Both distinguished visitors honoured me and two of my sisters, who had by this time followed their brother to the land of promise, with a few days’ residence at our cottage, with its garden so full of fruit, upon the Merri Creek.  When so many other invitations pressed, we were in honour bound to this time-limitation.  They were easily entertained with such few elegancies as we could then boast of.  But we were bound also, even in mere good feeling to surrounding ambitious maidens, to get up a ball in the Prince’s honour.  I had my task in discriminating the comparative few of the fair hands that could possibly be placed in that of the guest, for even a prince could not dance for ever, so as to overtake all.  On the Prince’s part every successive hand was accepted with equal readiness, and every favoured maiden was duly encouraged, or discouraged, by faultlessly impartial courtesy.

BLACK THURSDAY.

“Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire.” 
—­Milton.

The year 1851 had for us three memorable events:  first, “Black Thursday,” on 6th February; second, the elevation of Port Phillip district into the colony of Victoria, on 1st July; third, the discovery of gold, which was practically and substantially that of Ballarat, during the third week of September.

Black Thursday has been so much written about by others that I had best confine myself to my own experiences.  I rode in to business, as usual, from my Merri Creek residence, 4 1/2 miles north of the city.  The weather had been unusually dry for some days with the hot wind from the north-west, or the direction of what we called Sturt’s Desert, where hot winds in summer, and almost as distinctly cold winds in midwinter, were manufactured for us.  The heat had been increasing daily, and this, as we comforted ourselves, was surely the climax which was to bring the inevitable reversion of the southerly blast and the restoring rain, for it was felt as the hottest day in my recollection.  In town we did not hear of much that day, although reports came from time to time of sinister-looking signs from the surrounding interior, whence an unusual haze or thick mist seemed to rise towards the cloudless sky.  Some few, however, who were more active than others in their trading or gossiping movements, became aware in the afternoon, or perhaps were favoured with the news as a secret, that Dr. Thomson had ridden posthaste from Geelong to Alison and Knight, our early and leading millers and flour factors, to warn them that the whole country was in flames, with incalculable destruction of cereals and other products; whereupon the said firm at once raised the price of flour thirty per cent.  The Doctor had certainly earned a good fee on that occasion, and we must hope that he got it.