The following year, 1845, in which my worthy old friend Alfred Ross joined me in business in the Market-square, then a place of the very smallest pretensions compared to now, I rented, with him, the allotment next beyond the Major’s.  It had been vacant since its previous occupancy three years before by Mr. P.W.  Welsh, already spoken of—­one of the earliest and largest, best known, and least fortunate of Melbourne’s early merchants.  That the bad times that had brought many of us to the ground had then not quite passed, although they had by this time evidently “bottomed,” may be judged by the fact that we got a fairly habitable large cottage, with twenty-five picturesque acres, and the remains, such as they were, of a garden, for 30 pounds a year.  Five years earlier some thousands a year would have been needed to live in such a place.  Eight years later it was worth, for mere site value, probably 30,000 pounds.  I am afraid to say what it may now be worth.  Probably most of it is long ago “cut up” into streets and town lots, like “Major Davidson’s paddock” alongside, which, consisting of some twelve acres next the Dandenong-road, realized in 1854, under gold discovery stimulus, no less than 17,000 pounds.  Such are a few specimens of colonial ups and downs!

Here, too, we made acquaintance, pleasant and long protracted, with our neighbours, the gallant Major—­since Colonel—­Davidson, his quiet and amiable wife, and “Missie,” as she was called, their only child, then of seven years, but in due time a surpassingly accomplished young lady, who was married to the son of Colonel Anderson, and still survives in London.  She has confessed to me since that she used then to look up to me with great awe and regard—­not merely, I hope, because I was so much the senior.

Only one other incident here.  One dark night, towards the fall of summer, detained by business longer than usual, we lost our way as we walked home, distance hardly two miles.  After some “dandering” about, in order to strike the corner of Major Davidson’s fence, which was as good to us as at home, we caught glimpse of a light, which in that place we knew must be a stranger.  Then, as we approached, there were figures and voices.  Who should this be but old Liardet from The Beach, with a section of his family, who, having an outing in Melbourne, had, like ourselves, stayed too late, and were now hopelessly at sea, and far out of their track in groping their way back.  They offered us a share of quarters, as it seemed useless to try the pathless forest any longer.  But we were too sure of our whereabouts to give up the game so easily, and after some more perambulating we struck the fence.