32 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



he been a man of any education, or even of quick natural observa- 

 tion, he certainly had unique opportunities of acquiring much 

 valuable information on the habits, customs and traditions of a race 

 of people now practically extinct. But Buckley had never been 

 able to read or write, and the life of the Wild White Man, which 

 was published in Hobart in 1852 by John Morgan, though pur- 

 porting to be dictated by him, owes so much to the free exercise 

 of the writer's imagination that it probably bears the same relation 

 to fact as does the charming narrative of Defoe to the real life of 

 Alexander Selkirk. 



All the records seem to point to the conclusion that Collins was 

 unwilling to find Port Phillip a suitable place for settlement, and 

 that his predilection was from the outset in favour of the more 

 temperate climate of Van Diemen's Land. His commission from 

 the Crown left him almost unfettered in his ultimate choice of a 

 locality, subject only to the concurrence of the Governor of New 

 South Wales ; but he knew that Governor King had recommended 

 this port, and the Home authorities had made it imperative that he 

 should try it before proceeding elsewhere. Certain it is that from 

 the first day of his arrival he began to condemn it, and in his des- 

 patch to Governor King, written on 5th November, he sets out 

 several of the grounds of his objections. The first unfavourable 

 impression which he received of it, from Capt. Mertho's report, had 

 been strengthened by a more minute survey. The various localities 

 he inspected were generally " entirely destitute of that great es- 

 sential, fresh water"; the soil was poor and sandy; the coast 

 impracticable by reason of shoals ; the timber thin and miserably 

 stunted ; the bay itself, when viewed in a commercial light, wholly 

 unfit for such purpose, being situated in a deep and dangerous 

 bight, requiring not only a well-manned and well-found ship, but 

 a leading wind and a favourable condition of the tide to ensure an 

 entrance at all. Every day's experience convinced him that it 

 could not, nor ever would be " resorted to by speculative men ". 

 He cannot but suppose, he says, " that all the disadvantages of 

 Port Phillip are as well known to your Excellency as they are to 

 myself at this moment. If they are, you will have anticipated this 

 report, but it may not have entered into your contemplation that 



