It was also necessary to have a building at Sandridge, a warehouse in which to store our goods until they were needed in Melbourne, or until they were shipped for America or Europe. In putting up this building, I resolved to make an experiment. This was to have the building made in Boston, and shipped out to me to be erected at Sandridge, thousands of miles away. If successful, the warehouse would cost much less and would be of better material and in better style than anything I could get in Australia. It reached Sandridge all right and was put up at the end of the little line of railway, at a cost of $25,000. It was 60 feet deep by 40 feet wide, and six stories high. With a warehouse at each end of the line, with all the business credit that I could wish, and with the best connections in the world, we were prepared to do a big business in Melbourne. How far we succeeded may be inferred from the fact that my commissions the first year amounted to $95,000. Melbourne was a small but promising city. It had some 20,000 population at the time of the gold-fever, and had grown tremendously in the last two or three years, so that, in '54, it must have had something like 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants. It was, of course, a frontier town, crude and raw, with few of the advantages of civilization. The people were too busy with their search for gold and profits to think much of the conveniences or luxuries of life. The only good hotel, for instance, was the Squatters' Hotel, at Port Philip. There was not even a merchants' exchange, although one was greatly needed. The merchants had simply never heard of such a thing. I arranged with Salmi Morse, who afterward tried to introduce the Passion Play in this country, to assist him in putting up a building that could be used for a hotel, theater, and mercantile exchange. The hotel was the Criterion, and we had a hall in the building for the exchange. The latter was the means of bringing together ship captains, merchants, agents, and business men generally, and a great stimulus was given to business. I was able to introduce into Australia a great many articles and ideas from America. I brought over from Boston a lot of "Concord" wagons, of the same type as the one that "Ben" Holliday drove across the continent, and I told Freeman Cobb, who was then with Adams & Co., that I wanted him to start a line of coaches between Melbourne and the gold-mines, a distance of about sixty miles. I advanced the money for the enterprise, and a line was established, the first in Australia, to Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, and Castle Maine. These were the first coaches seen in that continent. The coaches cost in Australia $3,000 apiece.