Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/219

 acknowledges, p. 62 of Bonwick's work, in these words:—"It was with no little surprise, on arriving at the place Melbourne now stands on, that I observed in the basin, just below where the Prince of Wales' Bridge spans the Yarra-yarra with its noble arch, a vessel quietly and securely, moored. It turned out to be a vessel (I believe the Enterprise), belonging to Mr. Fawkner, which he had sent thither in charge of Mr. Lancey, to form an establishment, on the strength of Mr. Batman's favourable report of the country." This much for Mr. J. H. Wedge, who knew the latter part of his statement to be untrue, for he knew that Fawkner and party intended to come over, that Batman had revised all of them passages, and that the Enterprise was bought, to bring over Fawkner and party as soon as possible, on that vessel's return from Sydney. Now, let us see, what did Batman, and what claim has he upon this community for posthumous reward? Allowing him, for argument's sake, to be the first by a few days that actually landed in Port Philip, what did he do, or attempt to do? He attempted to found a large squatocratic establishment, and he asserted what can be proved to be totally untrue, viz., that he bought two plots of land,—one from Hobson's Bay, up the Yarra-yarra seven miles, then forty miles N.E., thence west forty miles, and from thence S.S.W. across Mount Vilamamator to Geelong Harbour, some 500,000 acres; and then another little plot—only that peninsula (Indented Head)—about 100,000 acres: falsely asserting that "his Sydney blacks" (his own words) "fully and properly interpreted and explained to the said chiefs," the written deed. This is most outrageous,—the Sydney blacks could not read print, except Bullet, who had been some time at school, and could make out with difficulty words of one syllable; and in defiance of its being a well established fact, after we arrived here, that the aborigines of Sydney and Melbourne did not understand each other's language. Then the deed recites that the two lots were bought from the same blacks. It is well known that the blacks about Melbourne had no rights over the tribes about Geelong. Nor were there any chiefs possessing the rights that the deeds describe; and further. Batman's