Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/614

country described by Messrs. Hume and Hovell, and that they could never have been there, as their accounts are not applicable to a single point either of it or to the anchorage."

Wright wrote (27th March 1827) that the country was scrubby, and that his own and Hovell's researches had failed to reveal the fine pasture land seen in 1824. Hovell had been "occupied twelve days in looking at the country north between Western Port, the mountains, and Port Phillip, but never got to the latter." Wright resigned his charge to his successor, Lieut. Burchell, and Hovell prosecuted his researches, which were duly reported to the Colonial Office. He thought he had found Hume's terminus on the Bay near a very extensive freshwater marsh, twelve to fifteen miles long, separated from Port Phillip by a narrow ridge or bank of sand not more than from two to three hundred yards wide." This was the Carrum Swamp, which bounded Tuckey's explorations in 1803 under Collins; but though Hovell, in one of his reports (27th March), alluded to Tuckey's narrative, he failed to observe that Tuckey's land journey from Collins' Camp was perforce confined to the eastern shore of Port Phillip, while the journey of Hume was entirely on the west. Having, as he thought, "near the head of the Bay, ascertained the spot which terminated the journey of Mr. Hume" and himself—he returned, unconscious of the fact that between him and any part of the country traversed by Hume ran the everflowing Yarra-Yarra river, and that the waters of Port Phillip lay between him and the place he thought he had reached.

It must seem strange to those who know the country that he could stand on the ridge of sand which he described, near the Carrum Swamp, without recognizing on the opposite western side of Port Phillip the Station Peak of Flinders, close to which he passed with Hume, and which Hume learned was called Willamanata by the natives.

Darling thought Hovell's services of little value. appeared that Western Port does not possess the necessary requisites for a settlement," and "should your Lordship consider that the object of taking formal possession has been answered," the persons sent to establish the settlement might perhaps be withdrawn. Lord Goderich