Page:Old Melbourne Memories.djvu/165

 sold to Captain Stanley Carr, a retired military officer, who had passed years at a German court, and held property in Silesia. There, it seems, he had acquired a taste for high-class merinoes. He had been tempted to visit Australia, probably as a larger field for investment, bringing with him some good sheep of the type then prevailing, and fashionable in the country of his adoption. These were sent to Lyne, where they were only moderately praised by the sheepholders of the district, being acknowledged to be fine as to quality of fleece, but considered small and delicate of frame.

Captain Stanley Carr, by birth Scoto-Irish, was a genial and polished personage, not altogether averse to the privilege accorded to travellers, but most amusing and agreeable. He bought, as did Mr. Gottreaux, "before the gold." The price he paid was therefore moderate, leaving a large margin for profit in the rising markets which were imminent, and of which he shortly experienced the advantage. Residing for a few months at Lyne, he made himself popular with his neighbours, who were nothing loath to visit and entertain a courtier, a man of the world, and a raconteur at once so experienced and original. He justified the shrewd outlook upon events which had caused him to become an investor in the first instance, by prophesying an extraordinary development of Australian prosperity which was to be rapid and astonishing. The soil, the climate, the extent of the waste lands of the Crown, all excited his admiration. The captain's pre-auriferous predictions have since received curiously close fulfilment.

Our gallant pastoral comrade had some knowledge