GOVERNMENT SETTLEMENT AT WESTERN PORT 67 



instructions to abandon the settlement unless Mr. Hovell's report 

 should be more favourable than those. There appears to have 

 been some conflict of opinion in England as to the desirability of 

 withdrawal, and some distinctly contradictory memoranda were 

 endorsed on the reports by the officials ; but practically the matter 

 was left in the hands of Governor Darling to decide. He certainly 

 seems to have misapprehended the general purport of Hovell's 

 report, for it will in no sense bear the construction put upon it by 

 the Governor, who says that " nothing could have been less satis- 

 factory than the information obtained from Mr. Hovell ". 



Probably the expense entailed in its maintenance had more to 

 do with the withdrawal than the reports referred to, and as the 

 immediate motive for its occupation no longer existed, the fiat 

 went forth for the return of the soldiers and convicts to Sydney. 

 The handful of free settlers who had found their way round to try 

 a life in the wilderness did not care to remain unprotected, and so 

 in January, 1828, the Government sent round the Isabella from 

 Sydney, and in a few days all were embarked, and the second 

 official attempt to settle in Port Phillip ended exactly like the first. 

 The live stock were transported across the Straits to Port Dal- 

 rymple, and the wild blacks and half-wild sealers remained the 

 only human occupants of the territory. 



It is said in Haydon's Australia Felix that the settlement 

 consisted of nearly fifty houses and huts, but this must be an 

 exaggeration, as the total number of residents scarcely at any time 

 exceeded from fifty to sixty. More than twenty years after the 

 abandonment remains of the houses were to be seen, and probably 

 some of the original trees planted in 1827 are still growing round 

 the sleepy village of Corinella. 



