CHAPTER XVI.
MELBOURNE "UNDER FIRE," WATER AND SNOW.
SYNOPSIS:— The First Incendiarism —"Billy," the Newfoundlander, Collars a Prisoner. —The Effect of a Dust Storm. —A Mysterious Fire. —First Extensive Conflagration. —Destruction of Dr. Clutterbuck's Residence. —Another Destructive Fire in Collins Street. —£10,000 worth of Property Destroyed. —Destruction of Condells Brewery. —Burning of Liddy and Passfield's Coach Factory. —The First Fire in Bourke Street. —First Fire in Fitzroy. —Fire at Messrs. Langlands' Foundry. —The Last Old Fire. —Six Great Floods. —Melbourne's Only Snowstorm.
The First Incendiarism.
THE earliest fire, of which there is no printed account, was perhaps (though certainly not from its extent, or the losses sustained) the most peculiar that has occurred in the Colony. It is difficult to draw a straight line between arson and incendiarism, or to tell where the one begins and the other ends. Incendiarism has been defined as "the felony of arson," and to my mind the first conflagration in Melbourne belongs to the higher rather than to the lower grade of the offence. In 1838, the wattle-and-daub guard-house-cum-lockup, described in a previous chapter, was one night unusually well filled with inmates, black and white, military and civilians, if the Aboriginals can be included in the latter category. It was situated midway between Collins and Little Collins Streets West. One day a party of the mounted police brought into Melbourne half-a-dozen blackfellows, arrested on a charge of stealing sheep at Keilor, and they were deposited in the watch-house. Night came on, and the weather was sufficiently cold to make a fire agreeable. Firewood was in abundance, and a heap of logs was lighted in the guard-house. The guard were chattering and smoking, and probably on too familiar terms with the abominable rum of which there was an abundance amongst the soldiers, convicts, and sailors in port. Perhaps, through the conjoint influence of the heat and the smoke, the fumes and the potations, added to the supposition that the prisoners would never even dream of an escape, the sentinels not only fell asleep at their post, but snored stertorously. Suspended from the ceiling swung a rude lamp, the guttering tallowy flame from which was sufficient to make darkness visible, but for the logs which blazed merrily on the hearth. In the door separating the prison from the parlour part of the structure, was cut a circular aperture, serving the double purpose of ventilating the interior den, and affording a peep-hole through which the guard could occasionally reconnoitre the prisoners inside. The structure was of the most combustible material, and the roof or covering was composed of a kind of long white reed then growing in the swampy hollows about the township. The darkies beheld through the spy-hole how it was faring with the whites outside, and the possibility of escape flashed on their benighted minds. How to do so was the question. The door was fastened on the outside, and it could not be forced without awaking the slumberers, in which case all hope would be over; and in this state of pondering uncertainty, an old blackfellow, more astute than his companions, proposed that the place should be fired,and the flames and confusion would give an almost certain chance of getting away. This suggestion was not only approved but acted on. The roof reeds were several feet in length; and quietly detaching some of these, the prisoners ran them through the port-hole in the door, lit the tops from the lamp, and then ignited the roof in several places with as much sang froid as a lamp-lighter would light one of our street lamps. In five minutes the whole place was a fierce burning pile; the soldiers roused from their repose by the smoke and flames, put it down as an accident, and ran away to sound the alarm at the neighbouring barracks. The entire detachment turned out, but only to find the guard-house and its appurtenance a heap of ashes, and all the prisoners off, except one fellow, who was collared and detained by a Newfoundland
