The salient defect, for more or less interval at first, in all commencing colonial societies, is the disproportion of the female element; and thus, in the sparseness of homes and families, we have that hardness of social feature, which illustrates how much better is the one sex with the "helpmeet" provided in the other. Early Port Phillip was no exception to this rule. Ladies and children were comparatively rare objects. From Tasmania and elsewhere there were a good many "choice spirits" in more than one meaning of the words. There was a marvellous consumption of brandy, among such unusual proportions of strong, venturous, rowdy adults; of tea and sugar, and butcher's meat also; giving altogether a statistical category worse than useless for accurate purposes. Manners were rough, to use a mild term. The town was bad, and the bush was worse. When a pious missionary of those early times, prior to adventuring into the interior, inquired of a squatter if the Sabbath were observed in the bush, "Oh, yes," was the prompt reply, "a clean shirt and a shave." In such times a large family of ladies might have trodden the soil somewhat as goddesses come down to the desolate habitations of men. Four such families of the earliest times, in particular, rise to my recollection. They were those of Mr. Grylls and Mr. Clow, both clergymen, the one of the Anglican, the other of the Presbyterian communion; of Mrs. Williamson, a widow lady from near Edinburgh; and of Mr. James Smith, Magistrate and Savings Bank manager, whose bustling form, ever hurrying through our streets, was perhaps the best known of the place, and who, along with his friend and co-magistrate, Mr. Simpson, was as the coping stone of local respectability. That all of these fair young maidens, most of them remarkably attractive and pleasing, as I have reason to remember, were duly married, need hardly, under all the circumstances, be told, besides being attested to-day by whole generations of consequences.