had confusingly got into.  Mrs. Aitken, as literally as by courtesy the good wife of the house, and then in the full charm of her beauty and strong youth (now Mrs. Kaye, and sadly changed in both respects), went busily about, her young family at her skirts, administering plenty and preserving order, while, towards genial eve, her good man occupied a quiet corner, indisputable king for the nonce of the toddy race.  The night accommodations were a difficulty, although not a few, like the host himself, were in no great want.  I and a score or two of others turned into a wool loft, where a number of little mattresses, mostly of a pro re nata kind, were provided, into one of which I was soon ensconced and fast asleep.  But well on, as I guessed, in the small hours we were all awoke by loud and burly noise in the loft, proceeding, as we soon recognized, from two Anakims of the party, Isaac Buchanan and John Porter, who seemed on the eve of a struggle for a Mace or Nolan belt.  Porter had retired peacefully with me, but Buchanan had been vieing in the toddy corner with his host, and when inevitably knocked under—­for the other had not yet been limited by his doctor to that woman’s wash, as he called it, sparkling moselle—­he had contrived to find the common loft.  It is said, of unpractised topers at any rate, that, after an extra indulgence, they either see nothing or see double.  Whichever it was with Buchanan, he insisted on berthing for the night in Porter’s occupied nest, while the latter, after standing the all-round chaff for a little, got savage and threatened war.  Buchanan’s sight getting by-and-by clearer, the remainder of the night was, happily, peace.  But it was not for long, as almost with the dawn our host, alive as if nothing out of the usual had happened, woke us up with the invitation to finish the champagne by way of refresher after all the toils and toddy we had gone through.

Dr. Thomson, of geelong.

This earliest amongst the early of Port Phillip, whose active form flitted about its shores ere the memorable year 1835 had expired, might have come in for a full separate sketch had I been thrown more with him, so as to have sufficient personal data.  But, although I met him at times, he lived at Geelong, fifty miles away from Melbourne.  I have put him under this sub-heading, in the Batman interjecta, because, as his daughter, Mrs. Henry Creswick, told me, it was Batman’s representations to him of the land of promise to the north that induced him to follow the early tide with his flocks and his family—­the latter consisting of his wife and one only child, the daughter above alluded to.  She still survives, in her pleasant residence, situated in the fitly named Creswick-street, Hawthorn.