Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/221

 But either some original infirmity or long absence from civilised social life had impaired his intellect, and he rarely and unwillingly conversed on the events of his extraordinary career. There is reason to believe that he and his tribe never wandered more than forty miles inland from the shores of the bay.

When, in June, 1836, a magistrate, Mr. Stewart, despatched by Sir Richard Bourke, arrived to assert her Majesty's rights, and to announce the invalidity of all purchases from the aborigines, he found the country already occupied, and the work of colonisation steadily proceeding. Nearly two hundred men had arrived from Van Diemen's Land, and were settled around the estuary of Port Phillip; 35,000 sheep, under the charge of strong armed parties, with a number of horned cattle and horses, were spread for many miles over the site of the present Ballarat gold-fields, each party seeking to appropriate as large a run as possible.

Until very recently, on the station of Messrs. Jackson, at Saltwater River, was to be seen one of the great bells, mounted on a lofty frame, which used to be rung from station to station to summon assistance when an attack from the blacks was anticipated.

In the same year Sir Thomas Mitchell re-explored and surveyed the overland route from New South Wales, part of which had been traversed by Messrs. Hovell and Hume, and described the fine plains of Victoria, to which he gave the name of Australia Felix—"the better to distinguish it from the parched deserts of the interior country, where we had wandered so unprofitably and so long." He then discovered and named Mount Byng, the hill since become world-famous as Mount Alexander.

The publication of this report in the colonial and English papers, and afterwards of Sir T. Mitchell's travels, fanned up the flame of the Port Phillip fever, and very soon, along the overland route, pool after pool was drunk dry by the thousands of stock marching on to the promised land.

In April, 1837, Sir Richard Bourke visited the new colony, and gave directions for laying out the town of Melbourne on two hills, East and West Hill, sloping down to the banks of the River Yarra. In June the first land sale took place, and speculation commenced, and did not cease until it ended in wide-spread insolvency in 1841 and 1842.

The steady course of depending on their increase of flocks and herds was abandoned; all but a few went into town speculations and country