Title:

"Le Premier Pas" is French for "The First Step"

Part One:

  The text gives no date for this exploit, but due to historical references in it, I have placed it as occurring in 1882. The year in which Raffles relates the tale is a matter of conjecture. "The fateful morning" referred to is the day on which Bunny Manders, our narrator, first joined A.J. Raffles as a partner in crime, as related in "."

  The Ides of March, which is to say, the 13th of March. (This is also an allusion to Shakespeare's "Julius Ceasar" in which the Ides of March is the prominent, and ill-starred date upon which most of the events of that play fall.) Perhaps more to the point, "The Ides of March" is also the title of Hornung's first Raffles story, in which his partnership with Bunny Manders was formed.

  After the events of the previous story, "Gentlemen and Players."

Part Two:

  Raffles apparently did not bet on the winner, The Assyrian, which came in at 7-13.

  The reference here to a cut hand is almost certainly inspired by the 1882-3 English cricket team tour of Australia, in which an injury to the hand of the captain, Ivo Bligh, caused him to miss six matches of the tour. The big Christmas match was mostly likely a reference to the December 26th match in Ballarat.

  Yea was founded in 1855, and named for Col. Lacy Yea, a hero of the Crimean War.

 Train service to Yea began with the opening of a train station was in 1883, and continued until 1979.

  Yan Yean reservoir was one of Melbourne's earliest catchments, constructed from 1850 to 1857 and still in use today. It is justly famed for possessing some of the purest water in Australia, and its name has often been using as a synonym for the water itself

Part Three:

  Whittlesea is a small township on the northern outskirts of Melbourne. Founded in 1853, it was something of a backwater until a railway was built connecting it to Melbourne in 1889. Combined with its location at the base of the heavily forested Plenty Ranges, it was indeed somewhat "wild" by British standards.

  Three digit temperatures are not unusual on summer days in Victoria. It should be noted, however, that this temperature would have been measured in degrees Fahrenheit - Australia did not adopt the metric system until 1972.

  W.G. Grace (1848-1915) was perhaps the most famour English cricket player of the 19th century, and was the proud possessor of beard you could lose a badger in. He had previously toured Australia himself as a member of the 1873-4 team.

Part Four:

  The Kelly Gang were bushrangers who mostly operated in Central Victoria from 1878 to 1880.

  The Tartars, historically, were the horde of mixed Turkic and Mongol descent led by Genghis Khan. The expression "to catch a Tartar" is an old one meaning "to have dealings with someone who proves unexpectedly troublesome" - Ewbank's use of it here is intended as a compliment to Raffles.

 A tu quoque - literally "you too" - is an attempt to turn the accusation back on the accuser. Raffles' use of it here is indicative of his confusion and defensiveness.

Part Five:

  To have "one's wind bagged at footer" is a more complicated expression than it may at first appear. "Wind" is this sense, is used much as it is in the phrase "second wind" - as a synonym for enthusiasm or momentum. "Footer" apparently means beginning, or outset in this context. And finally, bagged wind is also a classical allusion, in this case to "The Oddesy", in which Aeolus gives the four winds to Ulysses in a bag.

  As used in this sense, "cant" is insincere statements or platitudes.

Part Six:

  To be "bushed" is simply to be lost in the bush.

Part Seven:

  Tom Emmett (1841-1904), like W.G.Grace, was a famous English cricket player of the time, and also toured Australia several times, as a member of the 1876-77, 78-79 and 81-82 teams.

  Reuben Rosenthall was the victim of one of Raffles and Bunny's earlier capers, as related in "A Costume Piece".

  The hardness of a traditional cricket ball depends partially on the number of seams it has - the more seams, the harder the ball, as the leather is pulled tighter over the outside of the ball. And hand-sewn seams were judged to be superior to machined seams in quality and tautness. It is not surprising that a keen player of cricket such as Raffles would fall back on a cricketing metaphor.

  An harmonium is a reed organ, which is played by blowing through the reeds.

Part Eight:

  Soi-disant is a French adjective meaning variously "so-called", "pretended" or "self-styled" - the middle definition no doubt being the one Raffles has in mind here.

  "The old woman of Banbury Cross" was a figure of urban legend in Victorian London - a woman with so many rings on her fingers and other pieces of jewelry that the distinctive noise of her approach could be detected from some distance off

Part Ten:

  Coburg is a suburb of Melbourne. Although considered an inner neighbourhood today, in the 1880's it was just becoming a middle area between the city and the newer settlements at Fawkner and Craigieburn.

Part Eleven:

  Rods, poles and perches are all measures of distance in the imperial system of measurements, although they are all synonyms for the same length - 5.5 yards or 16.5 feet. In metric terms this would be 5.0292m