328 ACSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



with them from Inland, tin- pkftteen of the great pastoral industry of the colony, 

 just as, at a later period, they were foremost in commercial enterprise. 



The head of tin- family, Mr. Thomas Henty, who had been a banker and a landed 

 proprietor in Sussex, came out to join his sons at Launceston, in Van Diemen's Land, 

 after tlu-y had relinquished their project of settling in Western Australia, and he memo- 

 riali/ed th- - tary of State for the Colonies for permission to purchase two thousand 

 rue hundred acres of land, at five. shillings an acre, between the parallels of one hundred 

 and thirty-five degrees and one hundred and forty-five degrees of east longitude, on the 

 south coast of Vutoria; offering at the same time to relinquish his title to eighty 

 thousand acres of land on the Swan River. But the application was refused ; and we 

 learn from a subsequent memorial to the Governor of New South Wales, in 1840, that 

 the Hentys had erected two considerable houses at Portland Bay, one of them containing 

 twelve rooms, ami two other substantial habitations ac Merino Downs ; and had expended 

 altogether between eight and ten thousand pounds in the construction of barns, stores, 

 stables, work-shops, a dairy and other permanent improvements. 



By a remarkable coincidence the scene of this settlement was the precise point of 

 the coast struck by Major, afterwards Sir Thomas, Mitchell, on his memorable journey 

 overland from the Murray to the sea. That intrepid explorer, after having spent three 

 months in examining the river-systems of what are now known as the Riverina and 

 the Darling Districts, turned southward on the 2oth of June, 1835, at the junction of 

 the Loddon with the Murray. Ascending the banks of the former stream for three days 

 he then lost it ; and bending his course to the westward he crossed the Avoca and the 

 Wimmera, sighted the Grampians, and climbed to the summit of Mount William, over- 

 looking thence a lovely panorama, combining such elements of grandeur, beauty and 

 extent, such an interchange of solemn forests and far-stretching pastures of undulating downs 

 and green valleys, of gleaming lakes and refreshing water-courses, as more than confirmed 

 all the favourable impressions he had previously received from the country he had passed 

 through, and justified him, as he conceived, in denominating this part of the Continent 

 Australia l-'clix. Looking southward he saw few obstructions to the prosecution of his 

 journey, and so he set his face in the direction of the sea. Passing Mount Arapiles, 

 Mitchell reached a river bearing the native name of Nargula, on the 3ist of July, and 

 called it the Glenelg, after the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He subsequently 

 discovered the beautiful valley of the Wannon, lying to the eastward of the Glenelg ; 

 and on the 2Oth of August Mitchell and his party came in sight of the sea, and found 

 to their immense astonishment " a considerable farming establishment belonging to the 

 Messrs, llenty," from whom the travellers met with a hospitable reception. We need 

 not follow the energetic explorer on his homeward way. Enough to say that he varied 

 his mute, crossing a gap in the Australian Pyrenees, and skirting the Great Dividing 

 Range, he ascended Mount Macedon, in order that he might obtain a view of Port 

 Phillip, passed over the site of the present town of Castlemaine, and reached the River 

 Murray on the i -th of October. 



Speaking of the view from the summit of the mountain, upon which he bestowed 

 the name it bears, Major Mitchell says, " I could trace no signs of life about this 

 harbour (i.e., Port Phillip). No stock-yards, cattle, nor even smoke, although at the 



