Old Melbourne Memories

ngers, quitting the city and care for the night's charmed interval. All the streets of busy Melbourne are yet thronged, in spite of the apparently rapid diminution which is proceeding. The in

the discretion of passengers. It was a floating home. Colonists of ten years' standing, we had many things to bear with us, which under other circumstances of transit must have been left behind. There were carriage horses and cows, the boys' ponies, the children's canaries, poultry, and pigeons, dogs and cats, babies and nurses, furniture, flower-pots, workmen, house servants-all the component portions of a large household shifted bodily from a suburban home, and ready to be transferred to the first suitable dwelling in the new settlement. One can easily imagine to what a state of misery and confusion such a freight would have been reduced had bad weather come on. But the winds and the waves were kind, and on Saturday afternoon the harbour-master of Williamstown partook of some slight alcoholic refreshment on board, and

bestowed upon the deck of a larger vessel. "The Movastar was a better boat," I daresay, but the tiny Firefly bore us and the Lares and Penates of many other "first families"-in the sense of priority-safely to terra firma on the north side of what was then called the "Yarra Basin." This was an oval-shaped natural enlargement of the average width of the river, much as a waterhole in a creek exceeds the ordinary channel. The energetic Batman and the sturdy Cobbett of the south, Pascoe Fawkner, had tho

days, it is hardly necessary to say; not even the humble one with wooden piers that spanned the stream later, and connected Melbourne people with the sandy forest of South Yarra, then much despised for its alleged agricultural inferiority: still there was a punt. You could get across, but not always when you wanted. And I recall the incide

pulous suburb and wondered whether we were going straight for the "settlement," as we then irreverently styled the wonder-city. The streets of the new-born town had been "ruled off," as some comic person phrased it, very straight and wide; but there had not been sufficient money as yet available from the somewhat closely-guarded distant Treasury of Sydney to clear them from stumps. However, as in most communities during the speculative stage, any amount was forthcoming when required for purposes of amusement. Balls, picnics,

the native names being largely and very properly used. "Villamanatah" and "Maribyrnong" occurred, I think, pretty often in the same series of sales. The invariable increase in prices after the first sales led naturally to a species of South Sea stock bubbledom. He who bought to-day-and men of all classes shared in the powerful excitement-was so certain of an advance of 25, 50, or cent per cent, that every one who could command the wherewithal hastened to the land lottery, where every ticket was a prize. Speculative eagles in flocks were gathered around the carcase. Borrowing existed then, though undeveloped as one of the fine arts compared to its latest triumphs; bills, even in that struggling infancy of banking, were thick in the air. Successful or prospective sales necessitated champagne lunches, whereby the empty bottles-erstwhile filled with that cheerful vintag

t of Sir Charles. He was contradicted very flatly, and sufficient proof having been afforded to the stewards, her owner received the stakes. Still the mighty mind of John Ewart held distrust as he ambled home, dangling his "game" leg on his eel-backed bay horse, the same which carried him overland from Sydney to Melbourne in[Pg 8] ten days-six hundred miles. "A sworn horse-courser," like Blount, was Hopping Jack, and, unlike Marmion's fast squire, had ridden many a steeplechase. In the quickly shifting adventure-scope of the day it chanced that the two Jacks went to sea, desiring to revisit Scotia, doubtless for their pecuniary benefit. A great storm arose, and t

s-or, at any rate, did recently. The squatter's wool-freighted bullock-teams lumber along the deep ruts of Flinders[Pg 9] Lane. John Pascoe Fawkner bustles up and down the western end, at that time the fashionable part, of Collins Street. The eastern portion of that street-now decorated with palatial clubs and treasuries, and dominated by doctors-was then principally known as "the way to the Plenty," a rivulet on the banks of which still abode certain cheerful young agricultu

escorted by Captain Smyth and his terrible mounted police, the only military force of the day. The great plains, the wide forest-parks, shut closely in the little town on every side. Countless swans and ducks are dispor