These farms were very valuable in the days of the late boom, and are
called the city of Melbourne. Batman wanted to oust the newcomers;
he claimed the farms under his grant from the Jagga-Jaggas. He
squatted on Batman's Hill, and looked down with evil eyes on the
rival immigrants. He saw them clearing away the scrub along Flinders
Street, and splitting posts and rails all over the city from Spencer
Street to Spring Street, regardless of the fact that the ground under
their feet would be, in the days of their grandchildren, worth 3,000
pounds per foot. Their bullock-drays were often bogged in Elizabeth
Street, and they made a corduroy crossing over it with red gum logs.
Some of these logs were dislodged quite sound fifty years afterwards
by the Tramway Company's workmen.
DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER HOPKINS.
"Know ye not that lovely river?
Know ye not that smiling river?
Whose gentle flood, by cliff and wood,
With 'wildering sound goes winding ever."
In January, 1836, Captain Smith, who was in charge of the whaling
station at Port Fairy, went with two men, named Wilson and Gibbs, in
a whale boat to the islands near Warrnambool, to look for seal. They
could find no seal, and then they went across the bay, and found the
mouth of the river Hopkins. In trying to land there, their boat
capsized in the surf, and Smith was drowned.
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