78 
FROM CAPE OF GOOD HOPE TO SYDNEY. 
probable cause of the wide area of open water off Victoria Land discovered by Sir James 
Ross. On the 15th of March, when we were only 200 miles from the coast of Australia, a 
calm set in, to the great disappointment of all on board. On the following day every eye 
was strained to obtain the first glimpse of England’s great colony. In fine, half-an-hour after 
noon, a narrow streak of land appeared above the horizon, and was hailed with unmingled 
delight. Soon the sight of several sail told of our approach to a civilised land, after having 
spent three months in the society of the albatross, the whale, and the penguin. Cape 
Otway was passed at 8 o’clock in the evening, and the entrance to Port Phillip about 
the same hour on the morning of the 17th. While steaming up this beautiful sheet of water, 
which so many an emigrant from home has hailed with a heart full of hope, we met the 
Colonial defence training-ship “ Nelson ” belching forth volumes of black smoke. At 1.45 p.m,, 
H.M.S. “Challenger” anchored off Sandridge Pier in Hobson’s Bay, and in sight of 
Melbourne—the precocious child of the 19th century. 
AUSTRALIA. 
“Now, strike your sailes, you iolly Mariners, 
For we be come into a quiet rode, 
Where we must land some of our passengers, 
And light this weary vessell of her lode. 
Here she a while may make her safe abode, 
Till she repaired haue her tackles spent, 
And wants supplide. And then againe abroad 
On the long voiage whereto she is bent: 
Well may she speede, and fairely finish her intent!” 
The fiist view of Melbourne and of its port, as seen from the anchorage, was not 
prepossessing. Perhaps our arrival did not coincide with the time of year when both 
land and sea look their best; perhaps our recent sojourn in the midst of the striking scenery 
of Iveiguelen had rendered our taste exacting, but the panorama now spread out before us 
seemed flat and unpicturesque. The eye first encounters a long wooden pier crowded with 
shipping, beyond, an agglomeiation of sheds, timber houses, and tall chimneys; and some 
miles inland, a ridge crowned with buildings, towers, and steeples which mark the site of the 
famous capital of Victoria. No wooded islets dipping into the sea, no rocky promontories 
festooned with flowers, no stately mountains here welcome the traveller weary of the 
monotonous look-out fiom the deck of his ship. Yet these deficiencies, if such they be— 
and perhaps our young Australian friends may differ from us—are forgotten as soon as he 
finds himself in the palatial streets of Melbourne. That a large city, the centre of a prosperous 
community enjoying the advantages of modern civilised life, should occupy a spot where 
within one’s own memory there was a wilderness, the haunt of one of the least elevated races 
of man, seems little short of a miracle, and amply justifies the pride with which the citizen 
of Victoria speaks of his capital. 
Melbourne has retained a more decidedly British physiognomy than the cosmopolitan 
