First Impressions of Melbourne—Survey of the City—The Streets—Collins Street—The Traffic—Newness and Youngness of Melbourne—Absence of Beggars—Melbourne an English City—The Chinese Quarter—The Public Library—Pentridge Prison—The Yarra River—St. Kilda—Social Experiences in Melbourne—A Marriage Ball—Melbourne Ladies—Visit to a Serious Family.

I arrive in Melbourne towards evening, and on stepping out of the railway-train find myself amidst a glare of gas lamps. Outside the station the streets are all lit up, the shops are brilliant with light, and well-dressed people are moving briskly about.

What is this large building in Bourke Street, with the crowd standing about? It is the Royal Theatre. A large stone-faced hall inside the portico, surrounded by bars brilliantly lit, is filled with young men in groups lounging about, talking and laughing. At the further end of the vestibule are the entrances to the different parts of the house.

Further up the same street, I come upon a large market-place, in a blaze of light, where crowds of people are moving about, buying vegetables, fruit, meat, and such like. At the further end of the street the din and bustle are less, and I see a large structure standing in an open space, looking black against the starlit sky. I afterwards find that it is the Parliament House.

Such is my first introduction to Melbourne. It is evidently a place stirring with life. After strolling through some of the larger streets, and everywhere observing the same indications of wealth, and traffic, and population, I took the train for Sandridge, and slept a good sound sleep in my bunk on board the 'Yorkshire' for the last time.

Next morning I returned to Melbourne in the broad daylight, when I was able to make a more deliberate survey of the city. I was struck by the width and regularity of some of the larger streets, and by the admirable manner in which they are paved and kept. The whole town seems to have been laid out on a systematic plan, which some might think even too regular and uniform. But the undulating nature of the ground on which the city is built serves to correct this defect, if defect it be.

The streets are mostly laid out at right angles; broad streets one way, and alternate broad and narrow streets crossing them. Collins and Bourke Streets are, perhaps, the finest. The view from the high ground, at one end of Collins Street, looking down the hollow of the road, and right away up the hill on the other side, is very striking. This grand street, of great width, is probably not less than a mile long. On either side are the principal bank buildings, tall and handsome. Just a little way up the hill, on the further side, is a magnificent white palace-like structure, with a richly ornamented faÇade and tower. That is the New Town Hall. Higher up is a fine church spire, and beyond it a red brick tower, pricked out with yellow, standing in bold relief against the clear blue sky. You can just see Bourke and Wills' monument there, in the centre of the roadway. And at the very end of the perspective, the handsome grey front of the Treasury bounds the view.

Amongst the peculiarities of the Melbourne streets are the deep, broad stone gutters, on either side of the roadway, evidently intended for the passage of a very large quantity of water in the rainy season. They are so broad as to render it necessary to throw little wooden bridges over them at the street-crossings. I was told that these open gutters are considered by no means promotive of the health of the inhabitants, which one can readily believe; and it is probable that before long they will be covered up.

Walk over Collins and Bourke Street at nine or ten in the morning, and you meet the business men of Melbourne on their way from the railway-station to their offices in town: for the greater number of them, as in London, live in the suburbs. The shops are all open, everything looking bright and clean. Pass along the same streets in the afternoon, and you will find gaily-dressed ladies flocking the pathways. The shops are bustling with customers. There are many private carriages to be seen, with two-wheeled cars, on which the passengers sit back to back, these (with the omnibuses) being the public conveyances of Melbourne. Collins Street may be regarded as the favourite promenade; more particularly between three and four in the afternoon, when shopping is merely the excuse of its numerous fashionable frequenters.

One thing struck me especially—the very few old or grey-haired people one meets with in the streets of Melbourne. They are mostly young people; and there are comparatively few who have got beyond the middle stage of life. And no wonder. For how young a city Melbourne is! Forty years since there was not a house in the place.

Where the Melbourne University now stands, a few miserable Australian blacks would meet and hold a corroboree; but, except it might be a refugee bush-ranger from Sydney, there was not a white man in all Victoria. The first settler, John Batman,[3] arrived in the harbour of Port Phillip as recently as the year 1835, since which time the colony has been planted, the city of Melbourne has been built, and Victoria covered with farms, mines, towns, and people. When Sir Thomas Mitchell first visited the colony in 1836, though comprehending an area of more than a hundred thousand square miles, it did not contain 200 white people. In 1845 the population had grown to 32,000; Melbourne had been founded, and was beginning to grow rapidly; now it contains a population of about 200,000 souls, and is already the greatest city in the Southern Hemisphere.

No wonder, therefore, that the population of Melbourne should be young. It consists for the most part of immigrants from Great Britain and other countries,—of men and women in the prime of life,—pushing, enterprising, energetic people. Nor is the stream of immigration likely to stop soon. The land in the interior is not one-tenth part occupied; and "the cry is, still they come." Indeed many think the immigrants do not come quickly enough. Every ship brings a fresh batch; and the "new chums" may be readily known, as they assemble in knots at the corners of the streets, by their ruddy colour, their gaping curiosity, and their home looks.

Another thing that strikes me in Melbourne is this,—that I have not seen a beggar in the place. There is work for everybody who will work; so there is no excuse for begging. A great many young fellows who come out here no doubt do not meet with the fortune they think they deserve. They expected that a few good letters of introduction were all that was necessary to enable them to succeed. But they are soon undeceived. They must strip to work, if they would do any good. Mere clerks, who can write and add up figures, are of no use; the colony is over-stocked with them. But if they are handy, ready to work, and willing to turn their hand to anything, they need never be without the means of honest living.

In many respects Melbourne is very like home. It looks like a slice of England transplanted here, only everything looks fresher and newer. Go into Fitzroy or Carlton Gardens in the morning, and you will see almost the self-same nurses and children that you saw in the Parks in London. At dusk you see the same sort of courting couples mooning about, not knowing what next to say. In the streets you see a corps of rifle volunteers marching along, just as at home, on Saturday afternoons. Down at Sandridge you see the cheap-trip steamer, decked with flags, taking a boat-load of excursionists down the bay to some Australian Margate or Ramsgate. On the wooden pier the same steam-cranes are at work, loading and unloading trucks.

One thing, however, there is at Melbourne that you cannot see in any town in England, and that is the Chinese quarter. There the streets are narrower and dirtier than anywhere else, and you see the yellow-faced folks stand jabbering at their doors—a very novel sight. The Chinamen, notwithstanding the poll-tax originally imposed on them of 10l. a head, have come into Victoria in large and increasing numbers, and before long they threaten to become a great power in the colony. They are a very hardworking, but, it must be confessed, a very low class, dirty people.

Though many of the Chinamen give up their native dress and adopt the European costume, more particularly the billycock hat, there is one part of their belongings that they do not part with even in the last extremity—and that is their tail. They may hide it away in their billycock or in the collar of their coat; but, depend upon it, the tail is there. My friend, the doctor of the 'Yorkshire,' being a hunter after natural curiosities, had, amongst other things, a great ambition to possess himself of a Chinaman's tail. One day, walking up Collins Street, I met my enthusiastic friend. He recognised me, and waved something about frantically that he had in his hand. "I've got it! I've got it!" he exclaimed, in a highly excited manner. "What have you got?" I asked, wondering. "Come in here," said he, "and I'll show it you." We turned into a bar, when he carefully undid his parcel, and exposed to view a long black thing. "What is it?" I asked. "A Chinaman's pigtail, of course," said he, triumphantly; "and a very rare curiosity it is, I can assure you."

Among the public institutes of Melbourne one of the finest is the Public Library, already containing, I was told, about 80,000 volumes. It is really a Library for the People, and a noble one too. So far as I can learn, there is nothing yet in England that can be compared with it.[4] Working men come here, and read at their leisure scientific books, historical books, or whatever they may desire. They may come in their working dress, signing their names on entering, the only condition required of them being quietness and good behaviour. About five hundred readers use the library daily.

Nor must I forget the Victorian collection of pictures, in the same building as the Public Library. The galleries are good, and contain many attractive paintings. Amongst them I noticed Goodall's 'Rachel at the Well,' Cope's 'Pilgrim Fathers' (a replica), and some excellent specimens of Chevalier, a rising colonial artist.

The Post Office is another splendid building, one of the most commodious institutions of the kind in the world. There the arrival of each mail from England is announced by the hoisting of a large red flag, with the letter A (arrival).

In evidence of the advanced "civilization" of Melbourne, let me also describe a visit which I paid to its gaol. But it is more than a gaol, for it is the great penal establishment of the colony. The prison at Pentridge is about eight miles from Melbourne. Accompanied by a friend, I was driven thither in a covered car along a very dusty but well-kept road. Alighting at the castle-like entrance to the principal courtyard, we passed through a small doorway, behind which was a strong iron-bar gate, always kept locked, and watched by a warder. The gate was unlocked, and we shortly found ourselves in the great prison area, in the presence of sundry men in grey prison uniform, with heavy irons on. Passing across the large clean yard, we make for a gate in the high granite wall at its further side. A key is let down to us by the warder, who is keeping armed watch in his sentry-box on the top of the wall. We use it, let ourselves in, lock the door, and the key is hauled up again.

We enter the female prison, where we are shown the cells, each with its small table and neatly-folded mattress. On the table is a Bible and Prayer-book, and sometimes a third book for amusement or instruction. In some of the cells, where the inmates are learning to read and write, there is a spelling primer and a copybook for pothooks. The female prisoners are not in their cells, but we shortly after find them assembled in a large room above, seated and at work. They all rose at our entrance, and I had a good look at their faces. There was not a single decent honest face amongst them. They were mostly heavy, square-jawed, hard-looking women. Judging by their faces, vice and ugliness would seem to be pretty nearly akin.

We were next taken to the centre of the prison, from which we looked down upon the narrow, high-walled yards, in which the prisoners condemned to solitary confinement take their exercise. These yards all radiate from a small tower, in which a warder is stationed, carefully watching the proceedings below.

We shortly saw the prisoners of Department A coming in from their exercise in the yard. Each wore a white mask on his face with eyeholes in it; and no prisoner must approach another nearer than five yards, at risk of severe punishment. The procession was a very dismal one. In the half-light of the prison they marched silently on one by one, with their faces hidden, each touching his cap as he passed.

Department B came next. The men here do not work in their separate cells, like the others, but go out to work in gangs, guarded by armed warders. The door of each cell throughout the prison has a small hole in it, through which the warders, who move about the galleries in list shoes, can peep in, and, unknown to the prisoner, see what he is about.

Both male and female prisons have Black Holes attached to them for the solitary confinement of the refractory. Dreadful places they look: small cells about ten feet by four, into which not a particle of light is admitted. Three thick doors, one within another, render it impossible for the prisoner inside to make himself heard without.

Next comes Department C, in which the men finish their time. Here many sleep in one room, always under strict watch, being employed during the day at their respective trades, or going out in gangs to work in the fields connected with the establishment. Connected with this department is a considerable factory, with spinning-machines, weaving-frames, and dye vats; the whole of the clothes and blankets used in the gaol being made by the prisoners, as well as the blankets supplied by the Government to the natives. Adjoining are blacksmiths' shops, where manacles are forged; shoemakers' shops; tailors' shops; a bookbinder's shop, where the gaol books are bound; and shops for various other crafts.

The prison library is very well furnished with books. Dickens's and Trollope's works are there, and I saw a well-read copy of 'Self-Help,' though it was doubtless through a very different sort of self-help that most of the prisoners who perused it had got there.

Last of all, we saw the men searched on coming in from their work in the fields, or in the different workshops. They all stood in a line while the warder passed his hands down their bodies and legs, and looked into their hats. Then he turned to a basin of water standing by, and carefully washed his hands.

There were about 700 prisoners of both sexes in the gaol when we visited it. I was told that the walls of the prison enclose an area of 132 acres, so that there is abundance of space for all kinds of work. On the whole it was a very interesting, but at the same time a sad sight.

I think very little of the River Yarra Yarra, on which Melbourne is situated. It is a muddy, grey-coloured stream, very unpicturesque. It has, however, one great advantage over most other Australian rivers, as indicated by its name, which in the native language means the "ever-flowing;" many of the creeks and rivers in Australia being dry in summer. I hired a boat for the purpose of a row up the Yarra. A little above the city its banks are pretty and ornamental, especially where it passes the Botanic Gardens, which are beautifully laid out, and well stocked with India-rubber plants, gum-trees, and magnificent specimens of the Southern fauna. Higher up, the river—though its banks continue green—becomes more monotonous, and we soon dropped back to Melbourne with the stream.

It is the seaside of Melbourne that is by far the most interesting,—Williamstown, with its shipping; but more especially the pretty suburbs, rapidly growing into towns, along the shores of the Bay of Port Phillip—such as St. Kilda, Elsternwick, Brighton, and Cheltenham. You see how they preserve the old country names. St. Kilda is the nearest to Melbourne, being only about three miles distant by rail, and it is the favourite resort of the Melbourne people. Indeed, many of the first-class business men reside there, just as Londoners do at Blackheath and Forest Hill. The esplanade along the beach is a fine promenade, and the bathing along shore is exceedingly good. There are large enclosures for bathers, surrounded by wooden piles; above the enclosure, raised high on platforms, are commodious dressing-rooms, where, instead of being cooped up in an uncomfortable bathing-machine, you may have a lounge outside in the bright sunshine while you dress. The water is a clear blue, and there is a sandy bottom sloping down from the shore into any depth,—a glorious opportunity for swimmers!

I must now tell you something of my social experiences in Melbourne. Thanks to friends at home, I had been plentifully supplied with letters of introduction to people in the colony. When I spoke of these to old colonials in the 'Yorkshire,' I was told that they were "no good"—no better than so many "tickets for soup," if worth even that. I was, therefore, quite prepared for a cool reception; but, nevertheless, took the opportunity of delivering my letters shortly after landing.

So far from being received with coldness, I was received with the greatest kindness wherever I went. People who had never seen me before, and who knew nothing of me or my family, gave me a welcome that was genuine, frank, and hearty in the extreme. My letters, I found, were far more than "tickets for soup." They introduced me to pleasant companions and kind friends, who entertained me hospitably, enabled me to pass my time pleasantly, and gave me much practical good advice. Indeed, so far as my experience goes, the hospitality of Victoria ought to become proverbial.

One of the first visits I made was to a recent school-fellow of mine at Geneva. I found him at work in a bank, and astonished him very much by the suddenness of my appearance. He was most kind to me during my stay in Melbourne, as well as all his family, to whom I owed a succession of kindnesses which I can never forget.

I shall always retain a pleasant recollection of a marriage festivity to which I was invited within a week after my arrival. A ball was given in the evening, at which about 300 persons were present—the elite of Melbourne society. It was held in a large marquee, with a splendid floor, and ample space for dancing. Everything was ordered very much the same as at home. The dresses of the ladies seemed more costly, the music was probably not so good, though very fair, and the supper rather better. I fancy there was no "contract champagne" at that ball.

One thing I must remark about the ladies—they seemed to me somehow a little different in appearance. Indeed, when I first landed, I fancied I saw a slightly worn look, a want of freshness, in the people generally. They told me there that it is the effect of the dry Australian climate and the long summer heat, native-born Australians having a tendency to grow thin and lathy. Not that there was any want of beauty about the Melbourne girls, or that they were not up to the mark in personal appearance. On the contrary, there was quite a bevy of belles, some of them extremely pretty girls, most tastefully dressed, and I thought the twelve bridesmaids, in white silk trimmed with blue, looked charming.

I spent a very pleasant evening with this gay company, and had my fill of dancing after my long privation at sea. When I began to step out, the room seemed to be in motion. I had got so accustomed to the roll of the ship that I still felt unsteady, and when I put my foot down it went further than I expected before it touched the floor. But I soon got quit of my sea legs, which I had so much difficulty in finding.

Before concluding my few Melbourne experiences, I will mention another of a very different character from the above. I was invited to spend the following Saturday and Sunday with a gentleman and his family. I was punctual to my appointment, and was driven by my carman up to the door of a new house in a very pretty situation. I was shown into the drawing-room, where I waited some time for the mistress of the house to make her appearance. She was a matronly person, with a bland smile on her countenance. Her dress was of a uniform grey, with trimmings of the same colour. We tried conversation, but somehow it failed. I fear my remarks were more meaningless than usual on such occasions. Certainly the lady and I did not hit it at all. She asked me if I had heard such and such a Scotch minister, or had read somebody's sermons which she named? Alas! I had not so much as heard of their names. Judging by her looks, she must have thought me an ignoramus. For a mortal hour we sat together, almost in silence, her eyes occasionally directed full upon me. We were for the moment relieved by the entrance of a young lady, one of the daughters of the house, who was introduced to me. But, alas! we got on no better than before. The young lady sat with downcast eyes, intent upon her knitting, though I saw that her eyes were black, and that she was pretty.

Then the master of the house came home, and we had dinner in a quiet, sober fashion. In the evening the lady and I made a few further efforts at conversation. I was looking at the books on the drawing-room table, when she all at once brightened up, and asked—"Have you ever heard of Robbie Burns?" I answered (I fear rather chaffingly) that "I had once heard there was such a person." "Have you, tho'?" said the lady, relapsing into crochet. The gentleman went off to sleep, and the young lady continued absorbed in her knitting. A little later in the evening the hostess made a further effort. "Have you ever tasted whisky toddy?" To which I answered, "Yes, once or twice," at which she seemed astonished. But the whisky toddy, which might have put a little spirit into the evening, did not make its appearance. The subject of the recent marriage festivity having come up, the lady was amazed to find I had been there, and that I was fond of dancing! I fear this sent me down a great many more pegs in her estimation. In fact, my evening was a total failure, and I was glad to get to bed—though it was an immense expanse of bed, big enough for a dozen people.

To make a long story short, next morning I went with the family to "the kirk," heard an awfully long sermon, during which I nipped my fingers to keep myself awake; and as soon as I could I made my escape back to my lodgings, very well pleased to get away, but feeling that I must have left a very unfavourable impression upon the minds of my worthy entertainers.

[3] Mr. Batman died in September, 1869, at the age of 77, and his funeral was one of the largest ever seen in Melbourne. This "father of Melbourne" kept the first store, and published the first newspaper in the settlement.