taps were in great demand, and so far as a desire for stimulants went, there was individually a very general "spiritual" drought, or thirstiness, perceptible about the township. In January, 1839, however, the heat gave the province its "turn" in a most unmistakable manner, for bush fires raged everywhere along the coast and through the interior, inflicting no small losses upon the settlers scattered through the County of Bourke, Geelong, and other parts of the western and north-western country. One great want pressed heavily on the settlement, viz., something approaching a labour famine, and it was complained, with a degree of justice that could not be gainsaid, that the province was very unfairly treated in the appropriation of the money realised by the sale of Crown lands. Accordingly, in the month of September, a memorial was transmitted from the stockholders to the Governor, begging him to recommend the Home Government to despatch a vessel with immigrants direct to Melbourne; but no response was madde until July, 1840, when advices were received that not only one, but several shiploads, were to be deported to Port Phillip by J. Marshall, the then well-known emigration agent. Certainly, in January, 1840, a barque, appropriately named the "Hope," brought from Sydney 130 immigrants, with 30 women and fifty children; but this was, so to speak, only a drop in the bucket. The total revenue for 1838 was £43,524 2s. 9d., made up of the following items, viz.:— Postage, £150; squatters' licenses, £530; publicans' licenses, £200; auctioneers', £100; fees, £400; Customs, £6734 19s. 9d.; and land sales, £35,359 3s.
In the beginning of 1839 Melbourne could not boast of having a single one of those extremes of handicraftism, a watchmaker or a tinker—though there were half-a-dozen shoemakers, two saddlers, three bakers, four butchers, and three tailors—and oh—happy land, Australia Felix in reality! only one blessed limb of the law, bearing the unprofessional name of Meek. But though there was no other legal practitioner, Fawkner and a butcher named M'Nall were allowed to act as advocates before the Police Magistrate; and considering the surroundings of the place, it was no misnomer to put them down as "bush lawyers," for they were literally so. M'Nall kept a large butcher's shop, where now is Rocke & Co.'s furnishing mart, in Collins Street; and here he followed his dual calling, but the people preferred his mutton to his law, and affected his sirloins more than his equity. He did a very large business in the victualling line, but what he made in one way was lost in other more risky transactions. He died a good many years ago, and there is now nothing remaining of him except an almost forgotten memory, unless it be a poor bantling of a street in Richmond which is named after him. The first town fire occured in 1838, in a hut, used as a watch-house, near Spencer Street, but no fire bell rang, or brigade mustered to put it out. The place was burned down, and it is unnecessary to say that neither stock nor premises were covered by insurance. The next year the first Fire and Marine Insurance Company was started, but it collapsed after a brief reign. The first gunpowder explosion occurred in 1839, in a not very fire-proof locality, the now Market Street, where there was a row of weather-board shops, and in one of these a Mr. Blanche, the first of our gun and powder sellers, was located with his firearms and combustibles, all of which, with his wife and some customers, were blown up, and five persons killed. Our present numerous and respectable fraternity of barbers, and hairdressers, will be interested by the announcement that their earliest business predecessor was a shaver, rejoicing in the unrazorly cognomen of Lamb: and an accommodating modiste of the very appropriate name of Lily, was the first in the field to tender her services in supplying baby-linen to such as might require so interesting a commodity, which was then very slowly becoming an article of necessity; and, as if to assist the Lily patronage, a lady under the rugged appellation of Bear, stationed herself in Elizabeth Street, whence she informed married ladies that she would "be happy to attend those requiring her services during their accouchements." Next, there turned up an undertaker who promised "to attend to funerals on the shortest notice." As the representative of the icy King of Terrors, he was not unfittingly named Frost. He was a well-to-do butcher over the water, where he sought variety by passing from the trade of cutting up carcasses, to that of burying corpses' not much of a transition, though in the latter there was no killing or "cutting up" indulged in. He also started the business of carpenter and joiner, and to the time of his death was an industrious and well-deserving colonist. There was not a regular retail tobacconist in the town until September 1839, when a fancy snuff and cigar shop was opened in Market Street, yet there was a professor of music, a dancing master, and a Mrs. Clarke, "one of the lights of the Sydney stage," who gave occasional soirées at 10s. per head. But the poor fancy tobacconist did not keep his pipe long alight, for both it and his life were put out together in the Blanche
