lots; village sites were laid out in all directions, some of which remain projects or miserable hamlets to this hour. Emigrants crowded in from all parts of Great Britain. At Hobson's Bay, the entrance to the Yarra, more than one hundred three-masted ships were to be seen at anchor at one time. Labour rose to an enormous price; brickmakers earned 8s. a day; the common four-pound loaf was sold for 3s. 6d.; and mere huts were let at the rate of £100 a year. Meantime, fortunately, the living pastoral treasures of Australia came pouring in, and increased and multiplied on the fine downs and grass-covered hills, while some wise, hard-working settlers devoted themselves to agriculture.
During this period the Port Phillip district was nominally under the government of the central authority at Sydney, but in reality the people governed themselves, with the help of a magistrate and a few policemen, while a neighbouring colony of the same date was enjoying all the costly magnificence of elaborate government machinery.
In 1839 C. J. La Trobe, Esq., the present governor, was appointed superintendent of Port Phillip district, with an authority little more than nominal, as the surveys, post-office, customs, &c., were managed by subordinates responsible to the chief departments at Sydney; and even up to 1839 the sales of rural land took place at Sydney.
The centralisation of authority in a distant city, having different interests, and the appropriation of funds derived from Port Phillip land sales to emigration into Sydney district, were long subjects of grievance on which, as they have been redressed, it is not necessary to dwell.
When representative institutions were conceded to New South Wales, six representatives were apportioned to the Port Phillip district; but it was soon found impossible to find that number of colonists able and willing to live for six months of the year six hundred miles away from their estates; and for several sessions before 1850 the Port Phillippians virtually declined to elect representatives.
In 1842 Melbourne obtained a municipal corporation, under 5 and 6 Victoria, c. 76. Victoria has, however, never been a penal colony, although long and still suffering from the overflowings of the felonry of Van Diemen's Land.
It would not serve any useful purpose to record the struggles of Port Phillip to obtain an independent existence as a separate colony, now that the question has been finally settled.
The general quality of the soil in Port Phillip has given the settlers an advantage over land purchasers in less fertile districts of Australia,
