when he formed a whaling station. In July, 1833, Mr. Edward Henty paid a short visit to Port Phillip in the schooner "Thistle," but it was not until the 19th November, 1834, that his permanent settlement commenced, and it is to his and his brother's pioneering energy and enterprise that the future prosperity of the squatting interests were largely due. Mr. Edward Henty is chronicled as having landed the first pure Merino sheep in the present colony of Victoria.
It happened that a lad named Fawkner, then eleven years old, was allowed to accompany his father, one of the convicts of the Collins' party; and this boy, as he grew to man's estate, in Van Diemen's Land, often longed to revisit the strange country across Bass' Strait, which he had previously seen; and the idea had at length grown so strong in him, that he set about executing his long-cherished project. But he had an energetic rival, who had also been thinking of the very same thing, who set about the work in a cool, methodical manner, organised a company, and made all necessary preparations; so that whilst Fawkner was getting ready for his undertaking, and delayed by some unforseen obstacles, Batman had the start and arrived in the Promised Land before him.
On the 29th May, 1835, John Batman, with three white followers and seven Sydney aboriginals, passed into Port Phillip Bay, in the schooner "Rebecca," of 30 tons, and anchored a dozen miles inside off Indented Head. Accompanied by some of his party and aborigines he landed, and, after several excursions through the country, found that it more than satisfied his expectations as to its appearance and fertility. Renewing his excursions for several days, he met with the Saltwater and Yarra rivers, passed through the environs of the future city, had several conferences with the natives; and, on the 6th of June, at the Merri Creek, near Northcote, purchased from eight of the aborigines, who represented themselves as chiefs, the fee-simple of six hundred thousand acres of land (including the sites of Melbourne and Geelong) for some blankets, tomahawks, scissors, looking-glasses, beads, flour, men's shirts, and other articles. The whole assortment might be valued at £200, and an annual tribute was to be paid — some £150 worth of the same sort of chattels. Batman, though not a lawyer, had a lawyer's eye to business; for, before leaving Launceston, he had prepared, in due legal form, two deeds of conveyance with blanks to be afterwards filled; and according to his statement, by the aid of two of his Sydney blackfellows, he succeeded in making the vendors clearly comprehend the purport of the parchments presented to them. So the bargain was struck, the deeds "signed, sealed, and delivered," the consideration paid down, and possession given, by marking certain trees, and each of the chiefs handing to the vendee a lump of the alienated soil. Batman fancied he had made a good thing of it; but, no doubt, he thought differently when the Home Government afterwards annulled the whole transaction. He kept a journal of his trip, and, from an entry therein, it appears that, on the 8th June, he rowed up the Yarra — "the large river which comes from the east, and, about six miles up, found the river all good water and very deep." "This," he wrote, "will be the place for a village." Returning to Indented Head, he left there the three white men of his party, with five of the New South Wales blacks, after directing them to build a hut and start a garden. He supplied them with three months' provisions, half-a-dozen dogs, a quantity of fruit pips and garden seeds, and, arming one of them (James Gumm) with a written authority to act as his land bailiff, he hastened back to Launceston to communicate the results of his journey.
Fawkner all this time was not idle. Purchasing the "Enterprise," a fifty-five ton schooner, and freighting her with horses and various animals, a plough, and other farming implements, fruit trees, garden seeds, and some stores, he sailed with a party of six from Launceston, but the elements fought against him. He took so sea-sick that the schooner put back to George Town , where he was sent ashore the "Enterprise" resumed her voyage, and arrived at Western Port, on the 8th August. A Captain Lancy, who was in charge of the expedition, though not of the vessel, gave orders to move onward, and, steering for Point Nepean, they reached the bay and anchored off Point Ormond. Mr. William Jackson and others of the party landed, explored the bush for several miles about Melbourne, crossed the Yarra above the Falls, and camped on Batman's Hill. The river was next examined in a whaleboat, and the basin of the Yarra reached. Soundings were taken, and poles, vice buoys, fixed on some of the shoals; and on the 29th August, 1835, the "Enterprise," was the first vessel of the kind that floated on the Yarra, and must have been well-handled by her master (Hunter) for she had no ordinary difficulties to overcome, through
