Page:ChroniclesofEarlyMelbournevol.2.pdf/205

narrative is given, plain and unvarnished, constructed from personal observation, verified by a careful perusal of the printed accounts of the regretful episode. In 1844 ar>d 1845 the threatened Orange street demonstration was suppressed through fear of an unpleasant collision with the Batman's Hill hurlers, who, on the processional airing of an Orange flag, would be transformed into thrashers, and all idea of a public marching completely died out of the William-ite mind. In 1846 a kind of half-way course was designed, viz., an Orange celebration in an hotel, and the display of obnoxious party bunting from the windows. T h e matter was to be kept as "dark as Erebus" until the proper time should arrive; and as the 12th of July was this year on a Sunday, the anniversary was to be feasted on the following day. At the north-eastern corner of Queen and Little Bourke Streets, a Mr. T h o m a s Gordon rented, as the Pastoral Hotel, a recently-built house, whose substantial stone walls were not unconsidered. Here, about 1 p.m., a shoal of Orangemen commenced an early revelry, and unfurled three orange and purple banners from the upper front windows. T w o of these were creditable specimens of the brush craft of a Mr. Wmittaker, a scene painter of the period, and if regarded only from an sesthetic point of view, would be accepted as an indication of an improved taste on the part of those w h o fostered the production of such works of art. O n one was emblazoned a full-sized equestrian figure of William the Third, whilst the other showed forth an impersonation of William's great general, the fearless and unflinching Schomberg, killed on the bank of "Boyne's ill-fated river." But they were soon beheld with more than jaundiced eyes. T h e waving of such ill-omened symbols created a flutter which rapidly swelled into a storm, on whose wings the intelligence, as unexpected as it was unprecedented, was borne rapidly through the town. It was thefirsttime that such an act had been attempted, and by hundreds of the inhabitants it was viewed as little short of a public abomination; and the excitement instantaneously engendered could not be more intense if the streamers announced the arrival of the plague, or black sickness, in the community. People ran about half crazed, muttering threats of direst vengeance, and groups of half-a-dozen increased like a rolling snowball as they rushed along towards Queen Street, and in an incredibly short time a crowd of several hundred persons, fretting, fuming, and murmuring like an angry surf, blocked up the Pastoral corner, and the symptoms of a serious riot were every m o m e n t growing more imminent. Several of the persons congregated in the street hadfirearms,and it was stated that the shop of Fulton, a gunmaker further south towards Collins Street, had been rushed and ransacked of some of its "shooting irons," an allegation never satisfactorily substantiated. O n e huge Munster man, with an unmistakable Kerry cognomen, pranced about, flourishing a heavy wooden chair, with which he vowed he would make smithereens of the Gordonian stronghold; but his threat remained unaccomplished, for the mortar and the rubble survived. Rushing like a fury out of Little Bourke Street appeared on the scene an A m a z o n lady, descended from one of numerous septs of " M a c s " of Northern Ireland. Whirling over her head in Red-Indian tomahawking style that article of horse gear known in stableology as a "hames," she breathed eternal vengeance upon the crew w h o introduced into this country the heartburnings which she had often witnessed at home. But "the hames" was innocuous, for the Orangemen were far out of arm's length, and both it and the chair were inconvenient and uncertain missiles to discharge at long range. S o m e well-disposed persons, desirous to avert a threatening calamity, hastened to the residence of Mr. Henry Moor, J.P., the ex-Mayor, in William Street, and besought him to interpose in maintaining public order. H e promptly complied by despatching a special injunction to Gordon, the hotelkeeper, to have the offensive emblems at once removed from his licensed premises, to which Gordon atfirstdemurred, but at length consented, fearful, no doubt, of the non-renewal of his license. T h e T o w n Council was sitting when intimation reached the Mayor (Dr. J. F. Palmer) of brewing dangers, and his Worship forthwith adjourning, left with several of his colleagues en route for the supposed scene of conflict. They were joined on the way by the Rev. Father Geoghegan ( R o m a n Catholic pastor), and other townsmen of influence, and reached the place about 3.30, when the general aspect of matters was the reverse of encouraging. T h e whole thoroughfare, from Bourke to Lonsdale Street, was thronged by a swaying, angry, determined multitude, ready, like so many bears, to rush the hotel, from the