This Beach was a sterile spot, afterwards fittingly called Sandridge, and presented so little inducement to occupancy that these two public-houses were the whole of it till well on to the days of gold. Then The Beach awoke to its destinies. When the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay railway was projected, in 1852, there were already a good few houses, mostly wooden, straggling along either side of the original bush track. Then arose the respectable suburb of Sandridge, to be finally superseded by the municipality of Port Melbourne, which, with its mayor and corporation, can now enter the London market with its own loan issues. The only other indigenous feature of this somewhat featureless Beach which I recollect was a little virulently salt lagoon, situated in complete isolation near the Bay, and only some hundred yards on the right-hand side of the track to Melbourne. We all knew it was there, but it had extremely few visitors, owing to its unapproachable surrounding of bushes, and its bad repute from a countless guard of huge and ferocious mosquitos. Without outlet for its extra-briny waters, and in its desolate solitude, it might have aspired to be a sort of tiny Dead Sea. With the advance of Sandridge this evil-omened southern Avernus came in for better consideration, and by 1854, with a cutting into the Bay, it had become a ready-made boat haven. The Melbourne maps now show me that it must have reached still higher destinies. EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-51. "Will Fortune never come with both hands full?" --Second Part Henry IV. "The weakest go to the wall." --Romeo and Juliet. But "it's better to scheme than to slumber." --J. Brunton Stephens, Queensland. "Sweet are the uses of adversity." --As You Like It.