Excerpt from A History of the Colony of Victoria, Vol. 1 of 2: From Its Discovery to Its Absorption Into the Commonwealth of Australia To anticipate criticism, I desire to say that, despite the title, these volumes make no pretension to the science of history. They are simply the annals of a colony in which I have spent half a century of my life, and claim only the merit of accuracy so far as facts are concerned. For the first eighteen years of the period treated of I have been necessarily dependent upon the records and oral statements of others. I had the advantage of a personal acquaintance with Mr. John Pascoe Fawkner, Mr. John Helder Wedge, Sir William A'Beckett, Mr. D. C. McArthur, and at least a dozen others who shaped events in the Thirties and Forties. I have not always found their reminiscences accurate, but I have invariably endeavoured to verify them. Since 1854 all the events recorded have passed practically under my own observation. I am familiar with the aspect of the whole colony, from the Mallee wildernesses of the North to the forests of Cape Otway; from the pastoral plains around the lake districts of the West to the Buffalo Ranges and the table lands of far Omeo. The progress of agricultural settlement has been closely watched by me, and in my official career I have had some part in supervising and stimulating it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.