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