Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/483

 His notice was vain. Two whites were missing in 1810. One was thus described in the Thrive iit Star (Jan. IBIO) : — - '^Tlie natives who liftve been rendered desperate by the cnieltiea they I have experujuoed from our people, hftvt- now begun ta «listi-eas ns by attackmg our uaLtle. , . . No accoimt having been received of Williatii Knssell and ileorge ({etley^ there can be no doubt of the misorablo end they have Ijeen put to. This unfor Innate man, Russell, is a striking instance of divine agency which haa overtakeu liijo at last* and punished him by the hands *>f tboso very people who have suffered so much frotu hmi; he being well known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murtlering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach." Colonel Davey endeavoured to win the confidence of the natives. Through the agency of a native woman living with a white man, between thirty and forty of them visited the settlement. In spite of the Governor's known desires, some worthless Europeans maltreated them, and they escaped. Davey declared that ** he could not have believed that Britiflh anbjeetrt would have so ignominioiisly stained the honour of their country and themselves, as to have acted in the manner they did toward the aborigines.'* Sorell swelled the sad testimony. In 1819 he reminded his subjects that the natives were '* unsuspicious and peaceable, manifesting no disposition to injure'' in certain remote places, '* and they are known to be equally in- offensive in other places where the stock-keepers treat them with mildness and forbearance/' One instance will suffice as a record of the atrocities committed. Formal inquiry^** established the fact that about the time of Governor Davey, a man, while capturing a native woman, killed her husband, slung the bleetling head upon her neck, and drove her thus before him to be retained by force. From such scenes it is a relief to turn to the progress of discovery in New South Wales. When !N[acquarie assumed the government in 1810, the colony consisted only of the i county of Cnmberland, with an outpost at the mouth of the Hunter, reached l>y sea. Westward, the Blue Moim- tains, whose rugged watershed fed the Nepean, the Cox, the Grose, and other tributaries of the Hawkesbury, had •" Report of a Committee appt>bited by Governor Arthur in 1830. *'In exeinplifi cation of (the * dreadful and unnecessary barlmrity' practised) the Commit Lee cannot but mention one fact, which from its atrocity would have appeared to them perfectly increrlible, had it not been conlicne<lVH^ testimony which they cannot doubt."