no recollection of anything such as described having happened. Next, there is Mr. Robert Russell, the first head of a Survey staff in Port Phillip. He was in the vicinity of the future Melbourne at the time - it was upon the outline first traced by him in 1836, that the subsequent plan of the township was based - and he has recently given me an assurance, from which I am disposed to believe, that there was more moonshine than subterranean fire, less fact than fable in the morsel of romance so spicily served up. Mr. Russell, however, has informed me that a shock of earthquake was really felt one night at the end of March after Sir Richard Bourke's departure. Possibly, in this case, the historians considered themselves entitled to a poetical license sufficient to enable them to antedate the terrestrial upheaval, or to move it backward by three weeks, of course only a chronological trifle, when done metaphorically. The next point of debate was that of name. Van Diemonian public opinion wished the new-born town to be called after Batman; whilst New South Wales' influences tended the other way. The native appellation of the place "Narr-m," was such a consonantal barbarism as could not be conveniently mouthed by Europeans, and "Bearbrass," as it was termed in some temporary absence of mind by Captain Stewart, was as outlandish. There was some notion of styling it Glenelg, after the Secretary of State for the Colonies, but this was abandoned for Melbourne, in compliment to the nobleman then occupying the high office of Premier of Great Britain — so Melbourne it was, and Melbourne it is. The flat where Williamstown stands was so thickly timbered with sheoak that it was known as "Koort-boork-boork" (clump of sheoak). This was changed into its present more pronounceable appellation after King William IV., Geelong being permitted to retain its native designation from the aboriginal tribe occupying that picturesque locality. Sir Richard Bourke seems to have taken the whole matter into his hands, and evinced a special interest in the planning and nomenclature of Melbourne and its streets. The town, as originally designed, was partly rectangular, consisting of a frontage to the Yarra of a mile, with a breadth of three-quarters of a mile, and it is a singular fact that so far back as 1840, Arden, one of the earliest and ablest newspaper writers complained of the area of the town as being too cramped. He wrote, "It is evident that Sir Richard Bourke, in allowing so confined a portion, could have formed no accurate estimate of the unrivalled growth it has since manifested." Had Arden lived until to-day, he would have seen Melbourne, in its suburbs, extended beyond the Merri Creek, and stretching away towards every point of the compass.
During Sir Richard Bourke's stay there was a remarkable controversy between him and Mr. Hoddle as to the width of the streets. The Governor had a notion that the perfection of town-planting consisted in big streets with little streets or lanes backing them up from behind — a sort of personal attendant like the knight and esquire of old, or the gentleman and valet of modern times. It was also a hobby of his that no town street should, under any circumstances, be of a greater breadth than sixty-six feet, and like most hobbyised people he nursed this notion with much affection. But Mr. Hoddle, though a subordinate, had not only a mind of his own, but what was better, the moral courage to speak it, and that he did so with effect, will be seen by a perusal of the history of the transaction as penned by himself in the following extract from the journal already referred to:—
"When (he writes) I marked out Melbourne in 1837, I proposed that all the streets should be ninety-nine feet wide. Sir Richard Bourke suggested the lanes as mews or approaches to the stablings and out-buildings of the main streets of buildings. I staked the main streets ninety-nine feet wide, and after having done so, I was ordered by the Governor to make them sixty-six feet wide; but upon my urging the Governor, and convincing him that wide streets were advantageous on the score of health, and convenience to the future city of Victoria, he consented to let me have my will. I therefore gave up my objection to the narrow lanes thirty-three feet wide, which have unfortunately become streets, and many expensive buildings have been erected thereon. Had a greater number of allotments been brought to public auction at first, houses in the broad streets would have been built in preference. I have remedied it afterwards in marking out North and East Melbourne, by making the various streets sixty-six feet wide. In 1837, after marking the streets, Sir Richard Bourke came early one morning into my tent and gave me the list of the names of the streets."
It is refreshing to read this scrap of narrative, at the present day, when professional heads of departments are loth to exercise a freedom of opinion on questions which can only be properly decided by experts, and when Ministerial chiefs are wont to do much as they like, according to their own sweet will.
