After I had a few chapters off my hands, when the publication was commenced in the Herald, searching, writing, and printing went on in harmony. I was much gratified at finding my humble effort was most favourably received by the public generally, and in a short time I had most encouraging and complimentary assurances from quarters least expected. One journalistic friend (now dead) was most gushing in his anticipation of what I should do, before a line was in print. With the first chapter he expressed much pleasure, with the second he was delighted; but when I asked him what he thought of No. 3, he mildly shook his head, and replied with a gentle sigh, "Ah, my friend, it is growing rather flat." I laughingly rejoined, " Well A——————, if it be as you say, it cannot be helped; but of one thing I mAy assure you, there is such a long, galloping excursion before me, so many hills to be ascended, rivers to be forded, creeks to be swam, scrub to be penetrated, and ravines to be got through, that a now and then flat race canter will be a refreshing variation." In the afternoon of the same day, meeting a lady friend of considerable literary taste and discrimination, who was mistress of the "open secret" of the authorship, she congratulated m e on the incipient success I had attained, and on asking her what she thought of No. 3, the reply was, "Nothing could be much better; why, in the reading it seems to move like a train." This showed me how widely judges may differ.
As weeks rattled on I became the subject of that modern newspaper nuisance known as "interviewing," not by persons desirous of squeezing opinions out of me, but using me for personal purposes in the way of either chronicling themselves, or accepting as facts the most preposterous fictions that could be invented. Take the following as samples:— A seedy-looking grey-bearded Israelite called one day, and exhibited something like the half of a broken scissors, declared that with it he had shaved William Buckley, the historical "wild white man," and that this was the first "barber-ous" operation in the settlement. In reply to a question, he stated in a tone of egotistical triumph, that he had crossed Bass' Straits with Fawkner, an announcement which at once put him out of court with me, for Buckley was first,not only shaved, but shorn by the Batman party settled at Indented Head, to whom Buckley gave himself up on dissolving partnership with the Aborigines, after a thirty years' sojourn in the wilderness.
One morning I was accosted by an individual I had not previously known, who declared he well knew me. He was desirous of detailing some particulars of early snakes. He assured me without a smile that on a certain Sunday morning he was "rushed" by two of these reptiles and had to run for half-a-mile, when the snakes, "bested" by his fleetness, had to give up the hunt. It is a well ascertained fact that the Australian snakes never follow; if you bar their progress they will dash at you; if you tread upon one it will turn and bite, or if you unknowingly feel one. you may pay dearly for it; but aggression upon man constitutes no article of the snake's creed.
Another "story-teller" favoured me with a still more incredible achievement. He positively asserted, and was prepared to make a statutory declaration, that in October, 1839, he, with three or four families, had established himself in a temporary settlement near the present township of Whittlesea; that late one evening a girl was pounced upon by an "old man kangaroo," and carried off towards the Plenty Ranges. A pursuit party was at once improvised, and, after an eventful night's chase, the girl was found in a state of exhaustion, but with no more serious injuries than a few flesh wounds from tree-branches or scrub. This I noted as before, but never dreamed of printing it until now.
Another "story" was on account of the first execution by hanging in Port Phillip, which, according to the narrator, came off in December, 1840, immediately before Christmas. A woman had poisoned her husband, a cooper, residing in Little Bourke Street, for which she was hanged in William Street, near the now Victoria Market. She was conveyed to her doom on a dray drawn by four bullocks. The gallows was the limb of a wattle tree; the hangman a drunken convict, well-known as "Big Mick," who so bungled his work that when the culprit was turned off", the rope broke and she fell half neck-broken on the grass, whereupon "Mick," fearful of a flogging for his unhandy work, threw himself upon the writhing body and performed an act of strangulation. Beyond the existence of "Big Mick," (a notoriety of the town for ten years after), there was not an atom of truth in this yarn. It could not have been, for until 1841 there was no Court of Law in Melbourne
