SOME NAMES OF MARK IN THE EARLY YEARS.

“Some are born great; some achieve greatness,
And some have greatness thrust upon them.” 
—­Twelfth Night.

Before endeavouring to give a sketch of our early society and its ways and means, I am fain to pick out a few prominent persons as they flitted before me at the time and have stuck to my recollection since.  Although they might not all have been in an equal degree interesting, good or great in themselves, they were yet men of mark, closely associated in various ways with our early colonial life, and, like a busy dentist, much in the mouth of their public.  By all right and reason, the first of these prominent personages is the brotherhood group of the Messrs. Henty.

THE HENTY FAMILY, AND THE FOUNDATION OF VICTORIA.

“Let the end try the man.” —­2nd Part Henry IV.

“Great world!  Victoria brings thee meat and corn and wine,
With richly veined woods, and glittering gold from mine,
Fairy web of silken thread, soft thick snowy fleece;
Wide room for smiling homes of industry and peace.” 
—­Mrs. H.N.  Baker.

The founder of to-day’s great colony of Victoria was Mr. Edward Henty, who landed at Portland Bay from Launceston, with live stock and stores, for the purpose of settlement, on the 19th November, 1834.  But in regard to that notable event I prefer to speak of “The Henty Family,” because, in their colonizing efforts they seem to have acted so much with mutual family purpose and in mutual help, and because there was a preparatory work in which the family were all more or less engaged, all leading up to this settlement at Portland, a site which had been selected after more than two years of previous adventurous excursions and observations along the coasts of Western Victoria and of South Australia.

The successful settlement of the noble Port Phillip Harbour the following year by Batman and Fawkner caused such general attention and such a tide of colonization, that remote Portland was comparatively overlooked.  For many years, therefore, much less was heard of the Hentys than of those who had merely followed their steps.  In fact, there can be but little doubt that these latter were first aroused to the colonizing of the vast areas, the all but terra incognita, across the Straits by the vigorous example set by the Henty family almost from the moment of their arrival in Launceston in 1831, and by the reports which they brought back from time to time of the lands of promise they were opening to public notice in South-Eastern Australia.  But now that rail and telegraph have virtually abolished distance, and familiarized the central colonists with the value and beauty of the earliest occupied Western areas—­the Australia Felix of Mitchell—­the Messrs. Henty’s position has passed more to the front, and their priority been universally acknowledged.