Page:Last of the tasmanians.djvu/224

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BATMAN AT BEN LOMOND.
197

continues: "I have seen Jackey (then ten years old), driving the plough at your farm, and have expressed to you my admiration of his shrewdness and intelligence, and my hope that under the care and kindness with which both he and little Benny are evidently treated by your family, they would one day become useful members of society." He wished that all the children at Flinders were similarly placed. Ultimately Mr. Robinson gained his end.

I have in my possession, through the favour of Mr. Weire, Town Clerk of Geelong, who married Mr. Batman's daughter Eliza, the little memorandum book in which the leader of the roving party kept his Journal, from March 3d to September 29th, 1830. Outside, it is directed from his farm, Kingston.

A slight analysis of this Journal will illustrate the labours of the man. The scene is laid about Ben Lomond.

This grand pile of rocks lies toward the north-eastern comer of Tasmania, and is the source of the North Esk and South Esk, whose waters unite at Launceston. The district is one of great interest to the geologist. It is about twenty-six years ago since I had the pleasure of travelling through it on my way to the East Coast. Leaving the neighbouring farm to that where Mr. Batman lived in the olden times, I traversed the carboniferous and silurian county of Fingal, crossing several creeks that had cut through the bituminous coal, and glancing at the quartz veins of the palaeozoic rocks from which the gold is now extracted The granite succeeds, and carries one on to the shore. Overflowing these various formations, and presenting most fantastic appearances when prismatic, there is the greenstone. This ancient igneous rock constitutes the huge bulk of Ben Lomond, which I found to be a table nearly eight miles in extent, with an elevation of five thousand feet. The whole neighbourhood of Ben Lomond is a vast forest, varied by scrub and huge boulders. Lofty isolated hills of carboniferous order, as Mount Nicholas, are to be observed with remarkable caps of greenstone, telling the old story of denudation. It was amidst such a region that our leader and his party spent the winter and spring, watching for the Aborigines.

A little story of the author's Bush experience may afford the reader further insight into the nature of the place, and the characters one might have met in the period. The time of my visit