Arthur, Captain Montague, and certain other squatters. He evidently attempted to secure these lands for squatting stations. Witness the words, in the famous—or infamous—so-called deeds, viz.: "To feed sheep and cattle upon." Then Mr. Batman leaves on Indented Head the Company's two or three men, and orders them "to warn off all persons from 'his lands,;" including the whole western side of Port Philip Bay. One of his (Batman's) partners followed the Enterprise up to Melbourne, from Indented Head, and ordered off Captain Lancey and Fawkner's party, claiming this land as private property. Does this look like fostering or founding a new colony?
What did Mr. J. Batman towards founding a colony at Port Philip? See page 45 of Bonwick's, 27th line:—"I joined this tribe about 12 o'clock, and stayed with them till 12 o'clock next day, during which time I fully explained to them that the object of my visit was to purchase from them a tract of their country; that I intended to settle amongst them with my wife and seven daughters; and that I intended to bring to their country sheep and cattle. Here the object of the pretended founder is very clearly depicted by his own pen. And I may add, that if Mr. Batman did really, as Mr. Bonwick asserts (page 48), find a river from the east, it could not have been the Yarra, for he could not have gone, in his own words, "six miles up; found the river all good water, and very deep. This will be the place for a village." Batman could not from the junction—where (p. 47) it is stated he was on the eve of the 7th—have gone six miles up the Yarra, for the falls would have stopped his boat, and could not have escaped his notice (this has been subsequently added to his Journal). Or what is to be said of his foundership of the colony, when he left the banks of the Yarra, and fixed on that badly watered spot on Indented Head, where he left, June 9th, Gunu and others "to commence a garden, hut, or house," &c.? (See p. 48, line 12 from top of page.)
Was this the sane act of any person about to found a colony, or was it not the act of a squatter wishing to seize the snug peninsula of Indented Head for his own flocks and herds? And on
