THE CITY OF MELBOURNE. 



425 



this busy thoroughfare, and these are succeeded, as the wayfarer proceeds eastward, by 

 the shops or warehouses of packers and salters, sail-makers, outfitters, grain and produce 

 merchants, manufacturers of oil-skin hats and dreadnaughts, engineers and boiler-makers, 

 eating-house keepers and shipping-agents. Outside the taverns are congregated groups of 

 lumpers awaiting the arrival of the vessels they are to unload, and inside are seamen 

 not yet converts to temperance principles. 



Nearly opposite the wharf, on the north side of Flinders Street, is the Custom 



FLINDERS STREET WEST. 



House, which was enlarged and altered in 1873 to meet the exigencies of an expanding 

 commerce, and a fiscal system involving the collection of a multiplicity of import 

 duties. It is a building of no great architectural pretensions, but well planned internally 

 for the dispatch of public business. It occupies, with the Melbourne Savings Bank and 

 the offices of the Harbour Trust an isolated block of land surrounded by four streets, 

 most of the more important navigation companies and ship-owners having their offices in 

 its immediate neighbourhood. 



With the exception of a small area occupied by the Corporation Fish-Market on 

 the west side of the approach to Prince's Bridge, the whole of the river-frontage from 

 the Queen's Bridge to the eastern extremity of Flinders Street is covered, or will be so 

 in a short time, by the two railway termini, their goods and engine sheds and shunting 

 lines. The stations themselves are of a mean and make-shift character, and quite 

 unworthy of the sites on which they stand, and of the magnitude of the traffic conducted 



