"All cheering Plenty, with his flowing horn,
Led yellow Autumn, wreathed with nodding corn."
—Burns.
After the first few years of disturbing land speculation, and a too general extravagance of living, we settled down into a frugal folk, of moderate but steady prosperity, which lasted up to the general unsettlement of everything by the gold. The general moderation, and the cheap and plenty time that characterized it, culminated in 1844, when bread was 4 pence the 4-pound loaf, rich fresh butter 3 pence a pound, and beef and mutton 1 penny. A good managing lady, with whom I lodged in that year, told me one day at dinner that a savoury dish we were enjoying was a bullock's head, got for nothing from her butcher, and with which she hoped to keep the house for yet two more days. Shortly before this, when my friend Fennell and I housed together at the west end of the town, we sent one day to the neighbouring slaughtering-place, where the custom was to sell by retail to the public the legs of mutton at 5 pence each, as they had comparatively so little of tallow for boiling down. We duly got one, cooked it, and found it very good.
No doubt it was in very great measure because money was scarce and dear that nearly everything was thus cheap. I recollect the sale by auction at that time of a vacant half-acre allotment in central Collins-street, next to that on which Mr. George James, wine merchant, had very early erected his surpassing brick office and dwelling. After some slight competition, the allotment, put up, I think, at the upset price of 300 pounds, was bought by Mr. Edmund Westby for 344 pounds. The amount is impressed upon me, because I wondered at the time that anyone should thus throw away so much good money. But my friend Westby reckoned the future more accurately than I did, for within nine years after, this price was hardly the 500th part of the value. To cap the whole tale, the lot was, I think, in the hands of Government from having been abandoned by the original buyer, who had forfeited his deposit rather than complete his supposed bad bargain.
According to my recollection, the first of our sober community to set up a carriage and pair was Mr. Henry Moor, above alluded to. Even His Honour the Superintendent had no such luxury at that time. I remember looking upon that vehicle with a sense of awe, possibly not without envy at what was to most of us the entirely unattainable. I speak of the real Hyde Park Corner article, and not the old "shandrydan" with which some remote squatter might at times have galloped into town, poising himself with practised and needed adroitness on nature's bush track, behind a pair or more of the hundreds of nags on his run. I must except also those said anomalous early years, for I recollect sallying forth in 1841 from my little lodging in Lonsdale-street, opposite the old gaol, then being erected, to see Mr. John Hunter Patterson, a spirited colonist of the earliest times, drive his splendid four-in-hand through the trackless bush into town from the direction of the Moonee Ponds.
RELIGIOUS INTERESTS.
Our small society, in its upward struggle, received a distinctly great impetus for good by the accession in 1848 of the first Lord Bishop of the colony, Dr. Charles Perry. He exhibited a rare energy in the cause of his Divine Master, and he frankly and genially sought and recognized that Master's Church far beyond the pale of the Bishop's own section of it, so far at least as the rules of that section would permit. But the good Bishop, liberal as he was in one direction, yet failed to reach the full width of colonial sentiment in that respect, when he refused to reciprocate the courtesy visit of his Roman Catholic brother. He is credited with having given his reason, namely, that, in his view, the Roman Church belonged to "the synagogue of Satan"—surely a very venturesome assertion of so vast a part of Christianity and of the power and civilization of the world. We might say at times of bishops, as is so often said of judges, that when they have to make any unusual or unexpected decision they had best not give the reasons. I witnessed a very different sense of duty, and one to which I must confess a preference when we were at Lugano, an inland town of Teneriffe, situated a few miles from Santa Cruz, where our good "Coptic" halted for six hours to replenish her coal, thus permitting her passengers a shore excursion. A polite elderly gentleman, apparently the sole occupant of the Lugano hotel, whose decidedly clerical aspect, together with that simple white neckband which Catholics claim as solely their own, made us at once set him down as Roman, invited us to look through the inevitable cathedral, the only sight of the place. But we found our mistake when he took occasion to allude to "our dear Roman Catholic brethren." We then adjudged him to be a broad-minded Anglican, which was correct, for, as he afterwards told us, he was an ex-navy chaplain.
THE GERMAN IMMIGRATION.
"Go then forth, and fortune play upon Thy prosperous helm." —2nd part Henry IV.
When I made my first Home trip, in 1847, I resolved to open, if I possibly could, German emigration to Port Phillip. Quite a number had already been settled, some from the earliest years, in South Australia, where their industry, frugality, sobriety, and general good conduct had made them excellent colonists. This favourable testimony was confirmed to me by correspondence on the subject with my late much-lamented friend, Alexander L. Elder, one of South Australia's earliest, most esteemed, and most successful colonists. My first step on arrival was to write to the "Commissioners of Emigration," an officiate since dispensed with, pointing out this South Australian success, and suggesting that a certain charge upon the Colonial Land Fund, authorized in special cases of emigrants—an aid of 18 pounds a head, I think—might be made applicable to German vinedressers emigrating to Port Phillip. In due course, I received a most cordial reply from the secretary, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Stephen Walcot, to the effect that Lord Grey, then Colonial Secretary, highly approved of the project, and that the aid asked for would be forthcoming for properly qualified German vinedressers. Armed with this letter, I went to Hamburg with introductions to Messrs. John Caesar Godeffroy and Son, at that time the chief shipowners of the city. They were evidently well disposed, and had been, I think, concerned in the previous out-flow to Adelaide, as they referred me to Mr. Edward Delius, of Bremen, who had been an agent in the work. My visit to Delius resulted in my proceeding at once to Silesia, where I got as far as Liegnitz, whose gilded or tin-covered minarets reminded me that I was approaching the fanciful or gorgeous East. Here I met a number of the peasantry, all eager to hear about Australia, friends of some of them being already there. Hearing that a Moravian headquarters was also there, I introduced myself, stating that I was a subject of, and personally acquainted with, their brother Moravian, Mr. La Trobe, our Superintendent. I found other La Trobes there, his relatives or namesakes. Several of the body spoke good English, and so I got fairly on with the peasantry, explaining as to the class entitled to the assistance in emigrating, and that to vinedressers only would the aid apply, so as to enable the Messrs. Godeffroy to give them a free passage. I left them with the understanding that they would make up a party and communicate with Delius.
About six months later I went again to Hamburg, this time to see the first party away. They were in a good deal of trouble, for most of them, in spite of all advice, had clung to old family lumber, things mostly quite unsuited to Australia, and the carriage-cost of which drained their narrow means at every stage. But, worst of all, the cholera was then raging in Hamburg, and it attacked several of the party during some few days, while they waited, under such shelter as they could improvise, until the ship could take them. Delius and I visited them, to cheer them with the near prospect of the sunshine and plenty of Australia.