Volltext Seite (XML)
51 journal that the natives went round, but the opposite ; and to refer to the fixing only of one point, natural objects as hills, supplying the rest. Even the ambiguous and legally drawn up report simply speaks of marking the trees at the corners of the boundaries, not, as Mr. F. says, along the whole of the lines. It is a pity that Mr. Batman did not read with a little more care the documents to be signed by himself, prepared in the Solicitor’s office, Hobart Town. We have much more faith in the description written in the journal at the very time, than the more elaborate documents presented to his Excellency. For the history of the two days spoken of, the reader is referred to the journal. An examination of the chart accompanying this book, will give us an idea of what some regarded as the territories of the association, with the division of the spoil. We hardly understand Mr. Fawkner when he says, “ I landed, and settled, and the wheat I had sown was cut months before Mr. Batman settled,” unless he means that Mrs. Batman did not arrive till then, which was a few weeks after Mrs. Fawkner left the “Cornwall Hotel,” Launceston, to join her husband. But Batman’s party sowed seed in July, and gathered in their crops of potatoes the same month in which Mr. Fawkner first saw this country, namely, October. Moreover, the establishment of Mr. Batman was in full vigor on Batman’s hill, Melbourne, and cultivation proceeding, in the month of September. fawkner’s yarra settlement. John Pascoe Fawkner, Esq., now an active member of the Legisla tive Council of the Colony of Victoria, landed upon the shores of Port Phillip, in October, 1803. He was then a little boy, allowed to ac company his exiled father. His early life in Van Diemen’s Land, amidst unparallelled scenes of dissipation and debauchery, gave him, he declares, so unconquerable a dislike to intemperance, that he was always enabled to avoid the fate of a drunkard. When a young man, he laboured in a saw pit. Being, though bereft of the advantages of early education, attached to books, and having a strong love of justice, and an instinctive partiality to disputation and argument, we are not sur prised to find him afterwards figuring as an Advocate. In those halcyon days, before the glorious advent of Barristers, Solicitors, Attorneys, &c., &c., a very small amount of law sufficed for the Magistracy of
