parts of the stream being impeded by snags and the trunks of fallen trees until the Yarra Falls interposed a barrier, which seemed to exclaim "Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther!" The craft was brought to, and warped round a large tree growing on the river bank, opposite the (now) Custom House. Fawkner's parting injunction was to look out for a place with "good grass and plenty of fresh water;" and, believing these two conditions existed, though it was Sunday, the handful of men went to work, cut away some of the overhanging trees, so that the vessel might be comfortably berthed, and, by means of a plank, landed their stores and live stock, the latter consisting of two horses, two pigs, three kangaroo dogs, and a cat. They immediately put together out of sods, earth, and branches, a kind of structure, by which to shelter their provisions and themselves, and such was thefirst"house" or store ever raised in Melbourne. The "Enterprise" returned without much delay to Launceston for Fawkner and his family, who arrived in Melbourne on the ioth October, 1835.
There is some controversy as to the first white discoverer of the Yarra. It is averred that David Gibson, a runaway prisoner from the Collins encampment came upon it, and, on returning to give himself up at Sorrento, and reporting his discovery, it was treated as one of those unreliable "yarns" which convicts are especially prone to "spin." Buckley, "the wild white man," another of the convict colony, who escaped from the temporary penal depot, and lived for thirty years with the aborigines, until he surrendered to the Batman establishment at Indented Head, must have undoubtedly crossed the Yarra at some point in his weary circuitous wanderings from Sorrento to that unromantic hole at Point Lonsdale, still known as "Buckley's Cave," where he occasionally led a sort of amphibious life, when he went for a change of air to the seaside, with one of the couple of matrimonial "native companions" successively assigned to him by the "Watourongs," the aboriginal tribe by which he was adopted. But the records of the Grimes Suivey places it beyond doubt, that during the examination of the bay and the surrounding country, the party, not only found the Saltwater and Yarra rivers, but came up in a boat to Batman's Hill, where they landed (4th February, 1803), and traversed several of the (now) city suburbs, going as far as the "Falls" at Studley Park. Their journal explicitly declares "that the most eligible place for a settlement is on the Freshwater river "—the Yarra. A s the Collins expedition did not arrive until the following October, there can be no doubt as to the first white visitors there.
The next question of debate is as to the selection of the site of Melbourne, i.e., who made it? and, without question, it must be decided, if not in favour of Fawkner, certainly of Fawkner's party. On Batman's arrival he fixed upon Indented Head as his head-quarters in the first instance; but subsequently entertained some notion of a township on the Yarra—though not where Melbourne afterwards sprung up. A map of his has been found which delineates the extent of the Batman possessions, as secured by the Aboriginal treaty; and from this it would seem that he marked off a portion of the south side of the river "for township and other public purposes;" whilst, on the north side, "the extensive marsh is reserved for a public common." This would place the township over the Yarra, opposite the Spencer Street Railway Station and the Melbourne Gas Works—whilst the "public common " would be north-west of the railway terminus, taking in the then large swamp round by the Saltwater River. Batman seems to have had a weakness for perpetuating himself in nomenclature, for some of the most prominent localities were very soon branded with his cognomen. T h e beautiful tree-covered hill, the most unique of the olden landmarks, was called "Batman's Hill," the Yarra was the "Batman River," the marsh was "Batman's Swamp," the town was to be "Batmania;" and he even blotted out the name of "Merri" from the well-known creek, and designated it the "Lucy" Creek, after one of his daughters. But every trace of Batman was afterwards obliterated, and at the present moment he has neither "local habitation nor name" in any town, village, street, hill, river, stream, or creek in Victoria. On the other hand, Fawkner, though never the man "to hide his light under a bushel," was not affected in this way, and so far showed a delicacy and good taste in which his rival was deficient.
The site and surroundings of the embryonic city, when in a state of nature, formed a picture of wild and wayward beauty. The River Yarra from its embouchure was so half-choked with the trunks and branches of fallen trees and other impedimenta as to render its navigation a matter of difficulty and delay to even the smallest of coasters. Its low sides were lined with thick ti-tree scrub and trees over twenty feet high, and skirted with marshes covered with a luxuriance of reeds, wild grass and
