, having left the colonyon a Home visit early in 1853, and returned late in 1854, I found thatthe influence of the great "spirit interest" had succeeded in removingall restriction from the goldfields. By this time, however, the policeand other authority were better organized, so that there was a veryconsiderable mitigation of bad effects. 

EARLY VICTORIAN LEGISLATION. 

"They that stand high have many blasts to shake them. "--Richard III. 

"Hear ye not the hum of mighty workings. "--Keats. 

"Stay, you imperfect speakers. "--Macbeth. 

We commenced with an unpretending budget, although memorable 1853, withall its gold and its progress, in what Wentworth happily called theprecipitation into a nation, had dawned upon us. The Speaker of our thensingle Chamber system--one-third nominees--had but 400 pounds a year, which is guide sufficient to indicate the scale and style of otherthings. Our first choice for Speaker fell upon Dr. Palmer, an earlycolonist of the medical profession, and of good culture and bearing, butwho had not previously taken any prominent social position. His ambitionwas probably stimulated by the fact that amongst the busy colonists, whoperhaps foresaw more work than either honour or pay, there was nocandidate but himself. The rest of us speculated, not without expectedamusement, as to the official attire our new dignitary would appear in. Probably any other of the elected members, as Speaker, would havedecided on simple evening dress, as most consistent with the moderntendency to make a gentleman plain, and the waiter and footman dressilyconspicuous; and this would perhaps have decided as to "the Chair" inthat respect for all the future. But Palmer we all knew to be too muchof the old Tory for any surrender of that kind, and there was, besides, just a trace of the oddly positive in him, although otherwise a genialgood fellow, which held out promise of sport. We were only halfgratified. He appeared in a plain quaker-like but much braided coat, which was understood to have gone for dress in the good old times ofCharles II. --a time when kings were really kings. 

Three prominent subjects came before us for legislation. First, thatfundamental topic of interminable difference, the Land Question. Second, the Goldfields Question, which was even more important then, seeing thatthe Government, under pretence of old English law, to the effect thatall "treasure trove" was the Crown's, claimed the whole goldfields asCrown territory, whose population had thus no rights, political orfiscal, except the Crown chose to give such. Third, the TransportationQuestion, which, under the startling emergencies of the moment, wasperhaps second to no other before us. 

It was rather amusing to see how business went at first, for nearly allof us were quite inexperienced in public life. But Mr. Barker, our firstClerk of the Council, took bravely to his duties, and soon became auseful referee. There was much looking up for authority, and O'Shanassyindulged in many a profane joke at "May" having taken definitivepossession of Speaker Palmer's brain. One most decided obstacle to ourlegislative progress was the fact that the vast incessant tide ofbusiness thrust upon the colony made it hardly possible to spare anytime for other than each one's own private concerns. In my own case, theonly "leisure" I ever had then in the six days was half-an-hour for awalk and a thought in the early morn. The entire remainder of the day, and great part of the night also, were one succession of privatebusiness, public meetings, and deputations, Council Committees andCouncil sittings. 

The unprepared speeches were in due accordance. Dr. (now Sir Charles)Nicholson, the Sydney Speaker, happened to pay us a visit during theseearly legislative throes of baby Victoria; and as I sat by him in theprivileged place near the Speaker's chair, he remarked that, prepared ashe was to find a crude spectacle, he had never imagined an assemblage ofsuch helpless incompetency. But, in defence, I took Bulwer Lytton'sview, that genius being mainly labour, and labour mainly time, the wantof the last might be merely preventing the first. And so it has turnedout long ago; so that if Sir Charles, who, I am glad to say, is still tothe fore, were to pay another visit, and try conclusions with Mr. Service, and possibly a hundred others besides, he might reach adifferent verdict. 

We were all, confessedly, terribly raw in all matters of Parliamentaryform. One day, while we were more than usually puzzled in that respect, Town Clerk Kerr, who happened to be present, was continually sending tomyself and others written slips, suggesting the proper or common-sensecourse. I could not help thinking that, if he had been but a trifle lessof a party man, there was no one in the colony who would have made abetter Speaker, with his sufficiently portly person and commandingpresence, his imperturbable gravity, and his well-filled head ineverything required from that quarter for the position. But this was anutter non possimus with the nominees and squatting members, most ofwhom, with Ebden at their head, would almost rather have endured apresentable Vandemonian expiree in the chair than the ultra-democraticTown Clerk and caustic ex-editor of the anti-squatter andanti-government "Argus". Some of the officials, however, were fairly upto their mark, notably our Attorney-General Stawell (now Sir William, the ex-Chief Justice), who, both then and since, has ever held the firstposition in ability. At an interval came Auditor-General Ebden, and oneor two others, official or unofficial. My worthy friend Cassell, Collector of Customs (or Commissioner thereof, as I think he was thencalled), was brimful of information for us all, but not much of aspeaker. 

The other side of the House, that of the two-thirds elected, was, in mymemory, raw throughout. O'Shanassy's strong brogue, and ungainlydelivery and manner, had not yet been overbalanced by the solidity ofhis arguments. Johnson, our third metropolitan, had early descended, orelse condescended, to pungent snapping at the heels of the nominees, asthough these sacred persons had been ordinary mortals like the ruck ofmembership on his own side of the table. By far our most vivaciousmember was William Rutledge, of Port Fairy, who, with an earnestness ofmanner, contrasting with a merry twinkle of the eye, and with a readybut utterly negligent tongue, gave us many a laugh. He was highlyindignant on one occasion, as I remember, on hearing that a bet had beentaken that, on a particular Committee day, he would rise and speak morethan thirty different times; and he was still more angry when hisinformant went on to tell him that the bet had been won. One of thecountry members, whose name I am now not quite sure of, set us all in aroar, on one occasion, by taking as a personal affront, and very tartlytoo, as though quite intended, the interruption to his speech by thearrival of a "royal" message from the Governor. 

Another curiosity was the way in which the House adjusted itself forlegislative action. Almost as matter of course, under the instincts ofthe position, the elected members were, in fact and in principle alike, opposed to the nominated; and that, by consequent instincts, ever meantsimply the Government. The press, with similar unanimity, was on theelected side, for both were in the fight for the full "constitutional"concession, which came a few years later. In anything that touchedsquatting, however, the squatting representatives, led by another oldfriend, W. F. Splatt, of the Wimmera, went over bodily, thus giving theGovernment a small majority, which, as I have shown in my sketch of Mr. La Trobe, blocked us seriously in dealing with the waste or Crown landsfor the benefit of the inpouring tens of thousands of people. Sometimes, by the force of our case, we stole a vote from the Ministerial side, aswhen Mr. (afterwards Judge) Pohlman defected upon my anti-transportationmotion for transmission to the Home Government. There was one soleexception on our elective side (another old personal friend), WilliamCampbell, of the Loddon, who, uncongenial towards the disturbingdemocratic prospect, voted steadily for the Government. On this account, Edward Wilson, then editing "The Argus", found for him the designationof "the lost sheep of the Loddon, " which, as from the enemy's side, wasno bad piece of humour; and it took its place in the colony's categoryaccordingly; alongside of Ebden's "disgustingly rich, " and possiblyother like humour which I have forgotten. 

One of the nominee members, Mr. Dunlop, took me roundly to task forasserting that, through a mere "accident of law" about "treasure trove"being, as of old, the property of the Crown, the Government claimed toconfiscate the constitutional rights of one-half of the colonists. I"explained. " But the situation really explained itself. Thecommon-sense, as well as the political attainment of the day, could notpossibly tolerate such an application of "Old Black Letter" to theentirely novel and unanticipated circumstances of these great andpopulous goldfields. The elected members were compelled to threaten theonly course which appeared legally open to them--namely, that of notvoting the supplies, if the goldfields regulations, and receipts andexpenditure, all of which the Government had claimed as entirely theirown independent matter, were not of reasonable and suitable character, and in accordance with the colonial representatives' views. At the last, however, there was happily mutual agreement. 

The "Protection Question" was early brought on, of course from Geelong, by my worthy old friend J. F. Strachan, its member, and both its incomeand, for that time, its exit, were amusing. "Why lose so much revenue inorder to set up colonial brandy-making?" he was asked; "was the domesticarticle we were to make such sacrifice for to be superior to theimported?" "On the contrary, " he replied; "it was because it would beinferior, and must therefore be thus bonused against the superiority ofthe rival import. " So then we were to lose revenue, and pay a higherprice, in order to substitute bad liquor for good. Let us still keep tothe better quality at the lower price. So the proposal was laughed out, Strachan himself, with his usual good humour, joining in the laugh. 

It would be "supererogation" to go into our early legislation, which isfamiliar to the colony in a hundred publications, besides the fact thatI have touched already on some of the prominent subjects or questions inwhich I myself took a part, such as the movement against transportation, the new and rather startling course in "The Convicts Prevention Act, "and the first Gold Commission. I have therefore exhausted my subject, sofar as it is properly my own, and must hasten to take my leave. When Ifirst thought of this work for the delightfully complete leisure andrepose of a long voyage, I feared that I might find but little to say ofmatters of a retrospect approaching two generations. But seated at lastwith pen in hand, and with memory stirred up, I had ere long to exercisemercy towards my expected readers, in sifting the surging crowd ofrecollections, so as to keep to such as might have general interest. Ihope I have reasonably succeeded; and if I have also contributed, inhowever small a degree, to the information, interest, or amusement of myold friends and fellow-colonists, I shall be abundantly repaid. 

WILLIAM WESTGARTH. 

S. S. "Coptic", at sea, latitude 45 degrees south, longitude 142 degreeseast, 25th July, 1888. 

"And this is my conclusion. "--Much Ado About Nothing. 

POSTSCRIPT. 

MELBOURNE IN 1888. 

"Here, fifty winters since, by Yarra's stream, A scattered hamlet found its modest place:What mind would venture then in wildest dreamIts wondrous growth and eminence to trace?What seer predict a stripling in the raceWould, swift as Atalanta, win the prizeOf progress, 'neath the world's astonished eyes?"--J. F. DANIELL, "The Jubilee of Melbourne. "

"And, behold, one half of the greatness was not told me. "--2 Chronicles 9:6. 

My intended postscript on Melbourne as I found it in 1888 has beendelayed until I have seen Sydney also, so that I have a few words ofcomparison on the two great capitals of the southern section of ourempire. 

ARRIVAL AT HOBART. 

Allow me first to complete the outward passage. I concluded my"Recollections" when still at sea, within about a day of our ship'sdestination, Hobart. The Tasmanian shores gave us a salutation notusually associated with Australia, that, namely, of the snow, thicklysprinkled over the southern slopes of the island. I welcomed the scene, both as recalling that of Home, and as giving the promise of the highestof civilization, which, as Mr. Froude reminds us, belongs to thecountries where the snow remains on the ground. We shortened our courseby a few miles in taking D'Entrecasteaux Channel, and were, as Iunderstood, the first of the large vessels from the other hemisphere todo so. We cast anchor off Hobart after nightfall, the many bright lightsof the city gladdening our eyes, while the babble of English tonguesfrom the boats around us reminded us once more that, after so manythousands of additional miles since at Cape Town, we were still withinthe British Empire. 

WESTELLA HOTEL. 

My first salutation came from an exact namesake of mine, Mr. WilliamWestgarth, whom I had known at Melbourne thirty-five years ago, and who, after varying fortunes, had for the last dozen years been conducting asuperior class of boarding house or family hotel. It was calledWestella, and was situated in Elizabeth-street, the chief thoroughfareof Hobart. The house I recollected as that of Mr. Henry Hopkins, a veryearly merchant of the city, whom I had met more than once between fortyand fifty years ago. It was the undisputed palace of the city of itsday; nor was it disposed, even now, to bend its head to any secondposition. As my friend conducted our party over the pretty scene ofgarden and cliff behind the house, we found it all wrapped in frost, except where the bright morning sun had struck, and we broke the ice, quite quarter of an inch thick, on a fishpond of the grounds. ThusTasmanian ascendancy in the civilized world is secured. 

PROGRESS OF THE ANTIPODES. 

Already we began in Hobart, and we continued as we went further north, to meet with indications of the progress of the age, quite abreast of, and indeed rather ahead of, all that we have been used to at Home. Forinstance, we were hardly settled comfortably within Westella, when thewaiter announced that. Mr. Fysh, the Tasmanian Premier, wished to seeme. I had met Mr. Fysh in London, and I quite expected that he wished tohave a talk with me about Tasmanian Finance and Loans. "Is he waiting?"I asked, jumping up at once to go to him. "No, sir, " was the reply, "buthe is speaking to you through the telephone. " I passed to the telephoneroom, and the signal being sent that I was in attendance, I was giventwo ear-caps and told to listen. A clear, but also "a still, smallvoice" came up as from the "vasty deep. " Whether from the smallness ofit, or from my being unaccustomed to that mysterious sort of thing, Idid not catch the words, and had to relinquish the business to ourhostess, Miss Westgarth, and thus a meeting was conveniently arranged. 

AUSTRALIAN FEATURES. 

Fortunately for us, we had arrived in a leisure season in the hotel way, so that our host was free to devote himself to us in sightseeing, andthus, with hardly a day and a half to spare, we got a fair idea ofHobart, including a drive along the Huon-road, in whose shaded valleyswe found as much snow and ice as though we perambulated the ScotchHighlands in January. This had been, however, an exceptionally severewinter. On the way to Government House, my eyes were once more regaledwith the gum trees, in the well-accustomed form of open forest, theground being covered with grass, on which sheep were depasturing. Thisis the pleasing characteristic of much of Australian scenery. 

THE TASMANIAN MAIN LINE. 

The next day, Sunday, we had to leave for Launceston, by a special trainof the Tasmanian Main Line, so as to be in time for the boat toMelbourne, on which we depended for arrival prior to the opening of thegreat Exhibition on 1st August. We formed a large and important party, including the Governor and lady, the Premier, Treasurer, andAttorney-General, while the Auditor-General and others were to follow afew days after. We understood there was to be a general concourse fromall the surrounding colonies, and so far as regarded the officialcontribution to the concourse Tasmania had done its duty. 

While we ran along this, the chief railway of Tasmania, I recalledsomething of the endless contentions between its proprietors or agentsand the Tasmanian Government. The question requires some study, for the"literature" thereof has already swollen to most inconvenientdimensions. Any way of it, the Government would have done best for thecolony if they had themselves built the line. As matters now stand, thecompany cannot be made to maintain the line in due efficiency, because, unfortunately, it has neither capital nor credit to do so. Nor can theamount needed for that purpose be permitted to be taken out of earnings, because that only increases the guaranteedinterest properly payable on the bonded debt of the line by theGovernment. Nor can the Government keep back any of this latter amount, because the "innocent and helpless bond-holders, " or the company astheir advocate, are at once down upon them for such atrocity. Nor, lastly, can the colony buy up the line and thus be extricated from themess, because the company utterly scouts the idea of a sale at merevaluation. 

THE RIVER TAMAR. 

Next day we were steaming down the Tamar, famous for its beauty as anarrow inlet of the sea from Launceston downwards, rather than properlya river. A small boat took us the first twelve miles, and we were thentransferred to the larger vessel in which we were to cross the Straits. In the former we were rather crowded, for some twenty-five youths ofGeelong were returning from a football contest with some Tasmanian youngfolks. They kept us lively with songs and recitations, in which thepraises of Geelong were dutifully mingled. I was delighted to see thesmall Geelong of my early memory turning out in such strength; andrecalling in a parental way this said small past of the place, I mighthave maundered in the "bless you, my children, " sort of vein, had I notbeen kept in check by the frolicsome humour of the boys. 

PORT PHILLIP HARBOUR. 

Two disappointments awaited me on entering the Heads of Port Phillip:first, it was early morn, just before daybreak, and next, when the daydid develop upon us half-way up the Bay, it was in such mist and rain asall but deprived us of any view. But the mist and cloud lifted somewhatas we approached Hobson's Bay, and thence I was rushed into themultitudinous shipping of Williamstown and Port Melbourne, the greatharbour works going on all around, the New Cut, the crowded wharves, andall the other marvels of modern Melbourne. 

MELBOURNE. 

Here apartments had been provided for us at Scott's Hotel, as Menzies', in its near neighbourhood, the more usual place for families, was quitefull with Exhibition visitors. But although our hotel had the noise ofceaseless business below, we on the floor above were so quiet, with thebest of attendance and cooking, and with every other comfort, that weare, by choice, to return to it after visiting the other colonies. Here, then, we opened our campaign amongst old scenes and old friends, separated for more than a generation. I had to ascertain who were deadand who still alive. A glance over the city soon revealed to me that oneold friend--the oldest, I might say, upon the ground--had entirelypassed away, and that was the old Melbourne itself which I had leftbehind me more than thirty-one years before. But happily the old streetnames remained, and thus I began to feel again at home. 

OLD COLONIST HONOURS. 

Labours and honours opened at once. The day of my arrival I was to bethe guest of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce for the honour of adinner to their first President. My friend Mr. Cowderoy, the secretary, had telegraphed me to Hobart, in the hope that I might arrive in time tosecure the dinner taking place prior to the Exhibition opening, with allits proposed engrossing after festivities. Mr. Robert Reid, whoseacquaintance I had made at the grand Colonial Exhibition two yearsbefore, was now President of the Chamber, and received me mostcordially. For the following day again there was the opening of theExhibition, at which I was to march in the procession through the Avenueof Nations alongside of Mr. Francis Henty, now the sole survivor of theillustrious brotherhood who founded Victoria fifty-four years before. 

So far from anticipating such honours, I had been preparing myself toplead, on any public occasion that might offer, the cause of the earlypioneers; for although, as I proposed to put it, we were but the babes, and have since been succeeded by the men, we were surely to count forsomething, as without the baby there could never have been the man. Butall fears on that head were promptly dispersed, and at every turnhonours were poured out upon the "old pioneers" of the days of smallthings. I had repeatedly to confess, for myself as one of them, that itwas a most pleasant and fortunate ACCIDENT to have been an earlycolonist. 

But one disadvantage of these honours and attentions is that they areapt to excite the envy of your fellow-mortals. Human nature, even thevery best, can never be perfect. My old friend James Stewart Johnstonchallenged my right to appear in the grand procession, where he and agood half-dozen other "old colonists" had equal rights. I repliedsoothingly, regretting that so glorious a band of early warriors, whohad borne nobly all the rough battle of early progress (how eloquentpeople can be in their own praise!) should not have been super-added tohonour and adorn the procession. But this not satisfying him, I wasdriven to bay, and fired my reserved shot, to the effect that I was theonly old colonist who had come twelve thousand miles on purpose toattend the opening. That shut him up. 

THE SUBURBS. 

A busy time of public entertainments followed, during the intervals ofwhich I visited energetically persons and places of old association. TheMelbourne suburbs were quite as surprising as the city itself. Almostcountless miles of streets had taken the place of the country roads ormere bush tracks of my recollection. While I stood wondering at thesechanges, I had to regret that the old features had so completelydisappeared that I was at home nowhere, save that in an otherwiseentirely unrecognizable area there would still appear the old name, suchas the Sydney, the Richmond, or the Toorak Road. I had to be contentwith this scant remnant of the past, and to begin acquaintance with anentirely new set of occupant streets and dwellings. 

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD TIMES. 

Then I turned to the old and early friends of the past. Some of themkindly called; others, less able, I had myself to seek out. Thus I met, besides Mr. J. S. Johnston, already mentioned, Mr. J. A. Marsden, Mr. Alfred Woolley, Mr. E. B. Wight, Mr. Damyon, Mr. Brahe, Mr. John Barker, Mr. R. W. Shadforth, the Messrs. Ham, and Dr. Black. Mr. GermainNicholson, another old and worthy friend, was in Sydney, where he calledfor us, but we have not yet met. I found time to reach Sir WilliamStawell at his pleasant suburban residence at Kew, and was mostagreeably disappointed to find the veteran head of the law very muchmore like his former self than report had accredited him. Another oldfriend, Sir Francis Murphy, I have as yet failed to meet, and also Mr. David Moore. Mr. Francis Henty drove us to the St. Kilda-road to pay ourrespects to Mrs. Edward Henty, who pleasantly surprised us with as yethardly the marks of age, and as though fully intending to see at leastone generation more of the progress of the great colony which herdeparted husband had founded. Mrs. D. C. McArthur was still residing atHeidelberg along with her nieces, Miss Wright and Mrs. Were, the widowof my late old and intimate friend, Mr. J. B. Were. I saluted the formeras the venerable mother of Melbourne society, and being thus one of hersons I claimed and exacted the full salutation of sonship. I claimed thesame privilege from my other dear old friend, Mrs. A. M. McCrae, whom Ifound hardly changed, in vigour of mind at least, although noweighty-five years of age. Almost next door was Mrs. Henry Creswick, daughter of my old friend Dr. Thomson, of Geelong, of whom, as one ofthe very earliest, and only a few months behind Batman himself, I havealready spoken. We enjoyed a chat over the very oldest Victorian times. 

THE BENEVOLENT ASYLUM. 

I had one opportunity of taking "old friends and fellow-colonists" in awholesale fashion. The committee of the Benevolent Asylum complimentedme by so pressing an invitation to visit an institution which Iremembered and was interested in from its first commencement, that itwas imperative on me to find the time to do so. The spectacle was alikemost edifying and most interesting. The institution had enormouslyextended since my time, both in its accommodation and the number of itsinmates. There were nearly 700 men and women, all of them helpless anddestitute, and nearly all passed into old age. Some who were paralyzedin their lower limbs, and unable to move about, were put out in asheltered place in the sunshine, to busy themselves in various ways oftheir own choosing, and we particularly noted two rather pretty youngwomen, whose lively expression of face indicated no lack of happiness, and whose neat and nimble fingers turned out quantities of daily work. There was a considerable section of the blind, who were systematicallytreated, and had a library of their own. In one of the rooms were twodying men, one already past consciousness, the other still observant andeven lively, but not expected to survive the night. Amongst so many andsuch aged people this sight was too familiar to greatly disturb theothers. One of these was understood to be related to an Englishnobleman, and had passed through much adversity of colonial life. Hisface was still singularly indicative of the gentleman. Such cases are byno means rare in Australian experience. 

Our inspection was completed by a view of the kitchen and larder, andthe interesting spectacle of about 300 of the men engaged together underone roof at dinner, every one of whom revelled in solid beef to hisheart's content. Included in their number were twelve Chinamen, whoseemed as comfortably at home as any of the others, and whose presence, perhaps, helped to impress a Chinese Commissioner, who had latelyvisited the Asylum, and who had left his record in the visitors' book tothe effect that such an institution was an honour to mankind. 

THE OLD MELBOURNE CEMETERY. 

The old Flagstaff Hill and the old cemetery were two objects which Isought for on the earliest opportunity, and as the business day-time wasso full of work, I took the early morning. The Flagstaff Hill I had soonto give up as quite unrecognizable under new plantations and roadways, but the cemetery, in its close vicinity, was much as I had left it, andthere the old friends, albeit voiceless now, cropped up at every turn. Let me select a few, commenting as I go along, and beginning with theearliest in date. 

1841. 

A series of the well-known early family of the Langhornes, some of whosemembers I often met. Let me begin with "The wife of William Langhorne, "who died in this far back year, and end with Alfred, who used to amuseus all with interminable stories, who had a strikingly beautiful wife, and who died in 1874. 

1846. 

"The beloved wife of Joseph Raleigh, aged 32 years, " whose funeral Iattended, to be witness to the profound grief of the husband thusprematurely bereft of a wife who was, as I recollect, a rarely finewoman. Even Carlyle's indifference to "tombstone literature" mighttolerate these lines, recorded on her monument, both for their own highquality, and as the eloquent expression of the heart of the bereavedhusband:--

"Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee, For God was thy ransom, thy guardian and guide;He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee, And death hath no sting, for the Saviour hath died. "

1846. 

"Allan K. Renny, of Dundee, Scotland, aged 24. " A remarkably fine youngman, who died thus early, to the grief of all his friends. He was one ofthe staff of the Union Bank of Australia. Although the favourite ofeveryone, he retained his unaffected simplicity of manner and characterto the last. He died of consumption, in the house of Mr. Cassell, whohad invited him there when he took ill, in order that he might be betterattended to. Cassell, James Gill, Alfred Ross, and myself took the lastnight of the dying lad in relays of three or four hours each; and whenthe last breath passed from the fine young face, Mrs. Cassell, who stoodby with the rest of us, and who had nursed him with the fondest mother'scare, broke out into loud sobs of irrepressible grief. We decided upon abroken column as his monument--fit emblem of the life so earlybroken--and we settled his brief, simple epitaph, which Mr. Cassell drewup:--"Erected by his friends in this colony in testimony of esteem andregard. "

1848. 

"Edmund Charles Hobson, M. D. , born 1814, died in his 34th year. " Themonument, erected by public subscription, commemorates also two sons andone daughter--all the family save one thus early carried off, for, alas!the father, although of large and well-filled mind, was a man of poorhealth and feeble physique. Mrs. Hobson, our old friend, still survives, but is at present in England. I have already alluded to the Doctor andhis high qualities. 

1850. 

"James Jackson, of Toorak, who died at sea, aged 47. " This wasMelbourne's greatest merchant of his early time, although he died at soearly an age. His house at Toorak, or rather the second house which he, with his enlarging fortune, built there, but which he did not live toenjoy, was long the finest of the place, and served for some years asthe Governor's residence. It supplies a striking illustration of thesudden needs of the advancing colony after its golden era. A prominentMelbourne trader had leased it at 300 pounds a year, but in the mid-termof the lease, a demand suddenly arising in 1854 for a Government Housefor Sir Charles Hotham, Toorak was sublet at 10, 000 pounds a year. Irecall the early, happy, Toorak home, where personal beauty in motherand young children lost its edge by being so common. The remainingfamily are now all in the old country. Mrs. Jackson still lives, thehonoured head of a surrounding of descendants, which, to me at least, have been long past counting. 

1850. 

"Isabella, widow of James Williamson, solicitor, Edinburgh, aged 70. "This is the lady of whom I have already spoken, who gave up six fairdaughters to the young settlement in its direst need, and who in turnhave given to it multiplied sons and daughters. 

1850. 

"Edward Curr, aged 52. In your charity, pray for the soul of EdwardCurr, of St. Heliers. "

This is my old friend, the "Father of Separation" (from New SouthWales), with whom I marched for years towards attaining that object. Hewas a proud man, who, with his vigour of mind and body, grasped hisworld with a firm hand, and was not, perhaps, of the humour to ask thehelp or prayers of anyone. But his church, by enjoining the aboveformula over its dead, had its own way of humbling even the proudest, whether the great or the small, the prince or the peasant. I wassurprised to find that one who held so commanding a position in ouryoung community should have been, at death, only 52. 

He took the chief charge of the separation movement, if, indeed, it didnot originate with him; but, sad to say, he died, at this too early age, just the year before the great object of his later life had beenattained. In considering this question practically as a merchant, myview of the determining principle as to the mutual boundary line wasthat the natural tendency of the trading, whether it took the Sydney orthe Melbourne direction, should decide. Thus the hoofs of the bullocks, whether they indicated the northerly or the southerly direction, woulddecide the contentious question. When I mentioned this point to Curr, who, curiously enough, had wholly omitted it from a very long list of"my reasons for separation, " he saw at once its importance, and, inincorporating it in his list, remarked that it was worth all the restput together. Whenever we sat together afterwards at a separationmeeting, he would pass me the joke about the "hoofs of the bullocks"deciding the boundary. Sir John Robertson has since told us thatMelbourne missed its destiny in this fatal separation movement, for, hadshe remained within New South Wales, she would have been the capital ofEastern Australia. Well, that slap in the face to us is not altogetheruncleverly or unfoundedly directed. The eventuality thus predicted forus might, indeed, have happened. And we, too, might have hesitated inour divisive course if we could but have foreseen two things: first, that the very next year Victoria should produce as much as fifteenmillions of gold, and for some twenty years after between six and twelvemillions yearly; and second, that our mother, Sydney, who had completelythe whip-hand over us at the time, would have permitted us to use allour great resources in order to place ourselves, at her expense, thefirst in the race. 

1853. 

"The Honourable James Horatio Nelson Cassell, H. M. Commissioner ofCustoms, Member of the Executive Council of Victoria, born 1814. 39years of age. " I have already had to mention repeatedly one of my verybest and most intimate friends. He died in November, 1853, while I wasupon a Home visit. He left a message for me that he looked forward toresuming our most pleasant friendship in Heaven. What a reality of voicehas this hope when it comes thus from the brink of the grave! What astrength of resistance to that tendency of modern science, which, asinterpreted by some even of its greatest chiefs, is to abolish the hopeof the life beyond the grave, and to class us all with "the beasts thatperish. "

THE MELBOURNE RACES. 

Those who delight in contrasts may follow me now to the Melbourne Races. Although not, in any sense or degree, "a racing man, " I could not foregothis spectacle, so illustrative of the socialities and general progressof the colonists. This was a considerable occasion, as there were about70, 000 present; but it was not the grand "Cup Day, " an occasion whichcan muster 150, 000. The grand stand here seemed to me, from myrecollection, equal to Epsom and Ascot together. The racing was inadmirable style, the horses generally taking hurdles and steepleswithout visible hitch in their pace. I used to have a racing theorywhich was confirmed here--namely, that the horse should never be allowedahead, or at least for more than a yard or two, till close on thefinish, because he thus loses the highest of the excitement, and is moreamenable to fatigue. In one splendid race, of a dozen or more, on thisoccasion, one man, who came in far ahead at the first round, I predictedwas to lose the race; and so it proved, for at the second and finalround he came in only sixth or seventh. 

THE HONOUR OF THE RAILWAY FREE PASS. 

Sixteen days of Melbourne life had pleasantly glided away, and we mustneeds be off, because we had the rest of Australasia to see, and a verybrief term for accomplishing so great a business. Honours had beenheaped upon us. How we are to take it when we tumble once more to thecommon level at Home I hardly know or like to think about. One of themost gratifying of these honours was the railway free pass, whichTasmania first sent us, followed by Victoria, South Australia, New SouthWales, and Queensland. Later on I was accorded, through Mr. Labertouche's kind agency, the golden key or pass over the Victorianlines for life, which I was assured was my due as one of the originalmembers of the first Victorian Parliament. From my old friend of nearlyforty years standing, Sir Henry Parkes, I had a courteous note to theeffect that our railway comfort should be looked after so soon as wecrossed the frontier. The honour of these things is, by infinity, greater than the mere saving of money. This is to be literally the case, for our daughter is already counting up these savings, with theintention of claiming them for kangaroo and opossum cloaks and rugs. 

ALBURY. 

We took the day train to Albury instead of the through night mail, so asto see Victoria, and have a few hours to spare to see Albury and itsgreat wine business. We paid our respects to the Mayor of Albury, Mr. Mate, who, with Mr. Thompson, his son-in-law, showed us much attention;and we also inspected Mr. Fallon's great wine vaults, and tasted someexcellent wine, including the pale, delicate tokay. Albury, with itspopulation of 8, 000, reminded me of Melbourne about 1845. There was anair of comfort and prosperity all about, and a leisurely way of it, which contrasted pleasantly with the hurry and bustle of larger places. 

THE BRACING COLD ONCE MORE. 

Transferring ourselves now to the night mail, and awaking with the broaddaylight of a sunny morning between Yass and Goulburn, we looked outupon a country all white with hoar frost, while our carriage windows hadan inside coating of ice. This recalled an inspiring discussion at theChamber of Commerce dinner a fortnight before, on my introducing thequestion of the snow and the highest civilization it symbolized. I hadsaid that Victoria as well as Tasmania presented the significant snow. Mr. Service, the leader of the federation movement, alike intercolonialand imperial, corrected me by substituting Australian for Victoriansnow. But Mr. Macdonald Patterson, of Queensland, extended the snow linewell over even northern New South Wales, as he told us of a heavysnowstorm he had encountered when travelling south from Brisbane, andwhich lay so thickly upon the ground as to tempt the passengers to avigorous snowballing, which latterly concentrated upon the railway guardfor his grudging attempt to end the sport by ringing his signal bell. But this snow and cold, however favourable to ultimate civilization, were by no means a pleasure just at the moment, and I had to put on thevery warmest clothing I ever heaped upon me in an English or Scotchwinter. Nor did I escape a severe cold withal, which is only nowdisappearing under the genial influence of the balmy air of Queensland, which, now as I write, comes to us off the land towards the end of ourvoyage from Sydney to Brisbane (19th-21st August). We are just passingthe South Queensland boundary of 30 degrees latitude, and as a few morehours will land us amidst troops of new friends at Brisbane, I expeditemy work, fearing that, as at Melbourne, our brief space of time will beotherwise occupied. 

MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY. 

Having just seen Sydney as well as Melbourne, I feel bound to give myimpressions of both, which will, I think, be best and most briefly donein the form of a comparative sketch. I must premise with the remark thatthe great extent of both cities, the great and solid basis of trade onwhich they appear to rest, and above all the quick and ready step withwhich they apply to practical purposes the progress, mechanical orscientific, of our age, are beyond anything I had expected to meet with, well prepared as I had previously been upon the subject. Thus theelectric light, electric bells, and other electric uses, the telephone, and the lift system, all seem to me in more general use than in Londonand our larger Home cities. The lift, for instance, is, as the rule, inevery bank or other large institution for the use of the staff orcustomers or visitors. It is certainly as yet the rare exception in suchcases in London. 

THE SYDNEY PRESS. 

In Sydney I was first met by my old and esteemed friend the HonourableGeorge Alfred Lloyd, who, besides many other attentions, took me to SirHenry Parkes, with whom I enjoyed some interesting political andfinancial conversation. I afterwards met the Honourable Mr. Burns, theTreasurer, and discussed with him the prospects for consolidatedAustralasian three per cents--a prospect which, as he said, he fearedmight be still far off; owing to the perverse fancy of the othercolonies to enter upon special protective systems of their own, which, after being established, they, or the interests protected, might not bedisposed to give up even for the sake of a federated Australasia; nextwe called for one of our fellow-passengers per "Coptic", Mr. Sidman, atthe grand offices of the "Evening News" and the "Town and CountryJournal", for one or other of which he had been editorially engaged. This happily led to our introduction to the proprietor, Mr. Bennett, andto our being shown the wonders of the Press of our Southern Empire. And, here, again, I had to notice that all the latest steps of progress aretaken up so promptly and so thoroughly. The time of our visit wasbetween one and two o'clock, and the work of throwing off the "EveningNews" of that day had begun. The machines, we were told, embodied thevery latest improvements, and when we alluded to that of "The Argus", just then being fitted up, with every latest appliance, at the MelbourneExhibition, Mr. Bennett assured us that the machinery before uscomprised them all. We saw first the stereotyping process, by whichcopies of the one type-setting of the paper can be multipliedindefinitely. Then three machines were set in action, delivering 10, 000copies each per hour. A fourth machine was added shortly after, whichdelivered somewhat more; and this latter appeared to us the exactcounterpart of "The Argus" machine, as already seen by us in London. 

I recall a joke of many years back when mechanical contrivance wasattracting much general attention, and arousing great hopes, to theeffect that a sheep would some day enter the machine of the future atone end, and be delivered at the other as ready cooked food and broadcloth. What we saw was not a whit less wonderful. The great roll ofpaper unrolled itself into one end of the machine, and, even morequickly than one could walk the half-dozen yards of distance, it emergedin separate papers, dropped, as I said, at ten to twelve thousand anhour, printed, folded, cut, and numbered to the dispersing hand whichreceived them. The circulation of the "Evening News" is 60, 000 daily. That of "The Age", as I learnt on arrival at Melbourne, has now advancedin its inspiring career to 76, 000. These are the papers of greatestcirculation in the Southern Hemisphere. Such is already the Press of theinfant Hercules of Australasia. 

Another stirring sight next greeted our eyes ere we quitted the "EveningNews" office, namely, the crowd of eager little newsboys waiting fortheir trade stock. Pressing to the small open window, where their tinysums were paid to the cashier, they received their check, and forthwithproceeded to the fountains which were dropping out their supplies at therate of four copies per second, all ready for delivery. They receivedtwelve of the penny papers for ninepence. These poor little fellowswould begin, perhaps, with ninepence as all their capital. They gettheir dozen papers, and, if smart, sell them possibly in not many moreminutes. Then they are back with their increased capital, and so byquick degrees they get to be quite large dealers. We saw one littlefellow, already a great capitalist in his way, with a load of paperswhich one would have thought he could hardly carry, but which, nevertheless, he managed with well-practised adroitness. 

COMPARISON OF THE TWO CAPITALS. 

If comparisons are proverbially odious, they must be specially so ifdrawn out upon insufficient data. I must not, therefore, on such aflying inspection, go very deeply into my comparative analysis. And yet, under all the circumstances, the subject is one for which I feel notaltogether incompetent. To begin with, I had not, perhaps, sufficienttime in failing to note any material difference of physique due to thedifference of latitude, Melbourne having the cooler temperature by 4 to5 degrees of Fahrenheit. Tasmania and Southern New Zealand give notablythe ruddy plumpness of the English face. Conversing with a young friend, who was interested in football, he remarked that latitude is importantin a game which was mainly one of muscular strength. Thus, speakinggenerally, Hobart will beat Melbourne, Melbourne Sydney, and SydneyBrisbane. "But what as to New Zealand?" I said. "New Zealand, " hereplied, "will square with England, and the Southern Island may beather. "

The tide of general business in either city seemed to me equal, but thestreets and the public and business buildings of Sydney were scarcelyequal, either in number or style, to those of Melbourne, at least if thegreat edifices and other works of the latter, either just being finishedor in progress of erection, be considered. The Melbourne Harbour isconspicuously one of these, and will surpass alike that of Sydney andthose of most of the rest of the world. On the other hand, however, thegrand natural harbourage of Port Jackson, not to dwell upon itssurpassing scenic beauty, gives to Sydney a most decided economicadvantage for all time. 

Melbourne has two obvious superiorities--first in the systematic layingout of the streets, and second in the more conveniently level site. Thusno Sydney street can compare with Collins-street, where even themoderate rise of the eastern and western hills still adds to thecommanding effect of the whole line. The Melbourne street tram system isalso greatly superior to that of Sydney, and seems, indeed, to haveattained to all that is possible in that direction. In point ofpopulation, Melbourne continues ahead, having, with the suburbs, about400, 000, while Sydney has about 350, 000. On the other hand, New SouthWales has rather the advantage over Victoria in the total population, aswell as in the amount of external commerce, having lately, in theserespects, overtaken her younger sister, after the latter had cleandistanced her senior for a whole generation by help of the surpassinggold production. The populations are now about 1, 050, 000 respectively. 

THE RIVAL RACE. 

In estimating the future of these two great colonies and theirrespective capitals, I will endeavour to mark some distinctiveconsiderations. Unquestionably the climatic difference, although it maynot be serious, is in favour of Victoria, for the English race of bothcolonies and for English industries. Then, again, we have thisever-recurring Australian drought, from which Victoria does not indeedalways or altogether escape, but to which, with her cooler sea-girtshores, she is certainly less liable than her sister colonies, includingNew South Wales. Even now, as I sail along the northern shores of thelatter and along Southern Queensland, the severe drought which hasprevailed for the past six months is indicated by the ascending smoke ofbush fires in every direction, while Victoria, as I left it, was inuniversal green from the sufficiency of rain. Lastly, there is thedisputable question as to how the much wider area of New South Walesthan Victoria bears upon the question. Is that a help to her or a drag?With the present scant population to either, the advantage seems to mewith Victoria, compact as she is, and full of fertile land. Fifty yearshence, when the population of each has passed from one million to tenmillions, and when a system of irrigation has fertilized the largeproportion of now sterile areas of the larger colony, the latter willassert her precedence and, perhaps, easily pass her rival. But for thepresent she is rather handicapped than otherwise by her distances. Granting that she has throughout as many rich acres as Victoria, stillshe is, for the time being, under the disadvantage of having to draw herresources from greater distances--from an average, say, of more than 300miles to Victoria's 100. 

Against this collective relative handicapping in her race, New SouthWales has happily still to oppose her good fortune in having adhered asyet to the impartial freedom of exchange for the labour products of allher workers, while Victoria has restricted that freedom, and has, consequently, by so much, reduced that product, by her protectiveenactments. Let me try to estimate this most important matter. Victoriahas seen fit to protect certain interests, agricultural andmanufacturing, at the expense of the whole of her public. Happily forher the agricultural protection is probably almost, if not indeedaltogether, inoperative, as the climate and the soil of the country, andthe vigour of her people, give to her, independently, the natural leadin agricultural products. But the manufacturing protection isconfessedly effective, so that the manufactures would not be forthcomingwithout the extra price of protection. Let us average this protection at25 per cent, and let us further suppose that one-fifth of all thepeople's requirements are thus extra-charged. This means that theVictorian public are made to pay in the proportion of 125 pounds for aclass of their daily requisites which the New South Wales public, byvirtue of their freedom of exchange for all the products of theirlabour, can secure for 100 pounds; and that this very considerablyenhanced cost affects as much as the one-fifth part of all thoserequisites. Victoria, and the vigorous life which peoples her, will inany case ever present a spectacle of surprising progress. But if she ismated in a race in which, while the two rivals are otherwise equal, sheis thus restricted in labour output by protection, while the other keepsherself free, she is as surely to be beaten in that race as if, on hergrand Flemington racecourse, she were the seriously handicapped horse ofa noble pair admitted to be otherwise equal. 

POST POSTSCRIPT. 

BRISBANE, 22ND AUGUST. 

My publisher affords me just time to record my arrival yesterday, at thecapital of the youthful but already great Queensland, and to give someopinions of the place after a glance, which is, however, of necessity socursory. 

Brisbane is to me not less astonishing than either Sydney or Melbourne. From the adjacent heights of Mount Coot-tha, I looked over severalsquare miles, mostly of thickly compacted streets and dwellings, comprising a town and connected suburbs of 75, 000 busy people. While thesuburban houses are chiefly of wood, the town proper already, in somerespects, fairly rivals its senior sisters of the South. ThusQueen-street, in its general architectural aspect, and in the tide ofbusiness life which it presents, is but little short of the chiefstreets of these other cities; while the structures of two of theQueensland Banks, the Queensland National and the London Chartered ofAustralia, together with those of the Australian Mutual ProvidentSociety and of the stores of Messrs. D. L. Brown and Co. , Messrs. Stewartand Hemmant, and Messrs. Scott, Dawson and Stewart, seemed to me quiteequal to anything of the kind, respectively, which I had met with sincemy arrival. Indeed, I am prepared to congratulate my friend, Mr. Drury, at the head of the former of these banks, upon an edifice which, ingraces of structure, as well as in mere dimensions, seems to me tosurpass all rivalry. 

The Bank of England--the highly conservative "old lady ofThreadneedle-street"--on the recent occasion of negotiating yet one morelarge Queensland loan, broadly hinted to her go-ahead client that herborrowing must, for a time at least, be more restricted. I do not denythe wisdom of this advice, for truly all Australasian borrowing has beenutterly outside of all principle and precedent. But while the Homepublic is preoccupied with these colonies' great debts, my visit herehas diverted the leading idea rather to the solid and expansive basis oftrade and prosperity which I see around me. I have not yet seen SouthAustralia or New Zealand, but, from what already reaches my ears, I haveno reason to expect that my account of either colony is to differmaterially, if at all, from that of the others. The ready facility toincur debt on behalf of colonial progress is due, as it seems to me, rather to consciousness of strength than to indifference about financialobligation. Each colony will "pay" with equal certainty and promptitude, although a New South Wales or a Victoria may do so with less strain thantheir sisters.