John Batman: The Founder of Victoria

THE birth of great nations is always regarded with interest. The Roman historians, unable to penetrate, the gloom of their past and unwilling to claim a contemptible origin, boldly allied themselves with the celestial Olympus, and made their Romulus the son of a god. A Niebuhr has shattered the fairy fabric of those early days, and robbed our youth of the charming tale of wolf-nursed heroes. Yet who that trod the palaces of the Cesar's, and wondered at the glory of old Rome, would not throw a glance backward, and wish to know the source of so much majesty! And here, in this Melbourne of to-day, with its one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, and its noble Inter-Colonial Exhibition, as we look upon a sixty-feet pyramid of Victorian gold, can we be otherwise than deeply interested in the origin of our colony! It is with a view of settling this important question, that the present work is submitted to the Australian public. And a very trying task has it been to write such early history. I arrived in the colonies five years only after the first great exodus from Tasmania to Hobson's Bay, and two years after a settled Government of the Province here. I was personally acquainted with several of the leaders of the Port Phillip movement. I have made it my business for many years to converse with primitive settlers, and search through old records, to be correctly informed of the colonial past; and yet, with all my care and research, I have failed to satisfy my mind upon certain historical points. If such have been my difficulties to arrive at the truth of events so near our own day, what dependence can be placed in the histories of remoter times, written-it may be-by prejudiced partisans or careless collectors of facts? As a curious illustration of the difficulty of reconciling evidence in the formation of history, it may be mentioned that Wellington's mother said he was born at Dangan Castle, Westmeath, on the first of May, while the nurse affirms he was born at Dublin, on the sixth of March! To several gentlemen who have kindly contributed to my literary stores I must confess myself deeply indebted; but especially to the Rev. R.K. Ewing, of Launceston, to the Hon. J.H. Wedge, and to W.J. Sams, Esq. It is now twenty-one years since the first edition of my Australian Geography appeared; and I hope before long to bring out, for the Australian Youth, my story of the Last of the Tasmanians, upon which I have been occupied many years. To my fellow-colonists I am grateful for encouragement.