As early as 1842, I paid a pleasant visit to pretty little Geelong, and thence on to beautiful and diversified, but then almost empty, Colac, meeting, at either one or other place, Mr. Duncan Hoyle and his two sisters; the Messrs. Hardie, of Leith, who were then or after the husbands respectively of these ladies; Messrs. Hugh and Andrew Murray, and Mr. Augustus Morris, of Colac, who entertained us hospitably at “the huts”—­as station homesteads were then humbly designated—­and who poured out upon us interminable colonial experiences in a clear, penetrating voice from which there was no escape.  But we did not wish to escape, and so we enjoyed everything.

Mr. Morris, who is now a prominent and useful man in Sydney, came early from “across the Straits” with the tide, and settled here, and after some few years, passed through rather trying times, which were not perhaps quite so profitable as he expected, he was induced to “sell out” to the famous Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who, arriving unexpectedly just before this time from London in his fine yacht, had descended upon quiet, plodding Melbourne like a Dives of unfathomable wealth.  He had made a hasty run up to Colac, seen and appreciated Morris, bought him out, and left him in charge of this first of many purchases of the great “Australian Wool Company,” or whatever other title was to suit the great schemes of this busy head which had turned up amongst us.  Mr. Boyd’s main idea of buying up squatting property during the reaction sure to follow the early speculation excitement of 1837 to 1840 was no bad business project, or at all unskilfully formed.  He gave Morris 7 shillings a head for his sheep.  But the fall went on continuously into 1844, so that Boyd effected large purchases at rates as low, in some cases, in the Sydney district, as even one shilling a head, besides cattle and horses at relatively the same.  The result, however, was sad and terrible.  It was confusion and failure, and mainly for this simple reason—­that human nature, left practically uncontrolled, will never give the due care and attention to interests which are only those of other people.

He had got up a bank specially for the supply of all the needed funds for his grand schemes, thus securing, as he put it, an independently large business for that institution.  The chief shareholders knew, or might have known, the character of their prospects.  They all expected unusual profits under the circumstances, and might possibly have got them.  Under this pleasant result they would have credited chiefly their own sagacious courage.  But instead they realized most severe loss, and then, with angry unanimity, they condemned, and would have prosecuted, Boyd.  Wrath fell upon the younger brother, Mark, who had stayed at home, and who, I think, had honestly but vainly striven to keep an intelligible reckoning out of the confusing advices of his senior’s various and huge money-absorbing speculations.  There was a sad uncertainty about Mr. Boyd’s ending.  The local representatives, for the time, of the Royal Bank of Australia had closed accounts with him in the best way they could, allowing him to leave Sydney with his yacht and several friends.  He visited the Californian diggings, and afterwards took a cruise among the Pacific Islands.  He landed on one of them, as though for some shooting, but was never either seen or heard of more.