Mr. Francis Henty has given a most amusing account of the meeting between his party and that of Major (afterwards Sir Thomas) Mitchell, who, in exploring "Australia Felix," in 1836, came, in great surprise, upon the Henty settlement at Portland. The story reads now like the highest romance of adventurous exploration. The Mitchell intruders, five in number, were at once regarded as bushrangers, and a defence promptly organized. The fire-arms were limited to an old musket, which was loaded to the very muzzle, to be ready for a grand discharge. Then as to the Mitchell party, even after they were relieved of their first fears, for they too had taken the others to be "no better than they should be," they exercised a measure of reserve, as though doubtful of their new friends' respectability. Mutual suspicions, however, being at last dismissed, the travellers were supplied with the stores they much wanted, and, in return, they gave such a favourable account of the pastures of the Wannon Valley as to induce Mr. Edward Henty subsequently to remove a part of the flocks there, and to establish the homestead where, as I have already stated, I enjoyed in my Western Victorian travels the squatting hospitalities. Let me add just one more incident of the Henty family, one personal to myself, but in quite a different direction from the above. Once, on a special occasion, I met the banker, Charles, who had stuck to his profession at Launceston, instead of adventuring across the Straits with his brothers. Besides his quiet banking vocation, he was, I think, the portliest of the family, which may be the explanation. The occasion was a public dinner to the Anti-Transportation League delegation, sent from Melbourne, in 1852, to stir up the cause at the Van Diemen's Land fountain head of the common evil, and of which delegation my lately deceased old friend Lauchlan Mackinnon and myself were regarded as the heads. Mackinnon, like many another such vigorous Highlander, as he then was, could never take a subject of deep interest to himself quietly. We had had a sample of him already at Hobart, where the feeling as to our mission was by no means clear, both from the natural touchiness of convict connection or descent, and from that still considerable section of colonial employers and traders who thought that the ledger and its profit and loss account had at least an equal right to be heard in the question as any other so-called higher interest. The ground, slippery enough at Hobart, was supposed to be still more treacherous at Launceston. Had not Edward Wilson, of the thoroughly Mackinnonized Melbourne "Argus", been but a little before nearly mobbed by the furious Anti-Antis of this place, to his utter surprise and astonishment at his own importance, and been only saved, in life or limb perhaps, by old Jock Sinclair, who was timely on the spot, and who dexterously led him, by a roundabout, to safety within the departing steamer for Melbourne?