kind—also for Buckley. T h efirstMelbourne residence—a sod hut—was put up by George Evans; and the first shearer of sheep was Kenneth S. Clarke, manager for the V a n Diemen's Land Great Lake Company, the operation having been performed 9th October, 1836, at the Saltwater River. T h e winter of 1836 was very cold, and the thermometer was known to be as low as 19 degrees in a range of 88 days. For several days in the summer of 1836-7 the thermometer was at 107, and at night it was cold enough for a fire. Mr. T h o m a s Napier, of Essendon, who died in 1881, was thefirstto open a timber trade between Melbourne and V a n Diemen's Land. In 1837 he chartered a schooner and brought over a cargo of material for building. H e soon passed from building into a cattle station, went on and prospered. Napier Street in Fitzroy is named after him. O n e of the oldest Port Phillipian emblems in existence is a waterman's badge, issued to Captain Joseph Fermaner, the first Pilot and Harbour Master at Port Albert. It is a small brass plate crescent-formed, and thus inscribed :—" 1838. N o . 1. Melbourne Licensed Boatman." It was obtained at the Customs Flouse, cost 5s., and authorized the plying of a boat on the Yarra and the Bay. T h efirstwater conveyance of the kind worked by Fermaner was the whaleboat "Nancy," between Melbourne, Williamstown, and d o w n Hobson's Bay. T h e same old tar has mentioned to m e the following incidents, well worth preserving, in connection with the times of old :—Originally the shipping used to employ stone ballast, and Fermaner was thefirstto substitute sand taken at Fisherman's Bend for the " Regia," ship, bound for Calcutta. T h e stone realized 10s. per ton, and thefirstprice paid for sand was 8s. In m y chapter on the Yarra,* it was stated that in its native condition the ledge of rocks known as the Yarra Falls contained a fissure large enough to admit the passage of a boat at high water. Captain Fermaner has since assured m e that in 1836 he passed through the aperture in a six-ton schooner, named the " Mary Anne," and proceeded up the Yarra as far as the present Church Street Bridge. Mr. John Murchison, w h o died at K e w in 1882, drove thefirst" tandem " overland from Sydney to Melbourne in 1838. H e had attained his 86th year, and was the grandsire of 36 descendants. T h efirstrecorded death from excessive drinking is that of Mrs. E m m a Sarah Briars, the wife of a quarryman, w h o arrived towards the close of 1838. O n the 17th January, 1839, Mr. Briars discovered his wife stretched on the floor. Dr. Cussen was sent for, but before he could arrive she expired. There was no such convenient appliance as a Guardian of Minors, and consequently no person legally authorized to give away in marriage any over-young lady desirous to contract a matrimonial alliance before ceasing to be an "infant." This want was remedied in January, 1839, by the appointment of the Police Magistrate (Captain Lonsdale) to an office which, one would think, was (though it was not) something like an absolute sinecure. Presumably on the principle embodied in the adage, poeta nascitur, orator fit, it is that the real poet is a rare animal in a new country ; for while orators m a y be turned out to order by the half-dozen, the true National bard is an organism which Nature is chary of evolving from h u m a n kind. The first original colonially manufactured effusion that I can find appears over the pseudonym of "Coloniensis" in the Port Phillip Gazette, 26th January, 1839. It is an ambitious production, with a fitting theme, and though I have never heard the n a m e of the writer, it contains internal evidence of style and treatment to induce m e to assign its authorship to George Arden, the Gazette Editor. Its
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