pound per acre, had checked emigration, and
as there had been a good deal of speculation
in Melbourne in town allotments, things just
now looked gloomy. This was in eighteen
hundred and forty-three. " But it can't last
long," said the Captain, " that silly order of
raising the price of the land is so palpably
absurd; while America is selling land so
much nearer at a quarter of the price, that it
must be repealed; and then all will be right
again."

It was the middle of May when our party
arrived in Hobson's Bay. It was very rainy,
gloomy weather—the very opposite to all
that the climate had been represented in the
accounts sent home—but then it was the
commencement of winter, the November of
our season. Uriah got a boat, and sailed up
the winding river to the town. The sail was
through a flat tract of land densely
overgrown with a mass of close, dark bushes, of
some ten feet high, somewhat resembling our
sloe-tree, the tea-tree of that country. On
reaching the foot of the town, which stood
on a range of low hills, Uriah and his
companions stepped out into a most appalling
slough of black mud, through which they
waded till they reached the town, which was
of no great extent, scattered over a
considerable space, however, for the number of
houses, and with great intervals of woodland,
and of places where the trees had been felled,
and where the stumps, a yard high, remained
in unsightly nakedness.

Uriah walked on through a scene which,
somehow in keeping with the weather, fell
heavily on his spirits. There was nothing
doing, or stirring; houses in various degrees
of progress stood as they were. There were
piles of timber, lime, shingles, posts, and
rails, empty wagons and carts, but no
people employed about them. On every
hand he saw lots marked out for fencing
or building upon, but there they remained
all stationary.

"Is it Sunday?" Uriah asked himself.
No, it was Tuesday. Then why all this
stagnation; this solitude? In a lane, or
rather deep track of mud and ruts, since
known as Flinders' Lane, but then without a
name, and only just wide enough between the
trees for a cart to pass, Uriah wading and
plunging along, the rain meantime pouring,
streaming, and drumming down on his
umbrella, he came face to face with a large
active man in a mackintosh cloak, and an
oilskin hood over his head. Neither of
them found it very convenient to step out of
the middle mud track, because on each side
of it rose a perfect bank of sludge raised
by the wheels of drays, and stopping to have
a look at each other, the strange man
suddenly put out a huge red hand warm and
wet, and exclaimed:

"What! Tattenhall! You here! In the
name of all wonders what could bring you
here at this moment?"

"What, Robinson! is that you? " cried
Uriah. " Is this your climate? This your
paradise?"

"Climate—paradise—be hanged! " said
Robinson. " They're well enough. If everything
else were as well there would be nought
to complain of. But tell me Uriah Tattenhall,
with that comfortable Trumpington
Cottage at Peckham, with that well-to-do
warehouse in the Old Jewry, what could
possess you to come here?"

"What should I come for, but to settle?"
asked Uriah, somewhat chagrined at this
salutation.

"To settle! ha, ha! " burst out Robinson.
"Well, as for that, you could not come to a
better place. It is a regular settler here.
Everything and everybody are settled here
out and out. This is a settlement, and no
mistake; but it is like a many other settle
the figures are all on the wrong side
the ledger."

"Good gracious!" said Uriah.

"Nay, it is neither good nor gracious,"
replied Robinson. " Look round. What do
you see? Ruin, desertion, dirt and the—
devil!"

"Why, how is that?" asked Uriah. "I
thought you, and Jones, and Brown, and all
of you had made your fortunes."

"So we had, or were just on the point of
doing. We had purchased lots of land for
building, and had sold it out again at five
hundred per cent, when chop! down comes
little Lord John with his pound an acre,
and, heigh, presto! everything goes topsy-
turvy. Our purchasers are either in the
bankruptcy court, or have vanished. By
jingo! I could show you such lots, fine lots
for houses and gardens, for shops and
warehouses; ay, and shops and warehouses upon
them too, as would astonish you."

"Well, and what then?" asked Uriah.

"What then! why man don't you comprehend.
Emigration is stopped, broken off as
short as a pipe-shank, not a soul is coming
out to buy and live in all these houses—not a
soul except an odd—excuse me, Tattenhall,
I was going to say, except you and another
fool or two. But where do you hang out?
Look! there is my house," pointing to a
wooden erection near. " I'll come and see
you as soon as I know where you fix
yourself."

"But mind one thing," cried Uriah, seizing
him by the arm as he passed. " For heaven's
sake, don't talk in this manner to my wife.
It would kill her."

"Oh no, mum's the word! There's no use
frightening the women," said Robinson. " No,
confound it, I won't croak any how. And, after
all, bad as things are, why, they can't remain
so for ever. Nothing ever does, that's one
comfort. They'll mend sometime."

"When?" said Uriah.

"Well," said Robinson, pausing a little,
"not before you and I meet again, so I may