to Sydney after their
exploring expedition, Hovell insisted that the fine harbour he had seen
was Western Port. He had really been at Geelong Harbour, but was all
that distance astray in his reckoning. Induced by his report, the
Government sent an expedition under Captain Wright to form a settlement
at Western Port. Hovell went with him to give the benefit of his
experience. They landed on Phillip Island; but the want of a stream of
permanent water was a disadvantage, and soon after they crossed to the
mainland on the eastern shore, where they founded a settlement, building
wooden huts and one or two brick cottages. Hovell had now to confess
that the place he had formerly seen was not Western Port, and he went
off in search of the fine country he had previously seen, but came back
disappointed. The settlement struggled onward for about a year, and was
then withdrawn.

It is not easy to explain in a few words why they abandoned their
dwellings and the land they had begun to cultivate. It seems to have
been due to a general discontent. However, there were private settlers
in Tasmania who would have carried out the undertaking with much more
energy. For in Tasmania the sheep had been multiplying at a great rate,
while the amount of clear and grassy land in that island was very
limited. One of the residents in Tasmania, named John Batman, who has
been already mentioned, conceived the idea of forming an association
among the Tasmanian sheep-owners, for the purpose of crossing Bass
Strait and occupying with their flocks the splendid grassy lands which
explorers had seen there.

#4. Batman.#--John Batman was a native of Parramatta, but when he was
about twenty-one years of age he had left his home to seek his fortune
in Tasmania. There he had taken up land and had settled down to the life
of a sheep-farmer in the country around Ben Lomond. But he was fond of a
life of adventure, and found enough of excitement for a time in the
troubled state of the colony. It was he who captured Brady, the leader
of the bushrangers, and he became well known during the struggle with
the natives on account of his success in dealing with them and in
inducing them to surrender peaceably. But when all these troubles were
over, and he had to settle down to the monotonous work of drafting and
driving sheep, he found his land too rocky to support his flocks.
Knowing that others in Tasmania were in the same difficulty, he and his
friend Gellibrand,