VICTORIA. 49 



display of blue banners with golden hieroglyphics, proclaim that Little Bourke 

 Street has been converted into a Chinese quarter. The main streets run their 

 mile and more east and west. They are five in number, with four lanes, while 

 nine broad streets run north and south. Of the five, Flinders Street is adjacent 

 to the wharves and great warehouses, and is commercial in character. 



Collins Street runs from the public offices in the east to the country 

 railway-station in the west. The one end is given up to the fashionable doctors 

 and the favoured dentists, handsome churches and prosperous chemists filling 

 in the interstices. From the Town Hall corner, Collins Street is gay with 

 carriages and with pedestrians who come to see or to shop. Farther on we 

 enter the region of the banks, the exchange, the offices of barristers and 

 solicitors, and the rooms of the auctioneers. Here men of business are hurrying 

 about. The flutter about the tall building on the left tells of some mining 

 excitement. Farther on, a bearded, sun-burned, but well-dressed group will 

 attract attention. ' Scott's ' is the squatters' hotel, and it has been selected 

 as the place for submitting to auction those ' well-known and extensive pastoral 

 properties entitled the " Billabong Blocks," within easy distance of market 

 (say eight hundred miles), together with all improvements and stock.' The 

 conversation is whether the station will bring ^300,000 or not — for it is a 

 large property ; whether a better sale could have been effected in Sydney, 

 and so on ; and next day you read in your Argus that ' the biddings reached 

 ^290,000, when the lot was passed in, and was subsequently sold at a 

 satisfactory price, withheld.' Last of all, in Collins Street come Assurance 

 Companies' offices, the buildings of merchants, and great wool stores. 



In Bourke Street, commencing again at the west, where the new 

 Houses of Parliament stand, we have first shops, hotels, and theatres, then 

 hotels and mews, and finally a region of hotels (now less frequent), and of 

 offices and stores. Lonsdale Street is in a transitive condition. La Trobe 

 Street is not recognised. Standing on the midway flat you see two hills : 

 the western hill is commercial, the eastern hill is social. After six o'clock 

 Flinders Street and Collins Street are deserted. In place of busy scenes of 

 life there is gloom and solitude, while Eastern Bourke Street, where the 

 theatres and concert halls are, is lit up and is thronged. Leisured people 

 who can promenade in the day-time use Collins Street as their lounge ; the 

 toiling multitude, who must promenade in the evening or not at all, patronise 

 Bourke Street. On Saturday nights the Bourke Street block is great ; the 

 footways will not accommodate the crowds. 



Another Melbourne feature is the rush from the city from four to six 

 o'clock p.m., and the inrush from eight to ten o'clock in the morning. It is 

 enormous, but it is easily met. There is an extensive suburban railway system, 

 the property of the Government — as all railways in Victoria are. Omnibuses 

 and waggonettes are numerous, the latter taking the place of the London 

 cab ; and now there are gliding through the streets the successful and popular 



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