EXPLANATIONS FOR THE MAP.

THE "Settled Districts" include, besides the different circles in the Map, a reservation of the entire coast line for three miles inland, and of two miles on either side of the river Glenelg, as high up as the river Wannon.

Prior to the present divisions, made in 1848, the province contained only the three original counties of Bourke, Grant, and Normanby, the remainder of the country consisting of the five great pastoral districts of Portland Bay, Wimmera, Western Port, Murray, and Gipps' Land. The Wimmera and Murray districts, and the northern part of the Western Port district, under the more appropriate name of the Loddon district, now form the "Unsettled" district of the colony, and also three electoral districts of the same name. The other pastoral districts have merged into counties. (See the Map in explanation of the colouring; also Chapter IV. for particulars of the "Orders in Council," upon which the divisions of the Map are founded.)

LATE

AUSTRALIA FELIX,

OR

PORT PHILLIP DISTRICT OF NEW SOUTH WALES;

BEING

AN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT

OF

THE COLONY AND ITS GOLD MINES.

WITH

An Appendix,

CONTAINING

THE REPORTS OF THE MELBOURNE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOR

THE LAST TWO YEARS UPON THE CONDITION AND

PROGRESS OF THE COLONY.

BY WILLIAM WESTGARTH,

LATE MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF VICTORIA.

EDINBURGH:

OLIVER & BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT.

LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO.

MDCCCLIII.

226. d. 103.

RHODES

MOUSE

OXFORD

LIBRARY

PRINTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT, HIGH STREET, EDINBURGH.

PREFACE.

THE leisure hours of the long homeward voyage from Australia have furnished me, at two different times, with the opportunity of drawing up some account of one of the rising colonies of this remote territory of the British crown.

The first publication, in 1848, gave the history of a young but promising settlement, forming at that time the southern division of the colony of New South Wales, under the official title of the Port Phillip District-an inconvenient designation, however, for which the colonists themselves were prone to substitute that of Australia Felix, a distinctive appellation bestowed upon a large part of their country during the early explorations of the colonial surveyor-general, Sir Thomas Mitchell, on account of the surpassing beauty of its scenery.