Old-time Echoes.

Southern Cross, Volume 9, Issue 4, 27 April 1901, Page 10

Old-time Echoes.

THE TITLE-DEED OF MELBOURNE.

What may properly be called the title-deed of Melbourne is in the British Museum. This curious document, says a home paper, was rescued from a sscond-hand bookseller a very few years ago, after the disposal of the library of Sir R. Mac Donnell, Governor of South Australia, in the ’fifties.

It bears the signature of John Batman, the ‘founder of Victoria,’ James Gumm, Alex. Thomson, and William Todd, and is the contract of purehase bv Batman in 1835 from native chiefs of about 500,000 acres of land at Port Philip —now worth many millions sterling—for 20 pairs of blankets, 30 tomahawks, 100 knives, 50 pairs of scissors, 30 looking glasses, 200 handkerchiefs, 1001 b of flour, and 6 shirts, and an annual tribute of 100 pairs of blankets, 100 knives, 100 tomahawks, 50 suits of clothing, 50 looking glasses, 50 pairs of scissors, and 5 tons of flour. During the Victoria boom some of this land went up in value to between £400,000 and £500,000 an acre, and other portions in Melbourne itself have been sold at the rate of £2OOO the square fook The original bargain jecalls some deals in Rhodesia and other parts of South Africa. Batman himself went through many vicissitudes, as do most Australian laud speculators. Donald Gordon, who died in a Queensland hospital, parted with the ground of Mount Morgan for £640 to the brothers Morgan, who sold it for about a million, and it has since paid more than three times that enormous sum.