Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/489

Rh many old residents that I have no doubt of their correctness. The expense of getting goods from Sandridge to Melbourne, three miles, was often as much as to bring them from London to the harbor. William Howitt tells, in his 'Two Years in Victoria,' that the cost of carrying his baggage from the ship to his lodgings in Melbourne was more than that of bringing them the previous thirteen thousand miles, including what he paid for conveyance from his house to the London docks.

"When a ship arrived with passengers, the charge for taking them from the anchorage to the beach was three shillings, and then came the omnibus charge already mentioned. If a man was alone, the boatmen charged him ten or perhaps twenty shillings; and if a person was obliged to go out to a ship, and they knew his journey was important, they would charge any price they pleased. A gentleman having occasion to visit a ship that was about to sail, and manifesting some anxiety to do so, was obliged to pay £12, or sixty dollars.

"After goods were landed they were loaded into carts for transportation to Melbourne. A clerk looked at a load, and then said, glibly, 'These things will be £3;' and if anybody demurred at the price, the gate-keeper was ordered not to let the cart pass out of the yard till