122 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



House now keeps watch over a forest of masts. A few trees had 

 to be roughly dismembered to give her a suitable berth, and then 

 the master was fain to acknowledge that the place had all the 

 surroundings of a promising home for the adventurers. The two 

 horses and some dogs, which formed the live stock, were landed 

 as soon as possible, but as it was a Sunday they rested for the 

 remainder of the day, and started next morning with the erection 

 of a sod building a little back from the river bank in which to 

 house their stores. Another small hut for those who were to 

 remain in charge was put up by George Evans and his servant, 

 and although only built of sods, he was fond afterwards, when he 

 had become a substantial sheep farmer, of claiming to have built 

 the first "house" in Melbourne. On the third day after their 

 arrival, they were greatly surprised by the appearance of Mr. John 

 Holder Wedge, attended by an escort of blacks and one of 

 Batman's white servants. He had resigned his position as Assist- 

 ant Surveyor-General of Van Diemen's Land to undertake a 

 proper delineation of the country purchased by Batman from the 

 natives, in which he had an interest. He arrived in Port Phillip 

 on the 7th of August, nearly a month previously, and had devoted 

 the first three weeks to a survey of the Bellarine Peninsula, and 

 the country between Geelong and the You Yangs. Towards the 

 end of August he proceeded northward, with the intention of 

 striking the line of the conveyed land, starting from the banks of 

 the Yarra, and on the evening of the 2nd of September he un- 

 expectedly came upon the busy little settlement, and the Enterprise 

 in her arborial dock. He promptly informed Captain Lancey that 

 his party was encroaching on the land already purchased by Mr. 

 Batman from the natives, only to receive an assurance that they 

 intended to hold and dispute possession. According to Fawkner's 

 oft-repeated statement, the warning was given in the form of an 

 offensive threat, and received with derision and disgustingly coarse 

 language, but Wedge's report decisively contradicts this allegation. 

 He states that after the intimation which he felt bound to make 

 them, they generously offered to do anything for him in Launceston, 

 and even proposed to give him a passage back if he intended 

 returning shortly. It is certain that the ordinary courtesies of 



