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50 may be imagined to know something of a conveyance, when they had received grants of iand in Van Diemen’s Land, and had, doubtless, in several cases re-conveyed to purchasers. Our critic says he offered to prove before Governor Bourke in 1837 that those men could not read, &c. He then closes his animadversions in these words: “ And yet Mr. Batman got favor not only to hold the land, and the house he built, but also a large section upon the Yarra Yarra. Header, butter and milk, and eggs, and a few fowls, &c., &c., are very acceptable when travelling in an almost uninhabited country, and of these a very copious supply found their way into the large tent of the governor-in- chief, whilst he sojourned at Port Phillip. The writer of these remi- nisences was never given to “ grease the fat pig,” nor fawn on men drest in a little brief authority, “but kept on the even tenor of his way.”—We rather think that Batman’s family would be glad to see the grants of Batman’s hill and the large section upon the Yarra. We do sympathize with the difficulties Mr. Fawkner experienced about the celebrated deed, found in a subsequent part of the work. But such documents are never remarkable for perspicuity, and scarcely intended for perusal by any out of Temple Courts. The boundaries of the land are thus described by Mr. Fawkner. In a letter dated May, 1836, he says: “ His purchase follows the river up the right bank for nine miles from the Bay Head, and then 40 miles north east, and ends where the eastern line from the west coast intersects it.” Nearly twenty years after he writes thus to the “ Digger’s Advocate “ It appears that Mr. Batman, his party, and the aboriginals, travelled some four or five miles up the Yarra Yarra, which river he did not find ; then forty miles north east, then another forty miles across Tramoo plains, (a name taken from Hume and Hovell’s overland tra vels to Port Phillip) and then south by west about 80 miles across the Station Peak Mount, down to the bay at Geelong, and that the abori ginals marked the trees along the whole of the lines. These false hoods were too transparent to blind an old colonist on the spot.” * * * “ Then his precious deed asserts that he did travel in these two days 160 miles and then he was nearly 40 miles from the vessel ; yet if his account is to be believed, he went over another 40 miles, making 200 miles through the wilds of the colony, on foot, carrying luggage half the way.” There is some heavy metal here. Yet Batman does not say in his
