170 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



making regular voyages to and fro, calling at Launceston. A 

 subsidised mail-cart traversed the Werribee Plains, taking passen- 

 gers to Geelong in about twelve hours, at a fare of 2 per head. 

 Early in 1839 the first direct mail to England was despatched by 

 the barque Thomas Laurie, that also carried the first direct ship- 

 ment of wool from the settlement, and on the 17th of June in that 

 year the first two ships direct from Great Britain arrived, the 

 Midlothian, from Leith, and the William Bryan, from London. 



Most of the religious denominations had arranged for Sunday 

 services, and were devising means for the erection of suitable 

 churches and chapels. Two small newspapers had struggled into 

 existence, the first, the Melbourne Advertiser, which the energetic 

 John Pascoe Fawkner brought out on the 1st of January, 1838, 

 passing through a troublesome infancy of nine weeks in manu- 

 script before type or press could be obtained. Its rival, the Port 

 Phillip Gazette, started some months later, kept matters very 

 lively by the virulence of its attacks on its contemporary and 

 everything else that had a Van Diemen's Land origin. 



A Court of Petty Sessions was opened in July, 1838, in a 

 rough log building at the south-west corner of Bourke and William 

 Streets, and in May of the following year a regular Quarter Sessions 

 was opened, having been established by an Act of the New South 

 Wales Legislature. 



Mr. Backhouse, the Quaker missionary who visited Port Phillip 

 in November, 1837, commented upon the very disadvantageous 

 circumstances under which the business of the infant settlement 

 was conducted. " Almost everything," he says, " including labour, 

 was paid for by order on Sydney or Van Diemen's Land ; the dis- 

 count required by the few persons who had cash was from 20 

 to 40 per cent. A mechanic received half his wages in goods, 

 charged at about 30 per cent, profit, and the rest in an order on 

 which he paid his employer 10 per cent, discount for cash." 



This burdensome "rate of usance " was not, however, destined 

 to be of long continuance. In one of the early manuscript issues 

 of Mr. J. P. Fawkner's Melbourne Advertiser there appears an 

 advertisement that on the 8th of February, 1838, Mr. W. F. A. 

 Eucker would receive deposits and discount bills and orders on 



