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About the same time a Mr. Ardlie brought four camels (two males and two females) from India to Sydney, where the " gentlemen " ones died. T h e " ladies" he sent overland to Melbourne. They were onlyfifteenmonths old and about sixteen hands high. Their owner proposed to import a number from India for the Government, taking all risk at ,£60 per head, an offer not accepted. A shocking suicide occurred in December, 1841, at the Caledonian Hotel, long vanished from Lonsdale Street. A M r . G. W . A. Gordon, w h o had been in the service of the East India Company, O n e morning he arrived in Melbourne in the previous October, and gave way to habits of intemperance. did not m a k e his appearance at the breakfast table, and on the door of his room being burst open, deceased was found dead in bed, his throat cut from ear to ear, and an open razor grasped in his hand. A sheet of paper, inscribed with an inventory of unpaid h o m e debts amounting to ,£"1,095, was found on a table close by. H e came of a highly-respectable family in Aberdeenshire. T h e first illicit still discovery was m a d e in April, 1842, by M r . C. H . L e Souef a Custom House Officer, who, after a weary quest of eight days "sprung the plant" in a ti-tree scrub near Dandenong. It was capable of distilling forty-eight gallons in twenty-four hours, had been three months at work, producing 250 gallons of potheen every week, and this vile " raki" was delivered at the brickfields over the river to an agent, w h o got rid of it through the licensed and unlicensed grog-sellers ; but although twenty-nine persons were believed to be engaged in the " spec," not one of them was brought to justice. T h e consequences of over-cleverness were exhibited in a funny way at the April Criminal Sessions, 1842. A cattle-stealing case was d o w n for trial, and one Charles Jones, m u c h interested in the acquittal of the accused, attempted to " nobble " an important Crown witness by giving him .£30 to m a k e himself scarce when the case was called. T h e witness took the money, but "peached" on the briber, w h o was arrested, andfiguredin the same calendar as his friend. Jones was convicted, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, with £ 1 0 0 fine. But the cream of the joke was that the cattle-stealer was tried on the same day, and though the supposed material witness was examined, the jury returned a verdict of " Not Guilty," so he was discharged, and the unlucky Jones retained to take it out on the stool of repentance. One of the earliest extensive nocturnal outrages was committed at the store of E. Westby and Co., Little Flinders Street (28th July, 1842), which was plundered of a large iron safe containing the account books and ,£7000 worth of bills. T h e robbers had secreted themselves during the day, and at night the safe was lowered with a pulley from the second floor to the ground. T h e books were found a few days after in the Yarra near the breakwater, whilst the bills were turned out of the chimney of a house occupied by one Byng on the Eastern Hill, though there was no reason to suppose him to be a particeps criminh. A large reward was offered, and the police professed to have done a deal in beating up the guilty parties, yet no conviction followed. In all the literature of the marriage ring, I have met nothing to exceed the naivete of the following intimation of an Hymeneal "January and May," as gazetted in the newspapers:—" Married on the 20th August, 1842, by special licence, at the residence of Stephen C o o m b s , Esq., of Collins Street, by the Rev. M r . Bell, Presbyterian Minister, Captain Miller, late of H e r Majesty's 40th Regiment, aged sixty-five, to Miss M'Queen, of N e w Norfolk, aged seventeen. After the ceremony the happy couple, with their friends, partook of a splendid repast, and retired late in the evening highly delighted." T h e m a n w h o raised thefirsthead of cabbage in Melbourne was James Liddy, a licensed victualler in the Adam and Eve Hotel, in Little Collins Street ; and it was in a little garden at the rear of that hotel that he accomplished his horticultural feat. O n the 22nd September, 1842, M r . John Lewis, a greengrocer in Little Collins Street, exhibited in his shop window a head of 'early York cabbage, weighing 4 2 ^ lbs., and measuring 5 ft. 8 in.