Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/388

 one foresaw that any notable rise in value would take place in less than a century or two. That land purchased by the acre would sell for such prices in the life of the buyer, by the foot, entered not into the mind of man. Wharves, street frontages, building sites, allotments all passed under the hammer of the Government auctioneer of the day at curiously low prices. Who was to foresee that gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin were all to make their appearance in peaceful, pastoral New South Wales and her erstwhile appanage the Port Phillip District, afterwards the Colony of Victoria?

The great public schools of that day were our College, the King's School at Parramatta, and the Normal Institution, this last organised by Dr. Lang—that eminent colonising clergyman. The Reverend Robert Forrest was the Principal of the King's School. He was understood to have been a strict disciplinarian, as indeed he needed to be. We of the Sydney College thought ourselves superior in scholarship; but doubtless good work was done then as now at the Parramatta school.

Mr. Carmichael—Scottish, of course—presided at the Normal Institution, which was situated on the northern side of the Racecourse, or Hyde Park as at present named. We were near enough to play cricket together sometimes; also to fight, indeed, as occasions of strife will arise among schoolboys. Roland Cameron, a boy by nature warlike in the earlier stages of life, had then his celebrated combat, having challenged an oldster of the Normal, a head taller than himself. He didn't come off victorious, but he walked forth with an apparently calm consciousness that he couldn't be really conquered, which I have rarely seen paralleled among later and more tragic experiences.