Carlshrue; and so on the squatting system kept moving, every week enlarging its orbit. The Yarra Falls were found inconvenient, and even dangerous, for the crossing over of sheep, but a Mr. M'Intyre was a match for the emergency, and, ferreting out a ford near the "Falls," at the confluence of the Reilly Street drain and the Yarra, the old "Falls" were superseded as a sheep thoroughfare. "The land of the West" did not long escape the white invasion, and a horde of modern Argonauts, in quest of no fabled Golden Fleece—the Austins, the Cowies, the Steiglitzes, cum aliis, were soon following the true scent. Quiet Geelong and Corio were awakened from their slumbers by the Derwent Company and the Roadknights; whilst the Murrays, the Loyds, and Morrises disturbed the "corroborrees" round lone Lake Colac, an intrusion by no means relished by the aborigines of that quarter.
This reference to the aborigines reminds me to remark that, though at first muh good feeling existed between the settlers and the native race, troubles very soon set in. Towards the close of 1836 an atrocious double murder was perpetrated by some of the Goulburn tribe stealing down towards "the settlement," and, surprising a Mr. Charles Franks and his shepherd, at the Werribee, speared them. The bodies were brought to Melbourne and buried on the side of the (afterwards) Flagstaff Hill, where a small enclosed area was reserved for a cemetery. Theirs may be said to be the first public funeral in Melbourne, for all the inhabitants joined in the melancholy ceremonial. In November, 1837, Messrs. Gellibrand and Hesse, started on a bush excursion from Geelong, and were lost in the Cape Otway Ranges. It was supposed that the blacks had murdered them; Gellibrand's skeleton was found some months after and identified by the fact of one of his teeth having been stuffed with gold; and one of the teeth in the discovered remains was in that condition. He was an ex-Attorney-General of Van Diemen's Land, came over with Batman, and Gellibrand's Point, near Williamstown, was named after him. He and Hesse were gentlemen of high respectability, and two hills near Winchelsea are called after them. The singular mode of recognition by the stuffed tooth has much doubt cast upon it by the following undoubted facts :—In 1844, a M r . Allan, a settler in the Western portion of the district was one day in the bush, attended by some blacks, when they found a skeleton which was supposed to be the remains of Gellibrand. The skull was of peculiar configuration, and a front tooth was missing. Some metal buttons were picked up near the bones, and they were said to resemble those the deceased used to wear. Allan communicated the intelligence to some members of Gellibrand's family, resident at Hobartown, but they treated the matter so indifferently as not to reply to his letter. Allan next buried the bones, and kept the skull, which he suspended from the roof or ceiling of the kitchen of his house where it remained until May, 1847, when he took it down and shipped it off to Gellibrand's friends, in the Wave schooner which sailed from Belfast for Hobartown. So far as I am aware, nothing further was heard of the novel consignment. Gellibrand's life was insured for £11,000, and the policy was paid three years after his presumed death.
In 1838 a convoy of stock belonging to Mr. Faithfull, whilst en route from New South Wales to Melbourne, was attacked near the Ovens by a mob of two or three hundred blackfellows, and eight out of eighteen white men in charge, murdered. Several other outrages of a similar, though not so serious a kind, were committed on the Goulburn, the Ovens, the Murray, and at other places; and for some years collisions between the blacks and the whites occasionally occurred. Aboriginal aggression, as a rule, is said to have led to the disasters, though there can be little doubt that the white stockmen and shepherds not infrequently provoked reprisals, and fatal retaliations were often made on both sides. As early as December, 1836, an Aboriginal Mission was established where now flourish the Botanic Gardens; Mr. George Langhorne, a very benevolent man, was appointed missionary, and his assistant was the John Thomas Smith to be so well-known in the early future. The black population within a thirty mile circuit of the township might, at this time, be estimated at about seven hundred souls, including men, women and children. Appeals were frequent to the Executive at Sydney for protection for the lives and property of the settlers, and various were the nostra propounded; but the only immediate result was the formation of several mounted police stations at points of the overland route, and subsequently in other localities. The early settlers are declared to have treated the aborigines with kindness and consideration. In 1838 the British Government appointed a "Black Protectorate," consisting of one chief and four assistant Protectors. The colony was subdivided into four districts, one official in each district, whilst the chief exercised general supervision from Melbourne, and made periodical visits of inspection. The whole black population under the Protectorate
