and talk everlastingly, but he had not the 'robur' and 'as triplex'
suitable for a sea-robber. Sea-sickness nearly killed him, so he
stayed behind while the other adventurers went and laid the
foundation. They first examined the shores of Western Port, then
went to Port Philip Bay and entered the River Yarra. They
disembarked on its banks, ploughed some land, sowed maize and wheat,
and planted two thousand fruit trees. They were not so grasping as
Batman, and each man pegged out a farm of only one hundred acres.
These farms were very valuable in the days of the late boom, and are
called the city of Melbourne. Batman wanted to oust the newcomers;
he claimed the farms under his grant from the Jagga-Jaggas. He
squatted on Batman's Hill, and looked down with evil eyes on the
rival immigrants. He saw them clearing away the scrub along Flinders
Street, and splitting posts and rails all over the city from Spencer
Street to Spring Street, regardless of the fact that the ground under
their feet would be, in the days of their grandchildren, worth 3,000
pounds per foot. Their bullock-drays were often bogged in Elizabeth
Street, and they made a corduroy crossing over it with red gum logs.
Some of these logs were dislodged quite sound fifty years afterwards
by the Tramway Company's workmen.



DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER HOPKINS.

"Know ye not that lovely river?
Know ye not that smiling river?
Whose gentle flood, by cliff and wood,
With 'wildering sound goes winding ever."