AUSTRALIAN SHEEP HISTORY 3 



capital, and he offered his whole flock and pastures, which at 

 this time contained 4,000 sheep. The English capitalists and the 

 Government would not listen to his scheme, as they said that 

 sheep could not live on Australian grasses, and that it would not 

 pay to plant English grasses for them. Captain McArthur was 

 however, not to be set back, and he returned to Sydney to carry 

 out his ideas himself. During his visit to England he obtained 

 from George Ill's stud at Kew a few Merino sheep which 

 had been given to the King by the King of Spain. Captain 

 McArthur soon got together a flock of Merino sheep, which 

 gave such profitable returns that other keen men were soon 

 attracted by them, and immediately started to follow McArthur's 

 example. 



The Rev. Samuel Marsden is another who saw a great future for 

 sheep and wool-growing in Australia. He, like Captain McArthur, 

 obtained the ancestors of his flock from Captain Waterhouse in 

 1797. In 1804 he had a flock of 1,200 sheep, so this reverend 

 gentleman deserves credit as well as Captain McArthur, as a 

 pioneer in Australian Merino sheep-breeding. 



In the year 1792 there were only 105 sheep in Australia. Two 

 years later there were 526. In 1795 there were 830 ; the following 

 year there were 1,331. In 1799 these had increased to 2,457, 

 while in 1803 there were 11,275 sheep in Australia. In 1821 these 

 had increased to 290,158, and in 1842 the number was 6,312,604. 

 About this time New South Wales pastoralists began to look for 

 more pastures, and Captain McArthur and his brother squatters 

 found plenty of good sheep country in western New South Wales. 

 The first man to start sheep-breeding in Victoria was Edward 

 Henty. Mr. Henty had heard wonderful things about the Vic- 

 torian pastures from his friend John Batman, who was then in 

 Tasmania. Batman had been told all about this fertile country 

 by Hamilton Hume, who had visited Fort Phillip in 1824. Mr. 

 Henty established a whaling station at Portland Bay. In 1836 a 

 friend of his a Major Mitchell told him about some very rich 

 pastures on the banks of the Wannon River. Henty went out 

 and saw them himself, and so discovered the famous " Merino 



