plains, which now resound to the traffic of road and railway, and to the
busy hum of many towns and villages and of farming and gardening life.

As early as 1842, I paid a pleasant visit to pretty little Geelong, and
thence on to beautiful and diversified, but then almost empty, Colac,
meeting, at either one or other place, Mr. Duncan Hoyle and his two
sisters; the Messrs. Hardie, of Leith, who were then or after the
husbands respectively of these ladies; Messrs. Hugh and Andrew Murray,
and Mr. Augustus Morris, of Colac, who entertained us hospitably at "the
huts"--as station homesteads were then humbly designated--and who poured
out upon us interminable colonial experiences in a clear, penetrating
voice from which there was no escape. But we did not wish to escape, and
so we enjoyed everything.

Mr. Morris, who is now a prominent and useful man in Sydney, came early
from "across the Straits" with the tide, and settled here, and after
some few years, passed through rather trying times, which were not
perhaps quite so profitable as he expected, he was induced to "sell out"
to the famous Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who, arriving unexpectedly just before
this time from London in his fine yacht, had descended upon quiet,
plodding Melbourne like a Dives of unfathomable wealth. He had made a
hasty run up to Colac, seen and appreciated Morris, bought him out, and
left him in charge of this first of many purchases of the great
"Australian Wool Company," or whatever other title was to suit the great
schemes of this busy head which had turned up amongst us. Mr. Boyd's
main idea of buying up squatting property during the reaction sure to
follow the early speculation excitement of 1837 to 1840 was no bad
business project, or at all unskilfully formed. He gave Morris 7
shillings a head for his sheep. But the fall went on continuously into
1844, so that Boyd effected large purchases at rates as low, in some