CHAPTER II. 

 THE SETTLEMENT OP 1803. 



THE urgent representations of Governor King that the British 

 Government should undertake the immediate colonisation of Port 

 Phillip, lest the French should anticipate them, had taken due 

 effect, and even while Mr. Grimes was engaged on the survey of 

 the port, an expedition was being organised in England to take 

 possession of the new territory for purposes of penal settlement. 



It is fortunate for Victoria that this expedition, which sailed 

 on the 27th of April, 1803, had started before the report of Mr. Sur- 

 veyor Grimes reached England, or possibly the recommendation 

 that the settlement should be made on the Yarra might have been 

 given effect to. In such case it is most improbable that it would 

 ever have been abandoned, and the actual history of Victoria, 

 dating a generation farther back, would have been developed out 

 of those unwholesome surroundings of felonry that make the early 

 annals of New South Wales and Tasmania such painful reading, 

 and that, disguise it as we may, have undoubtedly affected pre- 

 judicially their development. 



Probably the eventual settlement of Port Phillip suffered to 

 some extent from its proximity to a recruiting ground so deeply 

 tainted with convictism. In the stirring days that followed on the 

 discovery of gold, an unwelcome contingent of expirees and ticket- 

 of-leave men from the adjacent colonies was added unnoticed to 

 the flood of energetic and adventurous manhood that poured upon 

 these shores. But, thanks to the faint-heartedness of Colonel 

 Collins, the historian of Victoria is saved from having to dwell on 

 any of those ghastly episodes in which the gallows and the triangles 

 play so prominent a part, or to lament the demoralising influence 



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