t the blacks, who soon
disappeared. The white men also disappeared over the mountains; the
rout was mutual.

But the country was too good to be occupied solely by savages, and
when McMillan returned with reinforcements he made some arrangements,
the exact particulars of which he would never disclose. He brought
cattle to his run, and they quickly grew fat; but civilised man does
not live by fat cattle alone, and a market had to be sought. Twofold
Bay was too far away, and young Melbourne was somewhere beyond
impassable mountains. McMillan built a small boat, which he launched
on the river, and pulled down to the lakes in search of an outlet.
He found it, but the current was so strong that it carried him out to
sea. He had to land on the outer beach, and to drag his boat back
over the sands to the inner waters.

He next rode westward with his man Friday to look for a port at
Corner Inlet, and he blazed a track to the Albert River. Friday was
an inland black. He gazed at the river, which was flowing towards
the mountains, and said:

"What for stupid yallock* yan along a bulga**?"

[* Footnote: *Yallock, river. **Bulga, mountain.]

McMillan tried to explain the theory of the tides.

"One big yallock down there push him along, come back by-and-by."
And Friday saw the water come back by-and-by.

They reached the mouth of the river on February 1st, 1841, saw a
broad expense of salt water, and McMillan concluded that he had found
a port for Gippsland.

Ten months afterwards Jack Shay arrived at the port. He had first
come to Twofold Bay from Van Diemen's Land, and nothing was known
about his former life. "That's nothing to nobody," he said. He was
a bushman, rough and weather-beaten, with only one peculiarity. The
quart pot which he slung to his belt would hold half a gallon of tea,
while other pots only held a quart, and that was the reason why he
was known all the way from Monaroo to Adelaide as "Jack of the Quart
Pot."

He had arrived rather late on the previous evening, and this morning,
as he sat on a log contemplating the scenery, his first conclusion
was that the port was not flourishing. There was not a ship within
sight. The mouth of the Albert River was visible on his right, and
the inlet was spread out before him shining in the morning sun.
About a mile away on the western shore was One Tree Hill. Towards
the south were mud banks and mangrove islands, through which the
channel zigzagged l