had given sixty shillings at Baker’s, in Fleet Street, for sixteen pounds, and the parting with it at that price was looked upon as a great favour.  Imagine boots, and they were very second-rate ones, at four pounds a pair.  One of our between-deck passengers who had speculated with a small capital of forty pounds in boots and cutlery, told me afterwards that he had disposed of them the same evening he landed at a net profit of ninety pounds—­no trifling addition to a poor man’s purse.  Labour was at a very high price, carpenters, boot and shoe makers, tailors, wheelwrights, joiners, smiths, glaziers, and, in fact, all useful trades, were earning from twenty to thirty shillings a day—­the very men working on the roads could get eleven shillings per diem, and many a gentleman in this disarranged state of affairs, was glad to fling old habits aside and turn his hand to whatever came readiest.  I knew one in particular, whose brother is at this moment serving as a Colonel in the army in India, a man more fitted for a gay London life than a residence in the Colonies.  The diggings were too dirty and uncivilized for his taste, his capital was quickly dwindling away beneath the expenses of the comfortable life he led at one of the best hotels in town, so he turned to what as a boy he had learnt as an amusement, and obtained an addition to his income, of more than four hundred pounds a year as house carpenter.  In the morning you might see him trudging off to his work, and before night might meet him at some ball or soiree among the elite of Melbourne.

I shall not attempt an elaborate description of the town of Melbourne, or its neighbouring villages.  The town is very well laid out; the streets (which are all straight, running parallel with and across one another) are very wide, but are incomplete, not lighted, and many are unpaved.  Owing to the want of lamps, few, except when full moon, dare stir out after dark.  Some of the shops are very fair; but the goods all partake too largely of the flash order, for the purpose of suiting the tastes of successful diggers, their wives, and families; it is ludicrous to see them in the shops—­men who before the gold-mines were discovered toiled hard for their daily bread taking off half-a-dozen thick gold rings from their fingers, and trying to pull on to their rough, well-hardened hands the best white kids, to be worn at some wedding party, whilst the wife, proud of the novel ornament, descants on the folly of hiding them beneath such useless articles as gloves.

The walking inhabitants are of themselves a study; glance into the streets—­all nations, classes, and costumes are represented there.  Chinamen, with pigtails and loose trousers; aborigines, with a solitary blanket flung over them; Vandemonian pick-pockets, with cunning eyes and light fingers—­all, in fact, from the successful digger in his blue serge shirt, and with green veil still hanging round his wideawake, to the fashionably attired, newly-arrived