Page:ChroniclesofEarlyMelbournevol.1.pdf/255

town were astounded when they looked upon the immense white drapery which shrouded everything out of doors. I well remember peeping through the curtains of m y bedroom window in Spring Street, shortly after day-break. I rubbed m y eyes, rushed out of doors, and then, to m y surprise, renewed acquaintance with an old friend with w h o m I had parted company on the other side of the globe years before. T h e snow was general, and in places more than a foot thick. About 9 a.m. a thaw set in, and the melting snow overwhelmed the half-made streets and unkerbed channel-ways. T h e low-lying streets were, in places, feet under water. Elizabeth Street was like a canal that overflowed its banks, and traffic was suspended. Punts there were not; small boats could not live in the gurgling roaring water-course ; and here and there rickety corporation bridges, at the street intersections, were washed by thefirstflood-burstinto the Yarra. B y degrees the waters subsided, and as there were no omnibusses and but few cabs to be found, bakers' and butchers' carts were called into requisition, and draymen turned their vehicles into horse-worked ferries and m a d e a good thing of it. Several accidents, some of them fatal, occurred. A w o m a n tumbled into a pool of water at the (now Colonial Bank) corner of Little Collins Street, and two men, at some risk to themselves, pulled her out half-drowned. A child slipped into a gully in Lonsdale Street, and its mother nearly perished in saving it. A horse and rider were carried away in Flinders Street, the m a n escaping, but the animal being so injured that it had to be shot. Near the Post-office corner there were half-a-dozen hairbreadth escapes, and in Swanston Street the following incident happened :—There was an old tube-crossing or wooden conduit, the remains of some civic experiment, at the corner of Bourke Street, half-filled with water. Into this a little boy was propelled head-foremost and stuck. H e would have been given up for lost but for the subterranean howling that issued from the pipe, and, as he was alive, the question arose as to h o w he was to be extricated. H e had travelled so far under the road that a man's arm could not reach him, and there were no practical grappling-irons convenient. In this emergency M r . Robert Cadden, then a well-known clerk of the District Police Court, rose to the occasion. Another boy of the same size as he w h o had disappeared, encouraged by promises of ample remuneration, consented to be shoved in after the other, which was done, with due instructions that when he should come to the boy's legs he was to clutch and hold them to the death if necessary. This not very pleasant operation was successfully effected, and on a signal from the search party, Cadden, aided by a bystander, drew him out by the heels, and by this contrivance thefirstunfortunate was literally towed ex articulo mortis, and on re-entering the world shook himself like a half-drowned rat, amidst the acclamations of the crowd which witnessed the plucky deliverance. A subscription was improvised, and the two boys departed with a freightage of small silver and copper coins, little expected by them as a result of the snow-storm. Cadden, w h o was a thorough good fellow, was amply compensated by a slice of the mens conscia recti, in such a case inevitable. M u c h suburban damage was done; a large number of pigs on Richmond and Collingwood flats were drowned, and planks of timber, shingle, and paling in considerable quantity carried from the wharf and adjacent wood yards into the river. A great flood was expected in the Yarra, and towards evening the rain came, and continued its downpour until next morning. At midnight it was tremendous, and there was never a colder, sloppier, or more miserable night in Melbourne. T h e molten snow ran gurgling along from the ranges, and, reinforced by the rain, the rivers and creeks boiled over and submerged the low-lying land for miles. T h e floods kept rising until the afternoon of the following day, when Melbourne looked like a town built on a small island, for it was almost environed by water. At Heidelberg, Darebin, Merri Creek and along the Yarra banks from Studley Park to the Saltwater River, and for miles up the Deep Creek there was a large destruction of property, and though not equal to the flood of the preceding year, this one was more disastrous in its results. O n the evening ofthe 1st September, the Merri Creek was as high as ever before seen. During the 2nd and 3rd the water fell some six feet, and to avert sacrifice of h u m a n life, beacons were lighted at night as danger signals at several points of its course. T h e accounts from the country reported the snow and floods as almost general, especially heavy in the Geelong district where the Barwon assumed a form that frightened the settlers located near it. Country bridges were demolished country mails stopped, and a postman was drowned whilst rashly endeavouring to cross a creek at M o u n t E m u . Another person almost lost his life in the Deep Creek, about twenty miles from town ; and the escape of half-a-dozen drunken people at the Merri Creek was little short of miraculous. Such is the history of the only snow-storm visitation witnessed in Melbourne since the White foundation of Port Phillip.