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Chapter V.

Ask why from Britain Caesar made retreat?
Caesar himself would tell you he was beat.
The mighty Czar, what moved to wed a punk?
The mighty Czar would tell you he was drunk.—Pope.

I Now took my passage for Melbourne in the barque Napoleon. Passing through Cook’s Straits we put in at Nelson for passengers, where I had the pleasure of meeting some old friends. This is a flourishing town, and in decidedly the best agricultural district in the neighbourhood. We only got two passengers here for the gold-diggings.

We were very unfortunate in the weather, and had to beat about almost all the way; in fact, we were thirty-four days doing 1100 miles: many vessels have made the passage in seven. We had sixty passengers, and with the exception of rice, which tasted as if it had been steeped in turpentine, and sugar, had only thirteen days’ provisions on board. I scarcely tasted anything but rum and sugar for more than a fortnight, and consequently got into Melbourne in a very poor condition. This was in the middle of the year 1852. Entering Hobson’s Bay, which runs inland forty miles, we brought up off William’s Town, in a fleet of about two hundred sail, and soon after a steamer came alongside, when I, with F…….d and W . . t, who had agreed to make a party with me, jumped on board, and we were carried up the Yarra Yarra river to Melbourne. We had no sooner stepped ashore than we were told that three men had been “stuck up”^* in front of one of the first hotels at eight o’clock the previous night.

We found the price of lodgings very high: indeed, they considered it a great favour to allow you to “coil up” in your own blankets, and give you very poor board, for thirty-five shillings a week; so we pitched our tent on page 47 the Emerald Hill, Canvas Town, where we employed ourselves tent-making for several weeks. The roads were too heavy to walk up at present, and the Government escort was stuck fast, unable to cross some creek or river which had swollen into a torrent, and every one who came down complained of being frost-bitten.

The carriage of goods to the diggings was ninety pounds a ton, showing a fall of thirty-five pounds within the last few days; wages for working men were very good; seamen in coasting vessels were getting eleven pounds per month, sawyers one pound per day; port wages fifteen shillings per day, and board; bullock-drivers, with no other training than a seven years’ term of transportation gives them, were getting their five pounds a week; while clerks and others, who have had expensive educations, are obliged to keep up a respectable standing on 150l. or 200l. a year. I myself answered an advertisement in the Argus for a draughtsman, but was too late; indeed, I was informed that within an hour after the paper was printed five-and-twenty applications had been made. Afterwards I could have obtained an engagement in my own profession at 300l. a year, but, finding that I could make more money by “hard graft,” as they call labour in the colonies, I would not take it.

The town was now in a fearful state, robberies and murders occurring every day. The police was badly organized and composed of any persons who chose to apply: they were totally unfit for the unsettled state of society, which was a curious mixture of every grade, compelled to associate from force of circumstances. I never walked out at night without a pistol in each pocket. Coming from town to our camp, which was about a mile out, we carried an open clasp-knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. My mate, a sailor, was passing the police-office in Swanston Street about nine o’clock one fine evening, when several men sprang on him, and “stuck him up,” but, being expert in the use of his clasp-knife, he laid about him, and finally got it under the shoulder-blade of one of the gang, when, finding he could not extricate it, he let go, and ran, as the sailors say, and appeared before us bathed in perspiration, having run the page 48 distance in less time than anybody else was ever known to have done. Another man, living in the third tent from ours, was coming unarmed from town, rather late, accompanied by his mate, who was armed with a brace of pistols, when they were met by three ruffians, and saluted with the usual words, “Your money, or Ill blow your ——brains out!” The man who was armed ran away close up to the camp; where, thinking, as he was out of the lion’s jaw, he must do something to retrieve his character, he commenced popping away at the group, without for a moment considering that his mate was still amongst them. Meanwhile the villains had shot the poor fellow, plundered him, and decamped. We were within hearing, but, as pistols were being fired off all night, we took no notice of these in particular, and consequently did not render him any assistance till too late. He was brought to his tent, had the ball extracted, and I believe recovered.