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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 again
An 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 uprears
Her 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 THE
SOUTH.

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 the
last I should expect to make, and the opportunity of the opening of the
great Centenary Exhibition at Melbourne on 1st August of this year was
too good to be lost. Accordingly, having been able to arrange business
matters for so long a holiday, I took passage, with my wife and
daughter, by the good steamship "Coptic" of the "Shaw, Savill New
Zealand Line," as it is curtly put. She was to land us at Hobart about
27th July, in good time, we hoped, to get across by the Launceston boat
for the Exhibition opening, and she bids fair, at this moment, to keep
her engagement. We would have taken the directer route, with its greater
number and variety of objects, via Suez and Colombo, but we feared the
sun-blaze of the ill-omened Red Sea in summer. We purpose, however, to
return that way towards the coming winter.

More than thirty-one years have elapsed since I left Melbourne, after a
residence there of seventeen years, broken, however, by two intermediate
visits "Home." I think with wondering enjoyment of what I am to see in
the colony and its capital after such an interval. Previously, when I
returned after only a year or two's absence, I was wont to mark with
astonishment all that had been done in that comparatively brief time. I
am thankful to Mr. Froude, whose delightful work, "Oceana," I could read
to all full enjoyment during the leisure and quiet of the voyage, for
somewhat preparing me for what I have to see, for I must infer from his
graphic accounts, especially of interior progress--while already three
more years have since elapsed--that even my most sanguine anticipations
will be exceeded. Our great Scottish poet and novelist has finely
said:--

"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 in
that with which one clings to the land where so many of the most
vigorous years of life have been actively spent? And a land, besides, of
surpassing sunny beauty and of rare romance. Business calls are usually
held to be imperative, even if they send us, willing or unwilling, to
"Ultima Thule or the Pole." Accordingly, my later lot has been to return
to the older, and not to continue in the newer, part of the common
empire. But, at any rate, that rather enhances the enjoyment of this
re-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 of
each day in writing these "Recollections," and now, as we get within
almost hours of our destination, I am putting this last hand to my
labours. I cannot hope that their light sketchiness can go for much,
save with those who, familiar with the great Melbourne and Victoria of
to-day, may enjoy the comparison of the small things of a retrospect
extending to almost half a century, and all but to the birth of the
colony.

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

Touching the important matter of speed, let me say a little. All
important it is, indeed, in this age of fast progress. When I first
sailed 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, within
that interval, to go and return, besides having nearly two and a half
months to spare--a space of time which now, with rails and fast steamers
everywhere, will enable me to visit all South-Eastern Australasia,
including even New Zealand. Of course, that means hardly more than "to
see," but still that is better than not to see at all, those wonderful
parts of our empire.

But yet again, on this point of speed, our "Coptic's" daily run averaged
rather under 300 nautical miles. In justice to the good ship, we should
credit her with rather more, for during the latter half of the voyage
she was meeting or anticipating the sun by six or seven degrees of
longitude daily, and thus clipping about half an hour off each day. But
turn now to the latest like exploit between Liverpool and New York--the
case, I think, of the s.s. "Umbria", whose unprecedented record is of
455 to 503 miles daily. Granting this to be subject to abatement for
running this time away from the sun, and thus prolonging the day, there
is enough of difference to give us, at this speed, the hope of a three
weeks' Australian service by the straightest available line. It has
already been effected to Adelaide in 29 days. We Australians must hope
that ere long Melbourne and Sydney, together with all about them, will
weigh, with ourselves at least, as heavily as New York. The coal
question is, of course, an awful difficulty for three weeks instead of
five to six days, but not, we hope, insuperable. Our "Coptic" burns but
fifty 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 excused
in doubting his chance of yet another Australian visit. But while he has
been waiting these many years, he has seen such vast improvement in
inter-communication facilities of every kind, as to establish, he might
say, a complete counterbalance to the increasing infirmities of years.
Imagine, therefore, the Australian liner of the next few years to be a
great and comfortable hotel, as though one went for three weeks' fresh
sea air to Brighton or Bournemouth, with the additional charm that, on
quitting your pleasant marine apartments, you stepped out upon
Australia.

This brings up yet another subject. When attending, four years ago, the
very successful and most interesting meeting of the British Association
at Montreal, I was very curious as to the possible prospect, now that
this body had made so good a first outside step, of a like meeting in
Australia. But, not very long after, an invitation to the Association
was actually sent from Melbourne. The year asked for had been
pre-engaged for Home. My distinguished friend, Mr. Service, told me,
when on his late Home visit, that no doubt the invitation would go
again. I may usefully mention here that the Association is usually
engaged, or as good as engaged, two clear years in advance, so that the
third year, at least, in advance should be dealt with for Melbourne.
This besides would afford sufficient notice for the busy men of all
classes and all vocations at Home to arrange conveniently for the
necessarily long absence. I do not doubt of complete success. Indeed, it
is such a further chance as that which might tempt even the oldest of us
into 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 did
not allude, somewhat more than I have already done, to Mr. Froude's
recently published "Oceana," a work which, in its vigour and high
literary style, marks quite an era in its Australian field. I had
regretted before embarking that, from the pressure of other things, my
acquaintance with it had been limited to the reading of many reviews and
the hearing of much criticism. But I have been well compensated by a
perusal during the peace and ample leisure of this long voyage. I must
confine my remarks to two points only, which, however, are amongst the
most prominent in the book. These are--first, the terms in which he has
alluded to the present condition of New Zealand; and, second, his
ardently loyal remarks, so often repeated, upon that rising question of
the day, the political unity of the empire--a subject which had been
advanced at the time into a most significant importance to the
Australian colonies by the apparent imminence of war with Russia.

NEW ZEALAND.

I am not inclined to repeat the scolding which, it is understood, my
zealous friend, Sir Francis Bell, Agent-General for New Zealand, under
his 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 the
contrary, he has given us such a charming account of the aspects and
prospects of this, the most magnificent of our colonies--for I agree
with him in believing that it is to be "the future home of the greatest
nation of the Pacific"--that certain loose or inaccurate words addressed
to him about the finances, and which he had deemed worth recording, may
well be expected to have in comparison the most evanescent effect. "One
gentleman," he says, "amused me considerably with his views," the said
views being to the effect that New Zealand would be ready, when the
final pressure came, to repudiate her heavy public debt. Another equally
vivacious informant stated that, besides the 32 million pounds of
colonial borrowing, "the municipal debts were at least as much more as
the national debt." Now this is six times overstated for municipal and
harbour debts together. No doubt the actual case is bad enough, for New
Zealand has far over-borrowed. But as to repudiation, there is not a
hint or notion of it in any responsible quarter whatever, any more than
with regard to our British Consols, although the colony is, for the
time, in the extremity of a depression, ever recurrent in such young,
fast-going societies, caused by a continuous subsiding of previous
too-speculative values. To this I may add, in reference to the smaller
issues of colonial municipalities, that of the very great number of
these, New Zealand's included, brought for many years past upon the
London market, there is not, in my recollection, as a matter of my own
business, one single instance of default, as to either principal or
interest, 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 few
years, and the successful establishment of the Imperial Federation
League has given an orderly procedure in every way promising. The object
aimed at is, that the empire shall have that political binding which
will give to it the maximum of power and influence possible under all
its circumstances. Above fifteen years ago some few of us--very few they
then were--first seriously raised this question at Home in the Royal
Colonial Institute. We had the smallest of audiences then. It is
marvellous to look back now upon that indifference. I recollect that
about ten years ago, when the movement was just beginning to look
serious to those outside of us, a leading Paris paper devoted an article
to the subject, remarking that if Great Britain persevered so as to
unite her empire as sought, the balance of the world's power would be so
seriously disturbed as to call for an international reconsideration of
that 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 of
superseding the present Imperial Parliament by a pro re nata Federal
Assembly; and it may be equally said of an influx of proportionate
colonial representatives into the Home House. Councils of colonial
ambassadors, agents-general, and so on, have, I think, definitely gone
the same way. These are chiefly Home views, for Home is at length
aroused as well as the colonies to their common question; and the
summons by the Secretary for the Colonies of the Colonial Conference
which sat in London two years ago marks alike the most prominent and
most promising feature in the movement.

Mr. Froude has given, most usefully, the views of the colonists. Let us
take Mr. Dalley's, which is also that of most others, namely, that the
nascent but increasing colonial navies should be all under one imperial
command--that is, be a part of the British navy. There is one more
step--namely, to dispose of all colonial military force in the same
common-sense way, and then we have a politically united empire. But we
are "constitutional" or representative in our polity, so that something
else is still wanted. In short, the unity of the empire requires two
things. First, that all its force be under one executive, and, next,
that the colonies be proportionately represented in that executive. The
Cabinet 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's
executive. Nothing should--nothing need--prevent the attainment of this
grand end. The tariff bugbear concerns only commerce, and need not
arrest nor even interfere with the empire's political unity. All other
matters of the common interest can be leisurely settled by mutual
consent, as the empire, in its united state, sails along the great ocean
of the future. The mother will then, in emergency, have the sure call of
her children; while every colony, even to the very smallest, will know
that in case of need the whole empire is at its back. When the rest of
the world knows that fact, it will thenceforth probably not trouble our
empire either about international rearrangements or anything else.

EARLY PORT PHILLIP.

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And 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 were
wafted quickly up to the anchorage of Hobson's Bay on the wings of a
strong southerly breeze, whose cool, and even cold, temperature was to
most of us an unexpected enjoyment in the middle of an Australian
summer. 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 who
told 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 into
heavy 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 to
accompany a young friend that evening to spend the next day, Sunday, at
his "country seat" on Richmond Flat, where he had constructed, mostly
with his own hands, a sort of hut or wigwam, under an unchallenged
squattage. Being engaged in a store for long hours on Saturday night, it
was past eleven ere we started. The rain had begun to pour, and the
night was pitch dark. We got into Collins-street, but had much
difficulty in keeping its lines where there were not post-and-rail
fences round the vacant allotments. Only three years had elapsed since
Melbourne had been named and officially laid out, and, excepting the
very centre, there were still wide intervals between the houses on
either side even of Collins-street. After floundering helplessly about
in the foundation-cutting of a new house, which was already full of
water, but happily only a few inches deep, we at length emerged upon the
open of the present Fitzroy Gardens, where for a little time we could
keep to the bush track only by trying the ground with our feet or our
fingers. But in spite of all care we soon lost the road, and wandered
about in the pouring rain for the rest of the night. We were young and
strong, and as the rain did not chill us, we were in but little
discomfort. A beauteous sunny morning broke upon us, with a delicious
fragrance from the refreshed ground. We found ourselves near the Yarra,
between the present busy Hawthorn and Studley Park. Solitude and quiet
reigned around us, excepting the enchanting "ting ting" of the bell
bird. We stripped ourselves, wrung our drenched clothes, and spread them
to dry in the sun, and then plunged into the dark, deep still Yarra for
our morning bath, afterwards duly reaching my friend's country seat.

INDIGENOUS FEATURES AROUND MELBOURNE.

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

These features form an interesting retrospect of early Melbourne. They
have nearly all disappeared since with the growth of town and
population. Some who preceded me saw the kangaroo sporting over the site
of Melbourne--a pleasure I never enjoyed, as the timid creatures fled
almost at once with the first colonizing inroad. I have spoken of the
little bell bird, which, piping its pretty monotone, flitted in those
earlier years amongst the acacias on the banks of the Yarra close to
Melbourne, but which has taken its departure to far distances many a
year ago. The gorgeous black cockatoo was another of our early company,
now also long since departed. For a very few years after my arrival they
still hovered about Melbourne, and I recollect gazing in admiration at a
cluster of six of them perched upon a large gum-tree near the town, upon
the Flemington-road. The platypus, also, was quite plentiful, especially
in the Merri Creek. Visiting, about 1843, my friend Dr. Drummond, who
had a house and garden at the nearest angle of the creek, about two
miles from town, we adjourned to a "waterhole" at the foot of the
garden, on the chance of seeing a platypus, and sure enough, after a
very 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 man
When he looks out in an ungrateful shape."
--Timon of Athens.

The natives still strolled into Melbourne at the time of my arrival, and
for a couple of years or so after; but they were prohibited about the
time of the institution of the corporation, as their non-conformity in
attire--to speak in a decent way--their temptations from offers of drink
by thoughtless colonists, and their inveterate begging, began soon to
make 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 upsetting
tide of colonial life.

Returning one night, about 1843, from dining with Mr. William Locke, an
old colonial merchant, at his pretty cottage and gardens on the Merri
Creek, between four and five miles out by the Sydney-road, I diverged
westwards from the purely bush track which as yet constituted that main
highway of the future Victoria. My object was to escape the swampy
vicinities 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. With
firm footing and under a bright moon, I had a pleasant walk through what
is now the beautiful Royal Park, when, judging that I must be nearing
Melbourne, I perceived quite a number of lights ahead. There were as yet
no public lights to scattered little Melbourne in those early days,
although the new corporation, elected the year before, had got to work
by this time. So, what could it all be? I was not long in suspense. It
could only be a native encampment, and I was soon in its midst. The
natives at a distance, especially in the far western direction, were
still at times hostile, but all those who lived near town were already
quite peaceful, so that I had no hesitation in now entering their
encampment. I was most cordially received and shown over the different
wigwams, each of which had its fire burning. I was taken specially to
one occupied by a poor fellow who, under native war laws, had had his
kidney-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 do
with this busy world.

The last great native demonstration near Melbourne, and, indeed, so far
as I can recollect, the last of its kind within the colony, took place
about a mile north-east of the town, in the middle of 1844. This was a
grand corrobboree, arranged for amongst themselves by surrounding
tribes, including the still considerable tribe of the River Goulburn.
This was, as it were, one last aboriginal defiance, hurled in despair
from the expiring native cause against the too-victorious colonial
invasion. We of the town had heard of the proposed exhibition, and many,
including myself, went out to see it. There were present seven hundred
aborigines of all ages and both sexes. The performances were chiefly by
the younger men, in bands of fifties, for the respective tribes, while
the females, in lines by themselves, beat the time, and gave what they
no doubt considered to be music.

EARLY CIVILIZING DIFFICULTIES.

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

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

A remarkable illustration of aboriginal tenacity, which, however, I am
quoting only from memory, occurred in South Australia. Two aboriginal
children, separated from babyhood from aboriginal life, were trained and
educated like colonists. For the earlier years little difference was
noticed, but as they advanced into boyhood some restlessness became
evident. When, on one occasion, a native tribe, presumably their own,
happened to be near Adelaide, these children, who had either seen them
or heard of them, made their escape at the earliest opportunity, and,
having reached the native camp, at once threw off the habiliments of
civilization, and never after showed any disposition to return to the
conditions 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 out
by their respective ships' boats upon that part of the northern beach of
Port Phillip that was nearest to Melbourne, whence, in straggling lines,
as they best could in hot winds, they trod a bush track of their own
making, which, about a mile and a half long, brought them to a punt or
little boat just above "The Falls," where the owner made a good living
at 3 pence a head for the half-minute's passage. This debarkation place
got to be called, par excellence, "The Beach." It consisted already of
two public-houses, kept respectively by Liardet and Lingham. Both were
respectable people in their way, but the first was also a character. Of
good family connection, he had enjoyed a life of endless adventure,
which, however, had never seemed any more to elevate him by fortune than
to 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 his
frankness and indomitable resource. Having a family of active young
sons, he secured the boating of "the Beach" as well as the other thing.
But his untold riches of experience seemed never to condescend to
develop into riches of mere money--and perhaps without one pang of
regret 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 two
public-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's
Bay railway was projected, in 1852, there were already a good few
houses, mostly wooden, straggling along either side of the original bush
track. Then arose the respectable suburb of Sandridge, to be finally
superseded by the municipality of Port Melbourne, which, with its mayor
and corporation, can now enter the London market with its own loan
issues.

The only other indigenous feature of this somewhat featureless Beach
which I recollect was a little virulently salt lagoon, situated in
complete isolation near the Bay, and only some hundred yards on the
right-hand side of the track to Melbourne. We all knew it was there, but
it had extremely few visitors, owing to its unapproachable surrounding
of bushes, and its bad repute from a countless guard of huge and
ferocious mosquitos. Without outlet for its extra-briny waters, and in
its desolate solitude, it might have aspired to be a sort of tiny Dead
Sea. With the advance of Sandridge this evil-omened southern Avernus
came in for better consideration, and by 1854, with a cutting into the
Bay, it had become a ready-made boat haven. The Melbourne maps now show
me 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 the
previous May, organized and sent forth his party from Launceston to
explore and colonize Port Phillip, his instruction was that they should
squat 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 the
Bay's head, ascended its roundabout course, and found ample water to
drink above "the Falls," they at once disembarked there, and there in
consequence arose Melbourne. Fawkner, following in October, confirmed
the choice, and with his characteristic energy commenced the work of
colonization. The immediate needs decide many things "for better, for
worse." A good many have since thought that this has been a costly and
inconvenient site for the colony's capital, and that that of
Williamstown, with its healthful level, like New York, might have been
better, and, still better than either, Geelong, with its beautiful
ready-made harbour, its immediate background of rich soil, and its
direct access to all the superior capabilities of the west and
north-west. But there Melbourne is, and in spite of all obstacles it is
already the prominent city of the Southern Hemisphere, and Fawkner is
justly its father. When Melbourne's father died, now a good many years
ago, and with not a few of the admitted honours and merits of a long,
laborious, and useful life, I sent authority to friends there to
subscribe for me to the inevitable monument. But my offered money was
never demanded, and therefore I fear that the living busy tide of such a
host of sons has crowded out the memory of the dead parent.

A vision of earliest Melbourne rises before me. Allotment speculators
were bound, within moderate time, to construct a "dwelling" on their
purchase, and in some cases these were made with honest intention, as in
the two adjacent half-acres of Mr. James Smith and Mr. Skene Craig in
west Collins-street. But in most cases these coerced structures were
only shams, which disappeared right early. The only "buildings" on a
good many sections, that are now central and almost priceless, were
post-and-rail fences, somewhat dilapidated at places by our license of
jumping 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 the
meagre view given some years ago in the "Illustrated London News", from
a sketch by Mossman, an early colonist of my acquaintance, and copied
into the lively and pleasant volume of my esteemed friend, Miss Isabella
Bird (now Mrs. Bishop). It may be true as far as it goes, but it is only
the Western Market square, which had hardly one-thirtieth part of that
year's Melbourne. At the close of 1840 there were between three and four
thousand of population, although perhaps one-fourth of these, who had
been recently shot out of emigrant ships, were merely waiting for
employment or settlement. The whole District had about nine thousand.
Curiously enough, Melbourne (including suburbs) has always had about
one-third of the total colonial population, while Sydney and Adelaide
respectively have been much the same. But this naturally comes of a vast
interior behind, which has practically only the one outlet. In New
Zealand, on the other hand, the long strip of land, with the sea near to
every part, calls into being a number of small capitals. The latter are
the immediate facilities; but, in the other case, the ultimate creation
of a surpassingly great city, with all its powerful concentration of
resource, seems on the whole the more promising for a country's advance
in all the interests of human life. The latest returns for the end of
last year (1887) give 392,000 people to Melbourne, in a total for the
colony 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 the
market corner, where originally Fawkner opened the first public-house,
and proceeding eastwards to Swanston-street, there was a good sprinkling
of brick-built offices, stores, and shops, including Kerr and Holmes, in
stationery; 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 the
ill-fortuned Port Phillip Bank. Returning by the other side were Hood,
chemist; Cashmore, draper; Carson, shoemaker; J.M. Chisholm and the
Benjamins, soft goods; the hardware shop of William Witton, a leading
Wesleyan, his Wesleyan Church, and the Bank of Australasia, which
towered up, prince of the small squad. To the far east, on the south
side, was our worthy Dr. Howitt's good house and garden. On the other
side were some few small brick dwellings. One was occupied by
Deputy-Assistant Commissary General Erskine. In another was Dr. Hobson,
whose untimely death was an early grief to our small society, unable to
spare such lives. He was the friend and correspondent of Professor Owen,
and supplied the Prince of Science with curious data of the strange, and
then but scantily known, Australian fauna, from the platypus, at the
head of modern wonders, back to the earliest marsupialdom of the fossil
world.

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

Returning to the market place, and taking its eastern side, was a small
nest of early merchants--E.M. Sayers, whose stores my firm bought eight
years later; Watson and Wight; Were Brothers, whose senior, the
well-known Mr. Jonathan Binns Were, was always, under all fortunes, a
prominent and influential merchant and citizen; W. and H. Barnes and
Co., and perhaps one or two more. But as the buildings are not given in
Mossman's sketch, they probably belong to the end of the year, or
possibly tide over into 1841. Towards the foot of the market slope the
first Custom House was being built, and of that dismal, dark-brown
indurated sandstone, of which other places--St. James's Church, the old
gaol, etc.--were also built, because it was so near at hand.

Sweeping now round to the west side we come to the good store and
residence 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. He
would always accept his bills in red ink, and, as the joke goes, the
bills being good, the Nodin manner was supposed to help even the
non-Nodin bills through at the "Australasia." At the corner opposite the
Shakespeare was the Melbourne Auction Company, where I first met my most
worthy old friend, George Sinclair Brodie, so well known for ten years
after as the leading Melbourne auctioneer, or rather "broker," for that
is nearer the home equivalent. He was the salesman, while a genial and
amusing good fellow, John Carey, from Guernsey, was manager. The company
had just paid 20 per cent dividend--the first as well as the last in
that way. In the jolly days up to that time every buyer got credit, and
there was plenty of business; but when the times changed the credit
bills were not met, and so the poor M.A.C., which had as usual
guaranteed them, got cleaned out.

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

For the rest of Melbourne of 1840 I must be content with one general
sketch. Manton's Mills had arisen at the lower end of "the wharf," such
as it then was. Flinders-street had as yet but little in it. James
Jackson, afterwards Jackson, Rae and Company, was already there. About
the middle was the cottage of P.W. Welsh, prior to his removing to South
Yarra; and there, as the story goes again, Mrs. Welsh gave her "Five
Hundred Pound Party," but having unfortunately omitted Arden, the editor
of the "Gazette", in the invitations, he was left free to denounce so
bad an example of extravagance. Bourke-street had an incongruous
grouping, including the well-known Kirk's Bazaar, and the superb
cottage, for its time, of Mr. Carrington, the solicitor; and in Little
Bourke-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 smallest
dimensions, he stuck to until his final leave in 1854. The lanes, or
Little Flinders and Collins streets, were already fairly filled, as the
land there was much cheaper. In the former were Heap and Grice's
offices, and the Adelphi Hotel, approaching the Lamb Inn in noisy
repute. The latter had Bells and Buchanan, the Post-Office under D.
Kelsh, and, where Elizabeth-street crossed, G. Lovell and Company and
Campbell and Woolley. The Catholic Church in Lonsdale-street was under
construction, 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 a
creditable total of family. Beyond was the trackless bush, excepting the
bush tracks to Sydney, and in the Flemington and Keilor direction. But
outside the town were already several suburbs, of which Collingwood was
the largest, having the residences of John Hunter Patterson and other
leading early colonists.

I used to traverse not a few dreary empty allotments in the hot summer
sun to reach the stores of my friend the Honourable James Graham, whose
dwelling and business place in Russell, by Bourke street, seemed then
quite far out of the village, but is since in the very heart of the
great city. The course of values in the colony, early and late, is well
illustrated by this example. The allotment originally belonged to our
friend in common, S.A. Donaldson, of Sydney, who had bought for some
nominal price at the Government sale in 1837. He bought many other lots
thereabout, and towards Collingwood, further east and north; and after
the gold discoveries, he told me pathetically, oftener than once, that
his impatience to sell had lost him the status and happiness--whatever
the 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 business
ways was rolling jollily upwards. But some few years afterwards the
landlord's attorneys, William Ryrie and myself, had to reduce the rent
to either 100 or 50 pounds--I think the latter. Some years later, Graham
purchased at 2,000 pounds, and it is understood has lately resold at
something approaching a quarter of a million. As these matters are all
locally so well known, I feel that, as with wills at Doctor's Commons, I
tread upon no toes in such useful illustrations.

I arrived just to witness the last glories of the famous champagne
lunches, which prefaced the auction sales of these early days, and
repeatedly I saw in his element Charles Williams, the earliest of his
trade. If such lunches cost 40 pounds, which was given me as a moderate
average, who suffered, argued their justifiers, if the exhilaration they
produced gave 400 pounds more to the net proceeds? The brisk liquor
appreciably blew up the prices, as the same lots, cut up and rearranged,
would come again and yet again under the hammer. Many a bullock-drover
would pull up on passing the auction room or tent, and quaff off half a
bottle to the good health of all concerned in such liberality. One
respectable old colonist was said to have almost lived on those lunches
in the dear early times, so regularly did he encourage and patronize
them. The bidding public were regaled before the sale, but the
auctioneer and his clients after--a plan which made very much the better
business, as might have been seen by the effects in either case.
Williams began with 4,000 pounds a year profits, which I dare say went
on to the rate of 10,000 pounds for the brief term. He was just
finishing what, for those times, was a fine villa on the Yarra-bank,
beyond Richmond, when the rapidly receding tide left him, as well as
many others, stranded.

Great gum-tree stumps were grievously prevalent, alike in Melbourne
streets and allotments. Swanston-street was special in this way, and
they long flourished upon allotments about where the city hall at first
stood. One huge stump, just touching the Collins-street line where the
Criterion Hotel was afterwards built, long held defiant existence, the
wooden building of the time having deviated to go round it. When at
length the lot came to be sold by Mr. James Purves, a well-known early
allotment-monger, whom I recollect on this occasion descanting on the
future prospects of so central a site, the buyer had the too
long-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-stump
warfare began. My friend Henry Condell, like so many other early birds a
Tasmanian (a Vandemonian was the ill-omened name at that time), was the
first 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 of
good abilities, was the first town clerk. His successor, William Kerr,
had greater abilities, but not equal method and activity. Both were
strong Orangemen--a feeling, however, for which this colonial ground was
not favourable.

The bane and bottomless deep for the corporation's narrow budget was
Elizabeth-street, where a little "casual" called "The Williams," of a
mile's length, from the hardly perceptible hollows of the present Royal
Park, played sad havoc at times with the unmade street. It had scooped
out a course throughout, almost warranting the title of a gully, and at
Townend's corner we needed a good long plank by way of a bridge. At the
upper end of the street was a nest of deep channels which damaged daily
for years the springs and vehicles of the citizens. The more knowing of
us who lived northwards dodged these evils by a particular roundabout
via Swanston-street. Up almost to gold diggings and Victorian
Parliaments did the great Sydney-road begin thus inauspiciously, and
hardly less pertinaciously disconcerting was the Brunswick swamp, three
miles further on. Melbourne missed a great chance in filling up with a
street this troublesome, and, as a street, unhealthy hollow. Dr. Howitt
used to tell me he never could cure a patient, resident there, who had
become seriously unwell. A reservation of the natural grass and
gum-trees between Queen and Swanston streets would have redeemed
Melbourne up to the first rank of urban scenic effect, and the riotous
Williams might, with entire usefulness, have subsided into a succession
of 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 or
Gardiner's Creek-road, then only a bush track, although considerably
trodden. I had not many neighbours. Mr. Jackson, at the far end, had
bought Toorak, but not yet built upon it; and the near end was graced by
Mr. R.H. Browne's pretty villa, in its ample grounds, sold shortly
before to Major Davidson, and constituting the palace of its time along
the road. There was a trackless forest opposite us, and more than once I
missed 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 countless
insects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nor
deep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasion
afterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only a
swamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in
Prahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort of central
reserve of the ever-rising Prahran. But still later it was drained off
and turned about its business, as either a profitless nuisance, or a too
costly ornamentation: sic transit, etc.

The following year, 1845, in which my worthy old friend Alfred Ross
joined me in business in the Market-square, then a place of the very
smallest pretensions compared to now, I rented, with him, the allotment
next beyond the Major's. It had been vacant since its previous occupancy
three years before by Mr. P.W. Welsh, already spoken of--one of the
earliest and largest, best known, and least fortunate of Melbourne's
early merchants. That the bad times that had brought many of us to the
ground had then not quite passed, although they had by this time
evidently "bottomed," may be judged by the fact that we got a fairly
habitable large cottage, with twenty-five picturesque acres, and the
remains, such as they were, of a garden, for 30 pounds a year. Five
years earlier some thousands a year would have been needed to live in
such 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 some
twelve acres next the Dandenong-road, realized in 1854, under gold
discovery stimulus, no less than 17,000 pounds. Such are a few specimens
of colonial ups and downs!

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

Only one other incident here. One dark night, towards the fall of
summer, detained by business longer than usual, we lost our way as we
walked home, distance hardly two miles. After some "dandering" about, in
order to strike the corner of Major Davidson's fence, which was as good
to us as at home, we caught glimpse of a light, which in that place we
knew must be a stranger. Then, as we approached, there were figures and
voices. Who should this be but old Liardet from The Beach, with a
section of his family, who, having an outing in Melbourne, had, like
ourselves, stayed too late, and were now hopelessly at sea, and far out
of their track in groping their way back. They offered us a share of
quarters, 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 same
year for a still greater bargain and temptation in the opposite
direction, where I had just then the chance of picking up, "at an old
song," the pretty cottage previously occupied by Mr. Locke, on the Merri
Creek, four miles north by the Sydney-road. Besides the presentable
cottage, there was a large, well-stocked garden, at enacre cultivation
field, and a small natural park (vulgarly, paddock), in all 46 acres,
for 50 pounds, plus 300 pounds of inevitable mortgage. I called it
Maryfield, after my parental home in Edinburgh, and revelled in grapes,
plums, and peaches, and much other country happiness. When a host of
visitors, on a bright summer day, would rather strain the narrow larder,
I used to divert the party into the garden, where they could complete
their meal, although at times with inconvenient demand, from the male
section at least, upon the brandy. When, in 1854, I re-sold "the lot" to
Mr. David Moore, under the heavy temptation of 6,000 pounds, he took the
warrantable liberty of a slight nominal alteration to Moorefield, while
at the same time he erased the poor old cottage for something more
accordant with great golden Victoria.

In this case I had a rather striking illustration of the old
land-transfer and other law costs incubus from which my late friend Sir
R.R. Torrens has so effectually relieved these colonies; and that, too,
as I believe, owing to the multiplied transactions, without any real
detriment to our many legal friends. Pounds were pounds in those
economy-needing times, and as the Savings Bank had, after a thorough
overhaul, accepted the title before giving its loan, I declared myself
perfectly satisfied to proceed at once to the conveyance. But no, that
was impossible. The courtesies, the practice, the established rights, in
short, of ancient custom required all to be done over again, in attested
copies 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 the
waste-basket; and thus a not over convenient bill of about 70 pounds was
rolled up. But I must at the same time bear in mind that this heavy drag
applied to all landed property, restricting business in it and reducing
its 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 the
fifty 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, we
bloomed into an independent colony, having succeeded, after a good deal
of struggle and contention, in getting separated from our mother, New
South Wales, who complimented us by being very loath, and even angry,
that so very promising a child should be detached from her. We had begun
as the Southern or Port Phillip District of that spacious colony, which
had already dropped South Australia, and eight years afterwards was to
lose 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 indigenous
reigned almost uninvaded throughout, and when aboriginal natives were in
many places as plentiful as colonists. For some years squatting life was
the predominant or rather all but the sole feature of the interior
beyond Melbourne. The little capital was at first always called "the
settlement"--a distinctive title, however, which was just expiring when
I arrived. But, for some years after, the term "settler" always meant a
squatter, and not a farmer, as might be supposed, with his "settled" or
fee-simple home.

My first trip to the interior was, towards the end of 1841, to the sheep
station of my old friend Sam Jackson, situated on the Deep Creek,
seventeen miles northward from Melbourne. There I first tasted damper
and saw the novelties of squatting life. Samuel, and his brother
William, nicknamed for some reason "The General," were of the very
earliest from "over the straits," William having been one of the party
organized and sent over in August, 1835, by Fawkner. Sam followed soon
after, and they "took up" this station on the Deep Creek, under the
natural impression that to be so near "the settlement" must be an
advantage. They soon found it otherwise for more than one reason. The
constant tramp of sheep passing over their "run" to go beyond them
exposed their ground to infection, especially from scab. And they were
exposed in another way hardly less costly and far more annoying; for
every "traveller," whether bond fide or not, claimed quarters at the
Jacksons', and made the sheep disappear of a hungry morning with
marvellous rapidity, and at a time when, with the demand for live stock
to fill up the empty country, their value had risen to 40 shillings each
and upwards. "The General" had mainly to sustain this attack, as his
brother was generally in Melbourne practising professionally as an
architect, and was engaged at that very time in building the Scots'
Church in Collins-street. Naturally enough, he would fain have turned
somewhat 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 the
Werribee Plains, where some friends, the Pinkertons from Glasgow, and
Mr. James Sceales, late merchant and Chief Magistrate of Leith, had
their respective stations. On those vast plains, extending westwards 30
to 40 miles, from Melbourne to the Anakies, or Station Peak, the slight
and scattered squatting invasion had hardly disturbed anywhere the
indigenous features. Thus over a vast solitude we revelled in much of
specially Australian scenery, particularly that of tortuous and deeply
excavated "creeks," with their chains of ponds or waterholes, the
running stream mostly dried up--indeed sometimes for whole years
together--but all characterized, more or less, by irresistible rushes
after heavy rains, sweeping all before them, including not seldom the
sheep, and even the homestead, of the incautious or inexperienced
settler. I have a striking contrast in store when I revisit those
plains, which now resound to the traffic of road and railway, and to the
busy 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, and
thence on to beautiful and diversified, but then almost empty, Colac,
meeting, at either one or other place, Mr. Duncan Hoyle and his two
sisters; the Messrs. Hardie, of Leith, who were then or after the
husbands respectively of these ladies; Messrs. Hugh and Andrew Murray,
and Mr. Augustus Morris, of Colac, who entertained us hospitably at "the
huts"--as station homesteads were then humbly designated--and who poured
out upon us interminable colonial experiences in a clear, penetrating
voice from which there was no escape. But we did not wish to escape, and
so we enjoyed everything.

Mr. Morris, who is now a prominent and useful man in Sydney, came early
from "across the Straits" with the tide, and settled here, and after
some few years, passed through rather trying times, which were not
perhaps quite so profitable as he expected, he was induced to "sell out"
to the famous Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who, arriving unexpectedly just before
this time from London in his fine yacht, had descended upon quiet,
plodding Melbourne like a Dives of unfathomable wealth. He had made a
hasty run up to Colac, seen and appreciated Morris, bought him out, and
left him in charge of this first of many purchases of the great
"Australian Wool Company," or whatever other title was to suit the great
schemes of this busy head which had turned up amongst us. Mr. Boyd's
main idea of buying up squatting property during the reaction sure to
follow the early speculation excitement of 1837 to 1840 was no bad
business project, or at all unskilfully formed. He gave Morris 7
shillings a head for his sheep. But the fall went on continuously into
1844, so that Boyd effected large purchases at rates as low, in some
cases, in the Sydney district, as even one shilling a head, besides
cattle and horses at relatively the same. The result, however, was sad
and terrible. It was confusion and failure, and mainly for this simple
reason--that human nature, left practically uncontrolled, will never
give the due care and attention to interests which are only those of
other people.

He had got up a bank specially for the supply of all the needed funds
for his grand schemes, thus securing, as he put it, an independently
large business for that institution. The chief shareholders knew, or
might have known, the character of their prospects. They all expected
unusual profits under the circumstances, and might possibly have got
them. Under this pleasant result they would have credited chiefly their
own sagacious courage. But instead they realized most severe loss, and
then, 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 an
intelligible reckoning out of the confusing advices of his senior's
various and huge money-absorbing speculations. There was a sad
uncertainty about Mr. Boyd's ending. The local representatives, for the
time, of the Royal Bank of Australia had closed accounts with him in the
best way they could, allowing him to leave Sydney with his yacht and
several friends. He visited the Californian diggings, and afterwards
took a cruise among the Pacific Islands. He landed on one of them, as
though 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 of
the River Yarra. This had already been made a charming home to any
contented mind, satisfied to fall back upon country resources. It was a
cattle station, for, in the thickly wooded hills, hollows, and flats
about sheep could not live--at least, to any purpose--and the homestead
had the importance of a little straggling street, with the main dwelling
at the top, as the end of a cul-de-sac, and the dairy and what not in
marshalled line below. We revelled in pastoral abundance. I wandered
into the adjacent woods, experiencing the sense of overpowering grandeur
amidst their vast solitudes, with the gum-trees rising straight above me
with colossal stems, not seldom 300 feet and more in height, and 100
feet, or even much more, from the ground without a branch. When this
"redgum" has elbow room, it expands in all variety of form, attaining in
favouring circumstances vast dimensions, as in one example met with in
the Dandenong Ranges, which measured 480 feet in height. But in this
Yering case, crowded as they were impoverishingly together upon flats of
the river, they did not bulk out into such dimensions, but they shot up
side by side, straight as arrows, rivals en route to the clouds. Sad
changes came to Yering's happy and hospitable owners since, for, like
many others, they had to "realize" in the bad times, and to quit a most
pleasant home. But Yering itself has thriven, and has since advanced
into a great wine-producing district, whose wines Mr. De Castella, its
later 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 recollection
of early colonizing life, were made to the far west--the one in 1844,
right through to the Glenelg; the other the year after, to the
newly-founded township of Warrnambool. The first of these was undertaken
partly on business in the interests of the Boyd stations lately formed
about 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 pleasant
as anyone could meet with, and with whom I both officed and housed to
mutual satisfaction for two years, until his marriage with a daughter of
John Batman. And thus I came in for some few of the many Boyd
commissions that were flying freely about in those years, and which were
not at all unacceptable to any of us in that time of small things. I
afterwards, as I have pleasure in recording, received the hospitalities
of the great commission-maker in his generously open house at Sydney.

Once more, in passing westwards, I was at Colac. It was the month of
June (midwinter), but the country, with its lake, was not the less
beautiful in the universal green. Excepting the partial post-and-rail
barricade of my friend William Robertson's 5,000 acres of purchased
land, there was nothing all around but free and open squatting. On every
side was the hardly yet disturbed indigenous aspect. Pelicans flew
aloft, tall "adjutants" stalked about here and there, and cockatoos
screeched everywhere. One of the curious green knolls, so common there,
was so thickly covered with the yellow-crested white cockatoo as to give
the look of a cap of snow.

Leaving Morris's huts, I made for another Boyd station, in the famous
far west Eumerella district. There were many beauties around, for I had
entered 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 richly
fertile country. The country was all but empty as I now coursed through
it, but no amount of colonization could much alter its most striking
scenery, geological and general. I had some sense of awe and mystery as
I gazed down into a sort of "Dead Sea" depths at the southern end of
salt, salt Korangamite, and then up at the abruptly towering "Stony
Rises," capped by volcanic Porndon in my near vicinity. I passed the
Manifolds', where a sprinkling of fat cattle left hardly an impression
on the superabounding grass.

Eumerella, or rather the Boyd fragment of that large, rich, and varied
cattle 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 friend
Fennell, I re-christened as Squire Hopeless, owing to his utter
nonconformability to the monotonies of civilized life. I was
sufficiently versed in geology to be aware of the wonders around me, so
we were soon off over the Stony Rises to Mount Eeles, only a few miles
away, which, like another Porndon, raised its not lofty but
mysterious-looking head to arouse our curiosity. We were guided latterly
by a well-beaten native track, for this seemed a favourite walk of the
aborigines. Our trip was not without danger, for the aboriginal
relations had been anything but of that peacefulness which characterized
the Melbourne vicinities; but we made up a station detachment under a
remarkably 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 of
geology. The little Mount Eeles cone surmounted, we looked far down into
a vast crater of miles in circuit, whose sharp-ridged, angry,
unsettled-looking sides could barely convince us that we looked upon an
extinct volcano. Hardly did its aspect reach the solid quiet of the
Vesuvian interior, as described by some scanty classic records, prior to
the grand, sudden, entirely unexpected outburst of the Pompeiian
eruption. Let the crowds of the future Pompeiis and Herculaneums of
Victoria look out, for their Vesuvius may some day play havoc, with
similar treachery.

We were introduced early to old Gorrie and his nephew McGregor, two
doughty Scots, famous--and too famous--in the native hostilities of the
last year or two--indeed, ever since these fine runs were taken up. The
aboriginal of so fine a country was, at any rate, a primus inter pares
of his race, and no way to be despised. The white invaders suffered
heavily, in property at least, if not much in their own lives, at the
hands of the invaded. Which side was in fault would have been a hard
knot to unravel, and probably few on either side troubled themselves
much to undo it. Old Gorrie was ever in the thick of war, and duty and
inclination 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 in
wild terror were making for another, he quietly waited till they chanced
to come in line, and then sent one bullet through both. But he had his
cautious and adroit way of telling his doings, as he described to us
how, in the turmoil of pursuit, "the gun gaed aff" and "some puir
craturs fell." He had good need, for the authorities had been thoroughly
aroused by the occasional atrocities that were sure to arise out of the
strong mutual antipathies of the case; and on one occasion, for what
seemed a signal case of this kind, involving the massacre of unresisting
women as well as men, five colonists were arrested and brought to trial,
and would certainly have "swung for it" had there not been some
inadequacy of direct evidence.

The next station, Dunmore, was already quite famed for its pattern
homestead. I entered its hospitable doorway with a sense of comfort and
of the climax of possible squatting attainments such as had never been
approached 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 lively
remembrance of the savoury hotch-potch and sheeps' head of another Janet
at old Robert Sutherland's, at Egham.

Thence I reached "Burchetts', of the Emus," less finished, indeed, but
hardly less attractive. They were business clients of my pleasant old
friend Charles Barnes, whose name I gave as my pass, with, however, but
little need in those open-door days. This was a sheep station, as it was
a drier locality, the other stations having been more suited for cattle.
We sat joyously chatting in the bright midwinter sunshine. The air was
redolent of humour, for which the Burchetts had a name. One of them was
rather deaf--indeed very deaf, but when he did pick up the current
subject, he seldom failed to contribute good sauce. With regret I
remounted next morning, for with business finished in this direction, I
was resolved to push on to the Glenelg, as I wished to see through
Victoria westwards while I had the opportunity. So I turned my steed
north 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 recent
slight rains had just set the tiny creek in motion, and it was now in
the act of filling up a previously quite dry waterhole. I watched the
tiny stream till it filled up this hole, and then saw it duly into the
next, only a couple of hundred yards off. There was a long succession of
these holes before it, generally so precisely rounded and scooped out as
to give the idea of human intervention, only that the human beings were
nowhere visible there as yet. Then I came down upon the Wannon, in
continuous admiration of the rolling hills on either side, grass-covered
to the very tops. One part of the Wannon vale here is remarkable for the
deep, almost blood-redness of its rich soil, a hue which seemed to come
from the similarly coloured stone and rock all about. Here I suddenly
came upon a grand spectacle--the falls of the Wannon, which Chevalier's
highly artistic brush has immortalized, along with almost countless
other Australian beauty. The river plunges over a far-projecting floor
direct into a volcanic crater, which, although very much less in its
dimensions, 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 most
important factor, was water, for, as far as I recollect, not one drop
was visible over the edge. At flood seasons the spectacle must be grand
indeed.

As evening drew on, causing me to be on the alert for quarters, I espied
a rather pretentious homestead, cosily placed in a natural shelter
half-way up the hillside. This proved to be Mr. Edward Henty's. He was
not at home, but Mrs. Henty happily was. Young, ladylike, beautiful, she
received me with that high courtesy which sets one at once at ease by
the flattering impression that in these squatting solitudes it is rather
the visited than the visitors who are the obliged parties. Ten years
later I, with my wife, called upon her in Melbourne to renew this early
acquaintance. She was then, of course, ten years older, but hardly less
charming. Thirty-four more years have since elapsed, and yet I must
still hope to meet her once more in that country which has become so
great, and which is, in so special a sense, her own.

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

I struck a little north towards Victoria Range, and passed one of my
nights with a solitary shepherd in an out-hut, so far and away from all
companionable life but that of his sheep that I could well realize, in
this extreme case, the dolorous side of squatting. My breakfast was a
tin of tea without milk, and a hunch of damper of my host's own
baking--not altogether rejectable in the keen fresh air when one had
nothing else. A sheep could not be killed for two, even if the business
could afford it. On I went, merrily withal, for it was the heyday of
youth and strength, making steadily eastwards for the southern extremity
of the Grampians, which rose in grand outline before me, forty miles
away. Neither station nor human being came in my road afterwards till I
reached and was rounding Mount Sturgeon, upon whose rocky summit the
setting 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 the
left looks as though a hut at least were nearer, and so I diverged into
it. 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 dozen
miles right up, within the outer sierra, towards Mount William, brought
me 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 rest
to 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, Byass
by name, who had lost an arm in wars of some kind, and was then in
charge, ministered to my wants, and allowed me to take well-nigh the
largest 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 as
the first. I dilly reached my last Boyd station, in the pretty and
varied Pyrenees district--a sheep station, then under charge of my
friend James M. Hamilton. Here the hospitalities were equal, but all the
rest sadly below The Gums, and an infinity underneath Dunmore. But
Hamilton promised us compensation in a visit to the more comfortable
residence of a squatting neighbour, Mr. John Allen. The master was not
at home, but the mistress received us with squatting welcome. She was a
young South Australian wife, charming alike in person and manners, and
surrounded by a little troop of children, some with the stamp of her own
beauty. She died not long afterwards, prematurely cut down, alas! like
many another bright flower in the world's great garden.

Next year, 1845, I reached Warrnambool, just then commencing its urban
life with a few straggling small white houses, along the edge of its
pretty semicircular bay. I had passed Mounts Noorat and Shadwell,
occupied respectively by Mr. Neil Black and Captain Webster, both early
colonists, and was once more in raptures with the spectacle of almost
continuously rich soil. I also came upon several round, deep, and
mysterious-looking lakes, one of which, with its waters far below me, I
descended to examine with no slight sensation of awe. I was told of
beautiful and grand coast scenes towards the east and Cape Otway; but
the ways were of Nature's uninviting hardness, and I apprehended a main
difficulty of the Glenmutchkin Railway kind, from want of house or human
being to help dependent humanity. I turned, however, the opposite way,
to rising Belfast and Port Fairy, and wandered about through the Alison
and Knight, and Rutledge and other acres; amongst cockatoos, as the
small farmers were there called, observing a soil of unsurpassable
richness, the potatoes and other products, the former particularly,
being the finest in the world. The striking new feature of this journey
seemed to me the picturesque and beautiful River Hopkins--beautiful in
all 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 the
natives 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 of
an Arthur Seat cattle station--pleasant to their town visitors at
least--I oftener than once looked in upon them from Melbourne. They had
the life and adornment of a large family of pretty curly-headed young
boys and girls, some of them with the aristocratic fine black hair and
cream-white skin of their accomplished mother. McCrae and I galloped the
thirty miles interval, and while crossing and watering at the
ever-running Cannonook half way, and admiring the varied, almost
park-like vistas among the three gentle hill rises of the bay's eastern
coast, we would marvel at the stupidity of Collins in 1803 in abandoning
such a country. To be sure he chanced to squat on the least inviting of
its varied areas, and this benevolent excuse we confirmed by a ride
across country one day to inspect the spot. All we could see was what
seemed the remnant of a small fireplace. The "cups and saucers" country
we passed over on the way might be interesting geologically, and even
artistically; but on any dry, hot summer day the look around might not
be enlivening to a new arrival. None the less, Sorrento has since arisen
there--a considerable, lively, and pretty watering-place, as I hear, for
which the colony's good friend, Mr. George Coppin, has provided, amongst
other benefits to it, a regular steam communication. This steam route
includes another like wonder of progress, Queenscliff, which, at the
time I speak of, only possessed a lighthouse, but is now a breezy and
lively crowded and fashionable retreat from the great dusty city of
business 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 ways
and means, I am fain to pick out a few prominent persons as they flitted
before me at the time and have stuck to my recollection since. Although
they might not all have been in an equal degree interesting, good or
great in themselves, they were yet men of mark, closely associated in
various 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 of
these 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 regard
to that notable event I prefer to speak of "The Henty Family," because,
in their colonizing efforts they seem to have acted so much with mutual
family purpose and in mutual help, and because there was a preparatory
work in which the family were all more or less engaged, all leading up
to this settlement at Portland, a site which had been selected after
more than two years of previous adventurous excursions and observations
along the coasts of Western Victoria and of South Australia.

The successful settlement of the noble Port Phillip Harbour the
following year by Batman and Fawkner caused such general attention and
such a tide of colonization, that remote Portland was comparatively
overlooked. For many years, therefore, much less was heard of the Hentys
than of those who had merely followed their steps. In fact, there can be
but little doubt that these latter were first aroused to the colonizing
of the vast areas, the all but terra incognita, across the Straits by
the vigorous example set by the Henty family almost from the moment of
their arrival in Launceston in 1831, and by the reports which they
brought back from time to time of the lands of promise they were opening
to public notice in South-Eastern Australia. But now that rail and
telegraph have virtually abolished distance, and familiarized the
central colonists with the value and beauty of the earliest occupied
Western areas--the Australia Felix of Mitchell--the Messrs. Henty's
position has passed more to the front, and their priority been
universally 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 met
most of the brothers repeatedly, and frequently I met James, the
Melbourne merchant, who was the eldest, and also William, the lawyer and
ex-Premier of Tasmania, a most amiable and gentlemanly man, who latterly
resided at Home, where he died, and who often attended the lectures and
discussions at the Royal Colonial Institute of London. Both of these
brothers were rather grave and quiet, while Edward and Stephen were
energetic and lively even beyond most colonists. Francis, now the only
survivor of the large family, I met only once, about forty-three years
ago, in the Western District. He was then a handsome and rather slim
young man, not of the Henty mould, which was rather of the full John
Bull kind, as "Punch" gives him, minus the obesity. But if I may credit
the Melbourne "Illustrateds" in a recent likeness of the last of the
Victorian founders, he must have consented, in later life, to drop more
into the family mould. They were a family of eight sons and one
daughter. Seven of the sons emigrated with their father. They were all
men of mark, above average in mind and physique--men of a presence, who
would have been prominent in any society; altogether, in numbers, in
appearance, in circumstances, and in events, quite a remarkable family.

As I am not writing for history, so as to study completeness in my
account, but only of personal observations and recollections, I shall
not do more than give a very slight sketch of the emigratory particulars
of this family, and my excuse is that these data are so far personal as
having been told me direct by one or other of the family. The story is
striking, and our descendants may look back with surpassing interest to
the Romulus and Remus of a future Rome which, in the possibilities of
modern progress, may exceed that of the past. The father, Mr. Thomas
Henty, of Sussex, England, took the resolution to emigrate, with his
family, to the "Swan River," as the present Western Australia was then
called. In 1829 he sent his eldest and two younger sons there, with
suitable servants and supplies, intending to follow with the rest. These
pioneers declared against the Swan, and advised their father to go to
Launceston instead, to which place they themselves also went. Arrived
all there in 1831, a new disappointment awaited the family. No grant of
land could be had, as in the case of the Swan, where they had 84,000
acres. This grant system had been abolished only a fortnight before
their arrival. They had now to rent their farms, and the prospects,
therefore, were discouraging. They were unable even to effect an
exchange for their Swan River grant.

This disappointment led to a search, begun in 1832, under the lead of
Edward, the second son, who twice traversed the seas between Portland
and Spencer Gulf, examining the aspect and promise of the country. The
result was always in favour of Portland, where he landed on one
occasion, confirming all impressions by actual inspection ashore. He,
therefore, resolved on a settlement here. In his second expedition he
took his father with him, as the latter had expressed the wish to see
for himself the Swan River grant before finally abandoning it. The
party, 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 to
settle 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 had
then a market garden on Windmill Hill, near Launceston, besides keeping
the Cornwall Hotel there; and with these he sailed in October, 1834. In
two days they were within twenty-five miles of their destination, when a
storm drove them back to King's Island. Six times successively they were
thus driven back, losing a good many of their live stock, and it was
only after thirty-four days that they effected their landing. The work
of colonization began at once. "The Thistle" returned to Launceston for
fresh supplies and additional colonists, and returned this second time
with Francis Henty, the youngest of the family, who landed at Portland
on 13th December, within twenty-four days of his brother. Edward was
then twenty-four years of age, and his brother only eighteen. This is
the brief but momentous story of the founding of Victoria.

Mr. Francis Henty has given a most amusing account of the meeting
between 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 the
highest romance of adventurous exploration. The Mitchell intruders, five
in number, were at once regarded as bushrangers, and a defence promptly
organized. The fire-arms were limited to an old musket, which was loaded
to the very muzzle, to be ready for a grand discharge. Then as to the
Mitchell party, even after they were relieved of their first fears, for
they too had taken the others to be "no better than they should be,"
they exercised a measure of reserve, as though doubtful of their new
friends' respectability. Mutual suspicions, however, being at last
dismissed, the travellers were supplied with the stores they much
wanted, and, in return, they gave such a favourable account of the
pastures of the Wannon Valley as to induce Mr. Edward Henty subsequently
to remove a part of the flocks there, and to establish the homestead
where, as I have already stated, I enjoyed in my Western Victorian
travels the squatting hospitalities.

Let me add just one more incident of the Henty family, one personal to
myself, but in quite a different direction from the above. Once, on a
special occasion, I met the banker, Charles, who had stuck to his
profession at Launceston, instead of adventuring across the Straits with
his brothers. Besides his quiet banking vocation, he was, I think, the
portliest of the family, which may be the explanation. The occasion was
a public dinner to the Anti-Transportation League delegation, sent from
Melbourne, in 1852, to stir up the cause at the Van Diemen's Land
fountain head of the common evil, and of which delegation my lately
deceased old friend Lauchlan Mackinnon and myself were regarded as the
heads. Mackinnon, like many another such vigorous Highlander, as he then
was, could never take a subject of deep interest to himself quietly. We
had had a sample of him already at Hobart, where the feeling as to our
mission was by no means clear, both from the natural touchiness of
convict connection or descent, and from that still considerable section
of colonial employers and traders who thought that the ledger and its
profit and loss account had at least an equal right to be heard in the
question as any other so-called higher interest. The ground, slippery
enough at Hobart, was supposed to be still more treacherous at
Launceston. Had not Edward Wilson, of the thoroughly Mackinnonized
Melbourne "Argus", been but a little before nearly mobbed by the furious
Anti-Antis of this place, to his utter surprise and astonishment at his
own importance, and been only saved, in life or limb perhaps, by old
Jock 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 Launceston
society, Mr. Henty resolved to prevent it, and did so most successfully
by a very adroit but not unworthy trick. He took occasion to speak just
before the Mackinnon avalanche was to come on. Introducing Mackinnon and
commending his straightforward honesty in this matter, and so on, he
said that some such people could not take even a good cause in
moderation; but that these defects, if he might so call them, were more
easily seen than remedied, and that all kindly consideration must be
made 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, as
he afterwards laughingly pleaded, what could he do under the cold douche
of such a wet blanket? He made the smallest and quietest speech of his
life 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 in
1834 by her remote portal, Portland Bay, and thus became the founder of
the colony. In the following year, John Batman, of Hobart, sailing from
the same stirring little Launceston, entered by the central and grander
portal of the Port Phillip Heads, and was thus the pioneer of Port
Phillip settlement; for we must really turn blundering Collins, with his
abortive doings in 1803-4, out of the running. I never saw Batman, as he
died the year before my arrival, so that, according to my rule, I have
nothing to say of him. But I must mention an incident occurring shortly
before my date, and characteristic of the times, namely, the raffling
for Batman's old and well smoke-begrimed pipe. This was at the famous
Lamb Inn, a little wooden edifice on the north side of West
Collins-street, opposite the Market-square, and fronting a small cliff
which the street levelling there had left for future disposal. There
were thirty tickets at a pound each, and the fortunate winner was to
compensate the disappointed by standing champagne all round. I was once
in the Lamb Inn ere its glories had quite expired, as might be inferred
from a charge of 4 shillings for a bottle of cider, for which I had
called in support of the house, and to while away time in waiting for a
friend. I had to share it with two others who happened to be in the
room, the waiter having promptly filled the three tumblers he had
brought, without even "Robert's" professional stereotype of "by your
leave," the tumblers, too, being as promptly emptied without any
ceremonious bother about acknowledgment. The Lamb Inn lived a brief
space longer, but utterly bereft of its old position in the revels and
extravagance of every kind of the young settlement, and was finally
levelled out of existence in company with the "cliff" at its back.

But I have to do also with nearer and dearer connections of Batman than
his tobacco pipe. I have to record the marriage, during 1844, of two of
his daughters, the elder, already a widow, Mrs. McKinney, to my pleasant
friend Fennell, as I have previously mentioned, and, happily, resulting
in a family of descendants to the Port Phillip founder, and the younger
to one of the two squatter brothers Collyer. The latter event, which
came off at the hospitable and comfortable homestead of old John Aitken
of that ilk (I mean of Mount Aitken), was a grand gala time to a very
wide circle. Guests, by the score together, trooped up from town and
country, headed, in the former direction, by Andrew Russell, then second
mayor of Melbourne, in succession to my friend Condell, and in the
latter by his cheery and ever-smiling uncle, Peter Inglis, of Ingliston,
a great station homestead in the comparisons of those early times, and
once, as Peter liked to tell, taken for a town, perhaps in the gloaming
hours, by a bush traveller when he inquired of one of the domestics, to
her 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, and
then in the full charm of her beauty and strong youth (now Mrs. Kaye,
and sadly changed in both respects), went busily about, her young family
at her skirts, administering plenty and preserving order, while, towards
genial eve, her good man occupied a quiet corner, indisputable king for
the 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 and
a score or two of others turned into a wool loft, where a number of
little mattresses, mostly of a pro re nata kind, were provided, into one
of which I was soon ensconced and fast asleep. But well on, as I
guessed, in the small hours we were all awoke by loud and burly noise in
the loft, proceeding, as we soon recognized, from two Anakims of the
party, Isaac Buchanan and John Porter, who seemed on the eve of a
struggle for a Mace or Nolan belt. Porter had retired peacefully with
me, but Buchanan had been vieing in the toddy corner with his host, and
when inevitably knocked under--for the other had not yet been limited by
his doctor to that woman's wash, as he called it, sparkling moselle--he
had contrived to find the common loft. It is said, of unpractised topers
at any rate, that, after an extra indulgence, they either see nothing or
see double. Whichever it was with Buchanan, he insisted on berthing for
the night in Porter's occupied nest, while the latter, after standing
the all-round chaff for a little, got savage and threatened war.
Buchanan's sight getting by-and-by clearer, the remainder of the night
was, happily, peace. But it was not for long, as almost with the dawn
our host, alive as if nothing out of the usual had happened, woke us up
with the invitation to finish the champagne by way of refresher after
all the toils and toddy we had gone through.

DR. THOMSON, OF GEELONG.

This earliest amongst the early of Port Phillip, whose active form
flitted about its shores ere the memorable year 1835 had expired, might
have 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 at
times, he lived at Geelong, fifty miles away from Melbourne. I have put
him under this sub-heading, in the Batman interjecta, because, as his
daughter, Mrs. Henry Creswick, told me, it was Batman's representations
to him of the land of promise to the north that induced him to follow
the early tide with his flocks and his family--the latter consisting of
his wife and one only child, the daughter above alluded to. She still
survives, in her pleasant residence, situated in the fitly named
Creswick-street, Hawthorn.

The doctor was one of the most active of the colonists, both politically
and generally. He was chiefly concerned in establishing the Geelong
Corporation, of which he was several times Mayor, and he was most
actively interested in the early representation of the district in the
Sydney Assembly. He sat there as one of the district members prior to
the "separation" session of 1851, and it was at his instance that the
House made an exhaustive inquiry into the condition of the aboriginal
natives. In the separation session elections his party was outvoted by
the squatting or anti-democratic element; but none the less the former
in Geelong deputed the doctor to accompany the elected members, in order
to keep a watch upon their doings. The case had its comic aspect, but as
the doctor and I were on the same side of the politics of the day, he
was most useful to me in our common effort to secure a due share of
representation for the mass of the people, as intended by the Imperial
Government. The aim of the reigning regime was to continue their power
by means of an electoral distribution which was to secure a majority of
Crown nominees and Crown tenants in the two future sections of the old
colony.

The doctor, as I said, went over with the earliest from the Hobart side
of the island, quitting his land grant, which was the last under that
system, and was got for him by his friend Governor Arthur--a privilege
for 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 was
the first of the equines landed at Port Phillip. Its owner was then a
very young girl. She and her mother landed towards the end of 1835, and
were the first ladies of "the settlement." The family pitched a tent
almost under a magnificent gum tree, whose stump, covered with ivy,
still exists close to the Cathedral at Prince's Bridge. But shortly
after several of the young men of the settlement, in order to provide
them better accommodation, collected some boards and built them a hut
lower down the river bank. With the two places the Thomsons were able to
dispense hospitalities, their guests including Messrs. Gellibrand and
Hesse, Mr. James Smith, and Mr. Mackillop. It used to be said that "the
settlement" was in the habit of going to tea with Mrs. Thomson.

This brings us into 1836. The next year came the officials in charge
from Sydney, who included Mr. R.S. Webb, as Collector of Customs, whose
daughter, 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 read
prayers to the little settlement in a rude structure upon the ground now
occupied by St. James's Church. Afterwards he removed to Kardinia,
Geelong, as his live stock had been landed there, and this place he
finally made his home.

From these lively and mixed events of our early society, let me now turn
to another subject, which is neither less lively nor less mixed than its
predecessors--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; for
what 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, they
are at times marvellously effective in making, and, for the matter of
that, also in unmaking men. So might we say with regard to the
well-known subject of this sketch, who, arriving amongst us with the
earliest, and within the repellent surrounding of an evil repute, yet
under different surroundings and favouring circumstances outlived all
traducements, whether true or otherwise, and after a long, practical,
and singularly useful career, died in the full regard of his adopted
country. The unanimity of dislike and moral depreciation with which he
was regarded by his Tasmanian fellows was not indeed without a certain
share 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 of
the fathers are not to be visited upon the sons even to the first
generation. His father arrived with Collins's prisoner party, and the
boy, John Pascoe, then eleven years old, was sent with his parent--for
not seldom were wives or children thus sent with the convicts, to
ameliorate by such a touch of nature the hard features of a society of
adult vice, much as Hogarth, in some of his masterpieces of the human
woes or vices of his time, gives, in striking contrast, a foreground of
maternal affection, or of children at play in the artless innocence of
their looks and ways.

But he was probably neither a pretty nor an interesting boy; for as a
man 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 no
patience to subdue natural antipathies in such cases, and these people
would, 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 so
notorious in after life had committed any very disparaging crime it must
have been as notorious as his name. But I never heard anything
distinctive beyond that he had, for something or other, passed under the
Caudine Forks of the Van Diemen's Land Criminal Courts. Inevitably his
early upbringing was in low associations, where, probably, ties of
friendly feeling survived, as to which he might have said with the bard
of Avon--"I am not of that feather to shake off my friend when he must
need me" (Timon of Athens). My impression was that he had been convicted
of harbouring, or aiding to escape, some who had broken the law,
whatever more that may have meant, for, with his pluck, he was probably
little troubled about niceties of fine feeling, and, thus accoutred,
Providence dropped the man amongst altogether different circumstances
and associations in his new location.

I had much to do with Fawkner, especially after he and I met in our
young colony's first Legislature, and after I sufficiently knew him, so
as to allow for the rough exterior of his nature, I never had but one
opinion of the man. That opinion was, that throughout every condition of
the 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 golden
Victoria--he toiled, late and early, for what, in his honest judgment,
was for the good of his colony; and with a singleness of purpose which
was not excelled--was not, I think, equalled, to my knowledge at
least--by any other in that colony.

He seemed to make an ascent under the exhilarating circumstances of his
new and increasingly responsible position, and to have the consciousness
of a great mission, which nerved him to surmount all that was dubious in
his earlier career. Nor was he behind in less pretentious ways. I never
once heard of any mean or over-reaching act of his, even in the smallest
matters. He once told me, in his prosperous days, with much becoming
feeling, and as an incident he could never forget, that when quite
broken in fortune, he had received, as unasked as unexpected, a most
timely pecuniary help from Mr. Henry Moor, the well-known solicitor. The
two were, I think, at hearty variance across the political hedge; the
more honour to both.

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

Another of his more prominent services was upon the first Gold
Commission, 1854-5, summoned hastily together by the Governor, Sir
Charles 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 of
rebellion. Already in his 63rd year, in broken health, and certainly the
weakest physically of the membership, he was the most active of all,
ever running full tilt into every abuse or fault or complaint that might
help to explain this unwonted, and, indeed, utterly purposeless and
stupid incident of a British community. In my capacity as chairman, I
appreciated Fawkner's untiring, or more properly, unyielding spirit, and
under travelling fatigues, too, of no mean trial even to younger men.
For the Colossus of Rhodes, as my energetic friend, Dr. (now Sir
Francis) Murphy, was humorously called, on accepting, recently before,
the charge of the rutty and miry ways of golden Victoria, had as yet
made but feeble progress in his most urgent mission. We learned enough
to explain, at least, if not to excuse the miners; and were thus guided
to a reconstruction of goldfields administration. This was chiefly in
that national element, hitherto utterly absent there, of local
representative institutions; and the change has since assured the future
from even John Bull's proverbial growling. General McArthur, with a few
troops, promptly, but not without considerable bloodshed, ended the sad
farce. In view of the very exceptional features of an incident extremely
unlikely to occur again, Fawkner and most others of the commission were
most decided for a general condonance; and this was agreed to in the
report 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 the
cause, 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 the
morning of a hot midsummer day embarked upon one of the springless "Cobb
and Co's" of the time, with the prospect of ten or twelve hours of
terrible jolting before us, poor old Fawkner seemed so much enfeebled
that 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 even
a goodly number of years after, but only to do more and more work. Old
General Anderson, of early colonial memory, had a habit, quite his own,
of saying to the face of anyone whose conduct gave him satisfaction, and
in his blunt soldierly way, "Sir, I have a great respect for you." Such
an accrediting and not unacceptable declaration he addressed, times
more, 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 for
them all. When at last the spirit quitted the worn-out frame, and its
well-known form, possibly, even to the last, keeping up still, amongst
some few, the lingering dislike of the long past, was to be no more seen
amongst us, there seemed but one impulse for the occasion, which
fittingly expressed itself in a funeral procession entirely
unprecedented in its every aspect. This was not less to the colony's
honour than to that of Fawkner. He died on 4th September, 1869. Not the
least impressive feature of the funeral, perhaps the most, was the
remarkable prayer offered up at the grave by the Reverend Dr. Cairns.
Victoria's most eloquent preacher, in giving the true setting to the
life 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 for
good to all who were to follow. He has fought bravely for the R.I.P. of
the 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 in
Israel, every man did as he pleased, the inevitable inconvenience of
that ultra-radical paradise led the small community to seek out a male
Deborah, and, with one accord, they made choice of James Simpson, their
early fellow-emigrant in the tide from Launceston. Had there been even a
much larger society, the choice would probably have been as surely the
same, for it would have been difficult indeed to find anyone, who, in
the grace and command of natural presence, exceeded this inaugurator of
authority 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 to
levity, although times without number to a smile or slight laugh, he sat
erect upon the bench, facile princeps, as though institutions were to
bend to him, and not he to them. When we entered the little hut-like
structure in the middle of the Western Market area, so long Melbourne's
only police-office, James Simpson seemed to us as much a part of its
fittings as the rude little bench itself; and it was a disappointment
not to find him there, as the indispensable complement to the scene,
even although better conduct in the community was to be inferred. How so
striking, so influence-wielding a man did not get or take a still more
leading position than he had was due, perhaps, to some indolence of
nature, to a rare and enviable contentment, or to a mixture of both. He
took what fell in his way--magistracies, bank directorships, or what
else, and lived unambitiously on his moderate but sufficient means,
always in the front social position, and, of course, in universal
respect. And how, again, so quiet a spirit adventured across amongst the
tag-rags of the earlier Launceston tide, unless indeed under some
benevolent inspiration and prescience about the magisterial needs, is a
mystery which, although I often conversed with him, I never happened to
hear 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, his
colleague in the Melbourne branch of the Bank of Australasia, of which
he was himself general manager, with Simpson as director, McArthur fitly
follows the other in this list of early colonial prominents. To the day
of his death he held the first position, active or honorary, in
Victorian banking. But he was even better known, or at least better
regarded, as, par excellence, "mine host" of the early community. During
a long life, of which the later and much the larger half was spent in
Victoria, there was none who entered more readily, constantly, or
acceptably into the varied life of the community. His leisure, such as
he had, his means, his fellowship, were at their command. He was
geniality personified. But he was a banker, and a banker has duties, and
in the ups and downs of colonial business life, he was but too often
reminded to that effect. It was quite a sight if you happened to witness
the scene with a bank customer, to whom, as to "the state of his
account," it was necessary to administer what Mac's countrymen call a
"hearing." Often he had to pity victims of circumstances in the sudden
changes of colonial commerce; but "the gods aboon can only ken" to
discriminate impartially in such cases, and duty to the bank must be
done. First, the humorous twinkle in the eye sensibly abated, but it
still lingered there, unless there must be still stronger stages of the
ordeal, to bring the business culprit to reason. But when the last gleam
went out, a storm was certainly imminent. The storm, however, swept past
on the instant with the provocation. When that eye finally closed, a
veritable 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 of
his making her his full heir. As they had no family to divide cares and
means, we must blame the less the surpassing hospitalities that
distinguished them. McArthur had really no other fault, unless indeed we
must fall back on the general limitation which Adam Smith had to admit
even in the excellence of his departed friend Hume; for, after all, a
man can be good or perfect only "so far as the nature of human frailty
will permit."

CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C.B., SUPERINTENDENT OF PORT PHILLIP, AND FIRST
LIEUTENANT-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 the
fifteen years of his unusually prolonged and varied officiate, the more
I explained his case by the excusing consideration that he was where he
was without his own consent. He was naturally a quiet, amiable,
unambitious man, full of official activity and ability, in a prescribed
line, or under the instructions of superiors. Thus commended at Sydney,
he accepted, as matter of course, or of duty, his appointment by the
Governor, in 1839, to the Superintendency of the Port Phillip community,
a small body as yet, although making an ominously loud noise upon the
far southern skirts of the vast colonial expanse of which Sydney was
then the official and business centre. The charge did not then seem to
threaten to be an anxiously large one, and in any case his inauguratory
office might hardly remove him from the accustomed instruction of
superiors. What he did not bargain for was that the child he went to
nurse 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, the
most notable, if not indeed actually the most important, colony of the
empire.

He was a Moravian Christian, of a well-known name in that excellent
body, and possessed of all its virtues; he was, besides, a well-educated
gentleman. The pure and happy home which he transferred to the new scene
was of priceless value to its society, and all the more so at a time
when such virtuous homes, in such high quarters, were by no means over
common thereabout. But with a natural shyness, and, in a socio-political
sense, timidity of character, which in ordinary circumstances are
feelings leaning to the better side, he exemplified how a good man may
not always be a good ruler of men. The diffidence is often mistaken by
the ruled, and always disappointing; and in public affairs it is apt, as
Mr. La Trobe but too well illustrated, to take the inconvenient and
injurious form of personal indecision.

He had not a particle of pride or selfishness, hardly even of the
commoner infirmity of vanity. He would, whenever possible, take a
roundabout to escape observation, but if even the humblest colonist
persisted to address him, unrepelled by the evident tendency to "move
on," he would be as frank and unceremonious as our Queen in a Highland
cottage. We regret that so righteously-stored a man should make a bad
Governor; 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 the
reluctance to resolve upon action in any departure from the red tape of
the beaten track, in a young settlement of men nearly all in the
exuberant prime of life, and almost daily called upon, amongst
Australian peculiarities, to confront their novel circumstances. For
instance, upon rumours, oft repeated, that there was good workable coal
at Western Port, a party is formed, with capital in readiness, to give
the case a thorough testing; and they, as of course, apply to the
Government to give them all those aids and concessions, or, at least, a
sufficiency of them, which could most easily have been given in that
quarter, for Mr. La Trobe was practically the Government. He referred
the matter to Mr. Crown-Solicitor Croke, to ascertain what might be the
legal impediments. Impediments, obstacles, difficulties! But who had
asked for them? The application had been for facilities. Of course, Mr.
C.S. Croke, as instructed, and with all the facility of any lawyer worth
his salt, duly found the required impediments; and so the disturbing
enemy was defeated, and the Government left at rest.

But when the goldfields' grand drama of progress opened, when thousands
promptly flowed into Victoria from neighbouring colonies, and, a little
later on, ten thousands from Home, this chariness of action, this
resolute irresolution, or, in Ollivier's description of his master
Napoleon, before he, in an unlucky moment, swayed over to his side, this
"obstinate indecision," proved sadly damaging to the colony, although
indeed, under all the circumstances, it was hardly possible for any
obstacle whatever to arrest materially its marvellous growth. Of course,
the interest of a colony, thus enviably favoured, was to settle as best
it could this throng of enterprising humanity over its vast and all but
empty areas, and that could only have been done by prompt and adequate
access to the land. But some current differences as to the bearing or
rights of squatting leases gave the Governor--the Superintendent being
now in that higher position--the too ready excuse for his infirmity of
indecision. Even the squatting difficulty, which could have been easily
removed by a reserve of compensation for whatever of it might have been
real, was only one part, perhaps not even the chief part, of the
wretched case. Acres by the million, on either side, along the busy
highways, and around the many goldfield outbreaks, small and great, from
which the live stock, where there had been any, were now all driven
away, might have been brought to market at once without real injury to
any interest. The squatters, naturally enough, sided with the Governor,
giving him an encouraging semblance of public principle; for did not the
one-third of united Crown Officials and Crown Nominateds, plus the Crown
Tenants, in our first so-called representative Legislature, show, on
this question, a small majority for "the Crown?"

At last, when the public scandal of so grievous a spectacle made longer
inaction impossible, when the disappointed and shiftless immigrants
began to beat a retreat from the inhospitable colony, the balance
streaming by thousands into "Canvastown," or wandering helpless
elsewhere, and mostly ruined by the cost of living--for a cabbage had
risen to 5 shillings at the goldfields, and to 2 shillings and 6 pence
in Melbourne--the Governor, by an adroit move, in the despair of the
position, referred the case "Home." There common sense decided it at
once, or at least as quickly as might have been expected from the
leisurely ways of the Colonial Office of those far-back times. But the
decision came, in very great measure, much too late. There had been in
the meantime a blazing fire of land speculation, which, unlike other
fires, had blazed all the more intensely from the want of fuel. The
small supply of land, and the fury of multitudinous demands, had driven
up prices to such absurd, and, the utilities considered, such impossible
heights, that the inevitable reaction had already begun, involving
numbers of families in most sudden and unexpected loss, and not a few in
ruin.

But Victoria easily recovered from and forgot this preliminary and bad
physicking, and was soon to be seen galloping on its road of progress as
if nothing to its damage could ever have happened. Full of work for the
day, full of hope for the morrow, the busy colonists saluted cordially
the departing Governor. For my part I do not grudge it to him, for his
motives and conduct were of the purest, and he was ever withal a right
good 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 twinkle
of his eye, was that "All men are born free and equal, AND MUST REMAIN
SO." He was wide as the poles asunder from the radical leveller, as this
joke of his might help to show. Indeed, he was decidedly conservative,
in a general socio-political sense of the word. While in strong sympathy
with the mass of his countrymen, he might have limped at times alongside
even of Parnell, to say nothing of Davitt and O'Donovan Rossa. He had
more than O'Connell's dread to pass irretrievably outside the law,
although he might not have scrupled to drive the proverbial carriage and
six through law's usual dubieties of expression, particularly in certain
sections of the Victorian Education Acts.

As one of the earliest Irish colonists from the old country, he soon
rose to the leading position amongst his fellow-colonist Irishmen. His
qualities, 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 in
speaking, and his sonorous voice, gave him this surpassing influence.
But in colonial public life, where he had to encounter greater
competition and sharper criticism than in his own smaller Irish world,
he lay under some disadvantages. Like his friend and occasional
opponent, Fawkner, he had an ungainly gait and rather mannerless
address; he had, too, a rich Clonmel brogue, and certainly he had not
enjoyed an education at all commensurate with his great natural
endowments. But, all defects notwithstanding, he steadily rose in
political estimation, and for the simple reason that his views of public
affairs were characteristic of the statesman more perhaps than those of
any others associated with him.

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

I saw much of O'Shanassy at the outset of Victorian legislation, when he
and I, in 1851-3, sat together as colleagues for Melbourne in the single
chamber of that inaugurative time, and afterwards when we were
associated in the Goldfields Commission, 1854-5. Often I noticed the
unerring bent of his mind towards the statesman's broad view of subjects
of political controversy. As a sincere Catholic he was sometimes
trammelled as he ran with liberal Protestant majorities. In the
education question, for instance, as already hinted, seeing that
Victoria stands amongst the most advanced in the rigid secularity of its
teaching, to the extent, at least, of what of instruction is
provided--and gratuitously provided--by public money. But in general he
was anxious to be reasonably accordant with public opinion--so much so,
indeed, in that "profane" direction (as Gibbon might have phrased it) as
not to be quite reckonable with the extreme of the Jesuit or
Ultramontane section of his church.

I recollect and record with pleasure one of the Goldfields Commission
incidents illustrative of O'Shanassy's high public qualities. We had
completed at Castlemaine, near the original Mount Alexander, our
considerable tour of goldflelds inspection; and as we sat round the
table of the only public room of the small hotel or public-house of the
place, the evidence completed, and all the proposed changes decided on,
there remained yet one question. Our proposed chief pecuniary change
abolished the indiscriminate, and, to the many unsuccessful, most
oppressive charge of 30 shillings monthly license fee, and substituted a
yearly fee or fine of only 20 shillings. And what was this, or the
documentary receipt that represented it, to be called? Reduced as the
amount was, it was still a tax, and any ingenuity that could dignify or
otherwise reconcile a tax, was worthy of the best statecraft. As
chairman, and not having at the moment a suggestion of my own, I had to
knock at the heads of my co-members. I turned to one, then another, and
yet another, but without response. Even the original brain of Fawkner
sent forth no sign. At length I came to O'Shanassy, who happened to be
at the far end of the table. He had been waiting his turn, and the
answer came promptly, "Call it the Miner's Right." It was but one out of
many instances of his statesmanlike turn. The Miner's Right, of course,
it was called. The name passed on to many other goldflelds. I noticed it
in British Columbia shortly after, with its new gold discoveries; for
the Commission's report had attracted much attention, owing to the
forefront position which golden Victoria had already assumed in the
world.

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 the
latter, with his strong Orange antipathies, would, upon opportunity,
have but grudgingly reciprocated. Two "brither Scots," happening to meet
one day in Melbourne, one of them, presumably not long arrived,
"speered" of the other, "Did ye ken ane Weelum Kerr here aboot?" "Weelum
Kerr!" replied the other, in reproachful astonishment; "No ken Weelum
Kerr, the greatest man in a' the toon!" That a hard-headed,
liberal-minded commonsense Scot, as Kerr was in most things, should have
had the Orange infirmity, may be excused, or at least explained, by the
fact of his being of Stranraer, a Scotch town almost within hail of
Ulster. That small, and not overmuch known place, has not been the least
among the cities of Scotia in contributing heads and hands to the
colony's progress, including, besides Kerr and others, James Hunter
Ross, a leading Melbourne solicitor, and my good old friend Hugh Lewis
Taylor, who, ere well out of his teens, was made manager at Geelong, and
is now manager in London, of the prosperous Bank of Victoria.

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

With the editorial pen Kerr was in his element, and his naturally
combative tendencies found their fitting expression in the motto he
adopted, and which still heads the paper, "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." But even the little "Argus" required
management, and Kerr was no manager. He was induced to sell it, and for