CHAPTER XX.
FRANK and Fred were impatient to see Melbourne, the city of which they had heard so much, and whose praises are loudly chanted by every resident of the colony of Victoria. As they rode from the railway-station to their hotel they could hardly believe that they were in a city where half a century ago there was little more than a clearing in the forest on the banks of the Yarra.
Yet so it was. On June 2, 1835, John Batman ascended the Yarra and Salt-water rivers, and made a bargain with the native chiefs of the locality to purchase a large area of ground, more than one thousand two hundred square miles, for which he paid a few shirts and blankets, some sugar, flour, and other trifles—probably not a hundred dollars' worth altogether. The Government afterwards set aside his purchase, but paid to Batman and his partners the sum of £7000 for the relinquishment of their claim.
Batman returned immediately to Tasmania to procure a fresh supply of provisions, and near the end of August, 1835, during his absence, another adventurer, John Fawkner, landed on the banks of the Yarra from the schooner Enterprise, and made his camp in the forest on the bank of the stream. He brought five men, two horses, two pigs, one cat, and three kangaroo-dogs; and this was the colony that founded the present city of Melbourne. Fawkner may be fairly considered the founder of Melbourne, as the permanent occupation of the site dates
