affectation, but winning all hearts by his attention to his guests. It
is hard to say why such a suitable person was recalled. He seems to have
been sacrificed to clamour; but to accuse, and prove, are very
different, and in any enquiry that may be hereafter instituted, Captain
Hindmarsh will, I am sure, come off without reproach.

FOUNDATION OF VICTORIA

+Source.+--Batman's Journal, Victorian Pamphlets, Vol. cxxvii, pp.
10-13, 16-22

Convictism in Tasmania caused great dissatisfaction among the free
settlers; in 1835 John Batman crossed the Strait in search of fresh
pastures. Melbourne stands on the site he selected for "the future
village."

_May 29th._ Daylight had no sooner broke this morning--and never had its
cheerful return been so ardently longed for--than we were again greeted
by the sight of Port Phillip Heads, at a distance not apparently
exceeding eight miles. By 9 a.m. we were between the Heads, with the
tide running out, and nearly at low water; a heavy surf and the wind
light and baffling. We effected an entrance with difficulty at a part of
the bay where the width was about a mile and a quarter. We succeeded,
however, in entering one of the finest bays, or basins of water, well
sheltered, that we remember to have seen. Within the Bay the water was,
compared to our late tossing in the boiling and foaming waters outside,
as smooth as a mill-pond, and our little bark floated gently along like
a sleeping gull. I shall, however, take this opportunity to remark that
it will be desirable to enter its mouth only at the times of the tide
running in. We continued our course down the bay, and found the country
everywhere of the same richly-grassed character.

_May 30th._ Robinson Crusoe was never better pleased with the appearance
of the first ship which arrived, and rescued him _from_ his desolate
island, than I was with the vessel which proved the means of thus
opening to view a country capable of supporting a future nation, and
which, we trust, will be the means of relieving the Hobart Town country
of its over-stocked cattle, and the Mother Country of her surplus and
half-starved peasantry. Futurity must develop this prophecy! Further
travelling and examination only added to my pre-conceived estimate of
this extremely interesting and extensive territory; consisting of plains
or downs at least twenty miles long by a width of 10 miles, and the
distance may have been greater, but