At this time also Captain Friend, of the whaling cutter ‘Sarah Ann’, took shelter under the lee of New Year’s Island, and he pulled ashore to visit Scott the sealer.  There he found the shipwrecked men and women whom he took on board his cutter, and conveyed to Launceston, except one woman and two men.  It was then too late in the season to take the whalers to Port Fairy.  Captain Friend was appointed chief District Constable at Launceston; all the constables under him were prisoners of the Crown, receiving half a dollar a day.  He was afterwards Collector of Customs at the Mersey.

In November, 1835 the schooner ‘Elizabeth’ returned to Launceston with 270 tuns of oil.  The share of the crew of a whaling vessel was one-fiftieth of the value of the oil and bone.  The boat-steerer received one-thirtieth, and of the headmen some had one-twenty-fifth, others one-fifteenth.  In this same year, 1835, Batman went to Port Phillip with a few friends and seven Sydney blackfellows.  On June 14th he returned to Van Diemen’s Land, and by the 25th of the same month he had compiled a report of his expedition, which he sent to Governor Arthur, together with a copy of the grant of land executed by the black chiefs.  He had obtained three copies of the grant signed by three brothers Jagga-Jagga, by Bungaree, Yan-Yan, Moorwhip, and Marmarallar.  The area of the land bought by Batman was not surveyed with precision, but it was of great extent, like infinite space, whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere.  And in addition he took up a small patch of one hundred thousand acres between the bay and the Barwon, including the insignificant site of Geelong, a place of small account even to this day.  Batman was a long-limbed Sydney native, and he bestrode his real estate like a Colossus, but King William was a bigger Colossus than Batman—­he claimed both the land and the blacks, and ignored the Crown grant.

Next, John Fawkner and his friends chartered the schooner ‘Enterprise’ for a voyage across the Straits to Australia Felix.  He afterwards claimed to be the founder of Melbourne.  He could write 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,