Western Australia; where James Henty took up a location of 1500 acres in 1829, But the early months of settlement on the Swan were full of wet, misery, and blundering; scab, and discouragement. The merinoes, which were in charge of Mr Henty's sons, did not thrive on the salt-bush of Fremantle. They were shipped to Tasmania in the Cornwallis, where they were joined by Mr Henty himself with the rest of the flock. Dissatisfied with Western Australia; finding both Colonies full of scab; and unable, again, to obtain certain lands he had been promised in Tasmania, Mr Henty sailed in 1834 for Portland Bay, on the Australian main, in what was then an unknown land, where he was free from neighbours, disease, and Government interference. And this was the real foundation of Victoria; though Batman sailed also from Tasmania next year in the schooner Rebecca, ascended and named the Yarra, and tried to buy the site of Melbourne for thirty tomahawks, some trousers, and 100 lbs, of flour. It was Henty's merinoes, bred on the pastures of the Western District, that stamped Port Phillip wool, as the most valuable wool in the world, with a primacy which it still retains; though MacArthur's sheep from the Cape, connected, by the way, with that same flock of George III.'s, had reached New South Wales in 1797. The great flats and rolling downs of Colac and Camperdown were marked out and occupied by the Robertsons and other allied families, mostly of Tasmanian extraction; and Victoria was a land of flocks and herds for many a day to come. Henty, indeed, tried agriculture, as his plough is there to testify: but the Henties tried everything,—many things which are now forgotten included,—such as whaling, which they carried on with success from Portland as well as in Western Australia. Even the gold rush, which gave
