The Express.
London, England, 1853-06-22 00:00:00

CANVAS roWN.

Canvas Town, as the name implies, is a town of
tents; it is on the southern side of the Tura, and shout a
quarter of a mile distant from Melbourne At the time I
write there are between six and seven hundred tents—
perhaps more—and the population 'moon's to five or six
thousand souls. The tents are arranged in rows more or
less regular, and with a squalid pleasantry ; some of them
have been called after certain well-known streets in Eng-
land—Regent street, Bend-street, Liverpool-street ; while
many of the tents have assumed ostentatious titles of dis-
tinction. . We have the London Coffee-rooms, the Euro-
pean Dining-rooms, the Great Britain Stores, the Isle of
%%WA Tent, the Golden Lion Stores (such a lion!) the
National Dining-rooms and Lodging Teat, Dover Cliff,
Eldorado, the Coffee and Tea-cake Depot. There are
tailors, butchers, bakers, shoemakers, ironmongers,
blacksmiths, hardware and crockery-stalls, tinmen. Al-
most every tent exhibits slops, books, cabin furniture or
utensils, with other articles of which the owners have no
seed here. Nearly every second tent also sells ginger-
beer, or lemonade. There are two physicians tents; who
et course are at the same time surgeon", dentists, corn-
oarera, and apothecaries. Young gentlemen of family and
education drive water-carts about the "streets," and sell
wood (felled and brought from a mile or two off in the
bash) ; and oh, ye classic groves, where the trees have
(huh green leaves, of which there are no siges here in sum-
mer, how many University men does this strange collection
of tents, with all their gipey-life appurtenances, contain ?
There are several besides myself ; and some ladies also,
besides my wife. It took mo some days to
learn these particulars ; but how many days
would it take to ascertain the amount of dimly-
pointment, privation, and misery, which these frail walls
sourest from view ? . . . 'lke general appearance of
this unique town is not very easy to describe. It bas too
many tents to be like a gipey encampment, snd the utter
want of all uniformity in the tents renders it quite as un-
like an Arab settlement or military encampment. The
at thing of all to it is that of a prestigiously extensive
fair; all tents and small booths, but without shows, music,
games, visitors, or anything pleasant. It has no gilt, and
very little gingerbread. Luxury, of the most cheap and
childish kind, hat no place here; even comfort, partly for
want of money, hut more en account of dust, is impos-
sible. Finally, there is a mixture of the highly educated
with the totally uneducated, the refined with the semi.
brutal (many a convict wi'h his bull-dog being among
UP', all dressing as roughly, and faring precisely alike-
There are several sects of religion here; ard, on Sunday,
the air is filled with the voices of the praying and singing
of these different persuasions, all going on at the same time
at different parts of the ground, and all in some degree
audible to an impartial listender in his own tent. There
are new tents of water-proof cenvas, "beat twice-boiled
navy brown," number one canva., number two, three,
four, down to brown holland, and bleached or unbleached
calico. There are blue tent., bed-tick tents, and wain-
covered waggons. There are squares, and rounds, and
triangles, and wedges, and pyramids; frame-works of rough
branches, and tents like tall rimer loaves or extinguishers,
and others of the squab molehill form, and many of no defi-
nite form; being in some instances double and treble (one
tent opening insdde into another), and, in other
instance', having been blown all away by the winds, or
set up badly, or with rotten cordage. Here anal there you
see patchwork tents, made up of all sorts of odds and ends
of bedding, clothing, blankets, sheet., sevens, petticoat?,
and counterpanes; or old sails, and pieces Of tarpauling,
matting, packing staff, and old bins of board with the tin
living of a case of good,: old biai of linen of all colours
tilling up the intervals. Sometime., also, yea come upon •
very melancholy one which makes you pause—a •o-called
tent, of six fret long, rising from a slant to three fret high
in the middle, so small and low, indeed, that the wretched
occupant (with, perhaps, a war) must crawl in beneath
it like a deg, end lie there till lie crawls no' again. It is
like a squalid tumulus.— Dickens's House/tad 11-urds."

TRF-11ENDOt'S CON FLAGIUTION.—This afternoon,
about one o'clock, during the absence of the worlsmen
at dinner, a most G metal outbreak of ft tore took place at
the catcosise h It manufactory of Messrs. M'Nu ill, Lamb's-
buildings, Bunhiltrow, St. Luke's Not a moment was lost
in sending for the brig tde and Weet of England enginrs, hut
unfortunately, the fl taws had taken to • firm a hold. At a
quarter to two o'clock about 12 engines of great power were
in operation, tut still the II Mel are ext-ntling their fearful
ravages in ail directions. Wet• r is uhundart, but at this time
there is no hope of saving the factory or hou-es adjoining.
Thousands arc assembled, but the unnagensent of the police
is excellent.

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