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32 the coast rivers and the interior waters on the south and the Mallee country on the north. I found then and registered by name, in their respective families and tribes, about 1,100 individuals."

The late Mr. William Thomas, who for more than a quarter of a century acted as Protector or Guardian of the Aborigines, and had in the discharge of his duty visited nearly every part of Victoria, undertook at my request, some years ago, to make a careful estimate of the number of the Aborigines at the time when they possessed the land; and he arrived at the conclusion that the total number could not be less than 6,000. From his statement it appears that "the Aboriginal population in 1835-6 of the counties of Bourke, Evelyn, and Mornington was 350." But he adds that one-half at least of one of the tribes inhabiting these counties had perished in 1834 in a war with the Gippsland and Omeo blacks, and that previous to the war the total number was certainly not less than 500. Further, the three counties he selected were in his opinion but sparsely peopled as compared with some other parts of Victoria, that these lands are not the best suited for the support of an Aboriginal population, and that the rivers which their boundaries embrace are not stocked with fish as are the Murray and its affluents. Now the sum of the areas of these three counties is nearly 3,000,000 acres, which gives 6,000 acres for each Aboriginal; and the population of the colony would have been, if the whole of it had been peopled in the same proportion, 9,200 nearly. In estimating the numbers in this manner it is necessary to take note of the geographical features of the colony.

Though the counties named by Mr. Thomas are not the richest in Victoria, yet the greater part of the country they include is available for the uses of a savage people. Though the lands near the ranges are thickly timbered, and the eastern parts of Evelyn are covered in places with dense scrub, an immense area was in former times lightly timbered. Fine open forests of gum and she-oak covered a great part of Bourke; in the county of Evelyn there is a fine river, with numerous perennial streams falling into it; and in Mornington there are