HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



337 



Bcarbrass, and sometimes as Dutergalla, its native name. When a census was taken on 

 the 8th of November, 1836, the population of Port Phillip was found to number one 

 hundred and eighty-six males and thirty-eight females ; while the aborigines within a 

 circuit of thirty miles around the settlement were ascertained to consist of seven hundred 

 men, women and children. They composed three tribes the Wawoorongs, the Boonoorongs 

 and the Watourongs. It was with the last-named tribe that Buckley became affiliated, when 

 he effected his escape from the Calcutta during Collins's stay at Sorrento. 



The year 1836 was memorable in other respects. Not only had the pioneers of 

 settlement signified their desire for orderly rule and self-government, but they had taken 

 steps to secure for themselves the ministrations of religion, and Divine service was cele- 

 brated for the first time under a group of trees upon the slope of Batman's Hill, in 

 the month of April, by the Wesleyan minister previously referred to. Nor were the 

 spiritual wants of the natives overlooked, for Mr. George Langhorne was entrusted with 

 the charge of a missionary station which was established on the site of the present 

 Botanical Gardens, and Mr. John Thomas Smith, subsequently celebrated as the 

 " Australian Whittington," acted as his assistant. In Mr. Arden's pamphlet some authentic 

 particulars are given of the appearance of the little township at this date : " In the six 

 months which had elapsed since the close of the preceding year (1835), the settlement 

 had assumed the appearance of a village, several buildings, although of rude construction, 

 havine been erected ; of these 



o 



many had their plot of ground 

 attached. A blacksmith's forge was 

 at work ; soil fit for the manufac- 

 ture of bricks had been discovered 

 and experimentally tried, and up- 

 wards of fifty acres of rich light 

 black loam had been brought into 

 general cultivation." A public- 

 house erected and occupied by 

 Fawkner in Collins Street West, 

 near the corner of what is now 

 Market Street, may be regarded as 

 the core and centre of the infant 

 settlement, which spread thence in 

 an easterly direction. The cot- 

 tages, constructed for the most part 

 of wattle-and-dab, were few and far 

 between, the thoroughfares were 

 mere bush-tracks, and the rising 

 ground eastward of Swanston 



Street was a sylvan wilderness. During the rainy season a turbulent creek flowed down 

 the valley, now marked by the alignment of Elizabeth Street, which separates the two 

 divisions of the present city ; and the blacks came in and camped and held corroborrees 

 upon sites now occupied by some of the most important buildings in Melbourne. 



CAPTAIN LONSDALE. 



