THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF PORT PHILLIP,
AND SUBSEQUENT ABANDONMENT.
As many persons, in all parts of the world, are looking with great interest to the Australian Colonies, now so rapidly rising into importance, the following extract from Bent's Tasmanian Almanack for 1829, will not be out of place in a work of this kind:—
"Lieutenant-Governor Collins arrived at Port Phillip, to form a British settlement at that place, with his Majesty's ships Calcutta and Ocean, having on board detachments of Royal Marines, a number of free settlers, and several hundred prisoners, stores, &c, October 9th, Governor Collins having left England on the 27th of April 1803, in the former vessel, for the express purpose of forming another settlement on the south coast of New Holland, for the further reception of convicts transported from Great Britain. Governor Collins, soon after his arrival at Port Phillip, saw the impracticability of colonizing that place, in consequence of the great want of water, and immediately dispatched an open boat from thence to Sydney, with an application
