HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



329 



highest northern point of the bay I saw a mass of white objects, which might have 

 been either tents or vessels." Yet, fifteen months before, a settlement had been already 

 effected near the shores of the Bay, and the foundations had been laid of the future city 

 of Melbourne, and the capital of one of the most flourishing of the Australasian colonies. 



THE ARRIVAL OF BATMAN. 



As early as the month of January, 1827, Messrs. J. T. Gellibrand and John Batman, 

 of Launceston, Van Diemen's Land, solicited a grant of land at Western Port, with a 

 view to establishing a pastoral settlement there ; but the application was curtly refused 

 by Governor Darling, to whom it had been 

 addressed. The project was allowed to slumber 

 until the year 1835, when a vessel was char- 

 tered at Launceston, and this same John Batman, 

 accompanied by seven aborigines from Sydney, 

 proceeded to Port Phillip, and landed there on 

 the 26th of May. Falling in with some natives, 

 Batman succeeded in disarming their fears and 

 conciliating their confidence by numerous pre- 

 sents and reiterated assurances of his pacific 

 intentions ; the blacks he had brought with him 

 acting as interpreters. He then asked to be 

 conveyed to the chiefs of the tribe, with whom 

 he spent four-and-twenty hours negotiating for 

 the purchase of a tract of their country in order 

 to stock it with sheep and cattle. The proposi- 

 tion is alleged to have been agreeably received 

 and cheerfully acquiesced in ; the boundaries of 

 the land to be purchased were defined ; and on 

 the day following Batman and the chiefs pro- 

 ceeded to mark the trees at each angle of the 

 estate of half a million acres, which was to be 

 conveyed to the purchaser in consideration of 

 twenty pairs of blankets, thirty tomahawks, one 

 hundred knives, fifty pairs of scissors, thirty 

 looking-glasses, two hundred handkerchiefs, one 

 hundred pounds of Hour and six shirts, to be 



paid down at once ; and an annual tribute of one hundred pairs of blankets, one hundred 

 knives, one hundred tomahawks, fifty suits of clothing, fifty looking-glasses, fifty pairs of 

 scissors and five tons of flour. A contract of sale was drawn tip in due form on the 6th 

 of June, 1835 the original document is in the Melbourne Public Library and possession 

 was given of this magnificent principality by the chiefs delivering to Batman a sod of earth, 

 after which he returned to Launceston, leaving three white men and five of the Sydney 

 natives to lay out a garden, and commence the erection of a house " near the harbour." 

 A second conveyance had been executed, covering one hundred thousand acres of land 



WILLIAM BUCKLEY, 



