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tains, to look upon a more level, more pastoral, and thinlywooded region.

In the afternoon, we had now a pilot, or a person calling himself such. The vessel being got off the sand-bank, we sailed up the bay with a fine breeze-and, blessings on the good old ship! we beg her pardon for finding fault with her so often! we cast anchor (in Hobson's Bay) opposite the pretty little embryo town called William's Town.

Thanks! infinite thanks to the kind Providence who thus brought our voyage to a safe and pleasant termination!

TENT-LIFE AND DISPERSAL.

What a change was this! From the old world to the new,from civilisation with old habits, customs, and conventional usages, to the simplest mode of life, new scenes, and an entirely new situation. Our good and substantial brick houses we had abandoned for canvas ones-our new carpets were cut out of nature's, just the size of our tents-there was no waste of material-and our servants were ourselves. We had left the good old ship too not without regret a feeling of regard will grow out of long companionship, and that was our first dispersal.

Yet at the tents were still bound together a goodly company of us. There was Mr. Hall, a most gentlemanly and facetious person, full of anecdote, with his large family. His tent was splendid, the very best. Then there were the Messrs. Greeves's with their families, and a tent each. The Bakewells and my brother with two tents, in the latter of which I was located. Then every tent had its one or two tea-tree huts. Altogether our settlement, Tentville, as we called it, was a very snug and picturesque little village. The site of it was a long and broad flat on the south side of the River Yarra, opposite Melbourne. On the river, our boat was ready whenever we had errands into the town, or excursions up or down the Yarra, many of which we pleasantly made. Nothing could be more delightful than our exploring expeditions by land and by water. We had guns with us, and were always seeing and killing some, to us, new kind of bird or animal. Nor was it alone the creatures we shot or saw; there was the bland feeling of sociality, a fine breezy, delicious atmosphere, new scenery, health and good animal spirits to give these effect; novelty mingling with everything for new excitement.

Often we had to take the boat down the river several miles, to cut reeds amongst the tea-tree marshes, to thatch our houses with. These beds of reeds had exactly the appearance of fields of ripe corn: and like genuine reapers we made bands, cut the reeds with sickles, and bound them up in sheaves. I have often thought how that reaping was a prototype of our colonial success-our fortune-reaping. Had we been more careful about the seed we sowed and the field we cultivated, the harvest might have been otherwise; that which looked like corn and proved reeds, might have looked like reeds and proved corn.

We had no little toil and trouble at first,-tent-pitching, hutmaking, and the bringing up of our luggage from the vessel. On one occasion, whilst we oared our boat up the River Yarra full of boxes, it rained heavily, and heavier the nearer we approached Melbourne, now looking as though a thunder-cloud had burst upon us. Then we had always to present ourselves, and make our bow to the custom-house officers, before we had permission to land the boat with our luggage. There was vexation! and in the rain too. Then at the tents the fire was out, and we had no change of dress come-at-able. Fireless and dripping wet, nothing could be more comfortless. But that was only once.

Our first night at the tent who can ever forget? The wool mattress laid on a few boards placed on the bare ground, all our clothes and blankets wet. The wind and rain beating upon the tent; whilst the splashing and pattering sounds were wearisomely monotonous, and a fine spray danced through the canvas roof, fell drizzlingly upon us hour after hour. At length we could endure it no longer; so starting up, we suspended over our head an umbrella. There! our head was now comfortable; only that myriads of insects, apprehensive of another Noah's flood, came pouring in as though our tent were the ark:

"But such things you know must be

In every new colony."

When the village was complete, we were tolerably comfortable. Our kind of government was purely republican at first. We had but one fire, to which in our commonwealth every one contributed his proper quota of fuel. This was the focus of general attraction-here victuals were cooked, wit and anecdote flashed or sparkled for the good of all. Here the fire of the soul, as well as of wood, often blazed out brilliantly. Alas! good things are not everlasting. Our national fire at length went out and instead of our large ox-roasting fire of the commonwealth, spiang up some five small fires, petty sovereignties. Our great council

fire did not, however, die away without regret their lamentations being loudest who had done the least towards its maintenance.

Yet if our particular fire was less, it was more retired and domestic; and oftentimes in an evening first one and then another would join our fireside party we had thus many a delightful evening. There was Mr. Hall, the soul of the party, with some always new droll anecdote; spirits circulated-good animal spirits others substituting some brandy; and Mr. Hall had his unvaried pot of tea. There was quiet smoking, friendly chat, laughter, and always sober enjoyment. With these, time glided over us on golden pinions.

We had also serious occupation. A vast country lay around us, with its new interests. This we had to examine for our future location.

Our visitors were many, some of them very intelligent people. Others were mere speculators, on the look-out for other flats beside that on which we were located. Soon we had at our fire the singular, wild, red-and-white-earth-smeared-dirt-and-whalegrease-pomatumed aborigines. It was odd enough in this strange land to hear such creatures singing the beautiful songs of Burns -correctly too-with a grand rich voice; contrasted too with their outlandish dresses, and rude head ornaments-feathers of their country birds, and a profusion of kangaroo teeth.

Here we were tent-fixers, house-builders, wood-cutters; and this latter vocation was near getting us into trouble. Dead wood there was scattered about us in every direction abundantly, and large fires we made of it; nor were we satisfied with dead boughs and prostrate trunks; we had all of us axes, and of hewing down the old gum-trees we were never weary, it was so new and pleasant an employment. People located near us, however, did not look on all our wood-burning and wood-felling activity with much composure. We filled them with grievous apprehensions of a great scarcity of fuel: so they just hinted to us that to the felling of live timber without a license there was attached a penalty of ten pounds. True enough there was; but we had never heard or thought of such a thing: all we thought of was very innocently to enjoy ourselves to the utmost. We were, notwithstanding these intimations, sturdy tree-spoilers to the last, often trying very much the patient endurance of our rather choleric near neighbour, who would have informed against us only that one important man in the colony, his friend, was ours also. How easily some offenders escape!

Here it was that our hearty and most companionable ship

mate, Mr. S, rejoined us from Van Diemen's Land, adding new interest to our party. With him he brought over one-andtwenty Merino rams, and, located with us, commenced sheepkeeping on a small scale, waiting along with us for more improved times and measures.

Accompanied by this gentleman, I went a day's walk to the River Warrabee, thirty miles into a wild region.

A more delightful May morning could not possibly be than the one on which we started. The dawn had been cloudless, and as the sun clomb the heavens, the day was breezy, and there was brightness everywhere. As we left behind us Batman's Hill, and held our way over the uplands between Melbourne and the Saltwater river, and beyond it we saw shepherds with their flocks, heard the sweet tinkle of silver-toned sheep bells, and saw many a fleece golden in the rich sunshine. After us the morning sun "sowed all the eastern clime with orient pearl" -all was pearl-gold and azure— -the Yarra, with its silvery reaches; the sun-brightened earth; and overhead universally the soft cerulean of the atmosphere. I had breathed the animating breath of a spring morning in England: none like this; it was indeed

"The bridal of the earth and sky."

And then, where else but in Australia could I find such a parklike Arcady?-mile after mile of the smoothest greensward, unbroken by any kind of fences; a sweet undulating land of knoll and slope and glen, studded over, not too thickly, but in a most picturesque manner, with she-oaks, trees of the softest and richest character imaginable? and under them were real shepherds and sheep worthy of Colchos and Jason's theft. Nor did our eyes rest only on these sweet knolls and slopes; on shepherds and their sheep; on the windings of the bright Yarra. A turn backward showed us, distant and dim, the Australian Alps; before us Station Park; and nearer, the blue rolling water of the Port Phillip Bay, with its shipping. The scene and the season were alike delicious. Nothing about us, far or near, escaped our observation; and our walk was one of too much inward enjoyment for much talk. We were yet new enough to the country not to overpass anything that could minister to our pleasure. We had read and enjoyed many a fanciful picture of pastoral life; but here, for the first time, with many a pleasant accompaniment, was the reality. It was a morning never to be forgotten.

After we left the Saltwater-river, about two miles from Melbourne, and a creek about two miles further, containing only

sweet water, sweet as if sugared, of which a taste is perfectly satisfying-after passing this creek, we had before us an immense trackless plain, lifeless and [solitary as the ocean. Our guidingstar, Mount Ripon, twenty-five miles off, with nothing to diversify the way, only that we had what Wordsworth calls "the music of our own sad steps." In the midst of the plain, we came to a place where an emu had been killed; abundance of its feathers being strewn about. We saw also a bustard or two, here called turkeys, very large birds, and appearing larger, being the only objects betwixt us and the horizon. Except ourselves and these, we saw no trace of human or animal existence. A wonderfully wild region it was, with ranges of faint-blue mountains in the distance. Behind us also were mountainous rangesand a portion of the inland sea of Port Phillip in full prospect, silverly bright. We did but just reach the river in the dusk. Rivers are easily discovered here, in the daylight, even far-off— the tones of the bell-bird falling pleasantly upon the traveller's ear. When we reached the Warrabee, these were still. We had to spend the night in the bush. Here we made our fire in a deep glen, boiled our tea, and made a comfortable, and you may depend upon it, a most palatable meal. Wrapped in a large opossum-skin rug, the fire blazing up cheerfully before us as we slept by fits; we were now and then startled by a splash in the river by perhaps a platypus, or the stamp of a kangaroo-rat, or a wombat angry at our intrusion, entertained by the harsh grating voice of the flying squirrel or the shriek of a night-hawk, or ówl. Mount Ripon in our progress showed itself to us crowned with a crescent-wood from various aspects beautifully. I retain, and long shall do, a pleasant feeling of the two days' jaunt, owing in some measure to the pleasing society of cheerful, honest, and companionable Mr. S Success attend him! at his

squatting station on the Saltwater-river.

Whilst at the tents, we attended the most celebrated of the land sales of Port Philip-that of June 10th, 1840. There it was that the land mania was the most rabid. How far it seemed adapted to suit our preconceived notions or necessities, may be gathered from the fact, that out of 20,000l. intended by our shipmates to have been invested in land, only 6087. was so invested. Still the land sale was gratifying to us for three especial reasons. Mr. La Trobe, superintendent of the province, was permitted by the Sydney authorities to select twenty acres from the government reserve, subject to its being put up by auction. Thus the price he must pay depended on the good or ill will of the people. At all events he was then popular, for there was no opposition,

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