Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/599

 TRUOANINA. CAPTIVES. ISLAND IMPRISONMENT. 571 peace was given. The spears were thrown down. Eumarrah found two brothers under the guidance of Montpeliata. Others found friends. The dark children of the forest, the wild and the subdued, mingled their lamentations for the lost with their joy at an unexpected meeting. They had secured sixteen muskets in the war, and produced them. Ammunition they had none. The whole party returned peacefully, but Eobinson could hardly allay the fears of the settlers as the dreaded tribe camped near their abodes. Neither could the white population credit that the tribe which had held them in terror contained only sixteen men. The march to Hobart Town was a triumphal progress. The Governor welcomed the natives at his residence, and decorated them with ribbons. One of them, Ondia, exhibited his prowess with the spear, piercing a cray-fish at sixty yards' distance. But the captives of Eobinson's conciliation were living memorials of bygone war. None of them were without wounds. Again, at Port Davey, Port Macquarie, and other places, Eobinson captured small parties of the remnants of tribes. Once at the Arthur river, on the north-west coast, his life was saved by Tru- ganina. The natives would not trust him. He could not swim, but he sat on a log which Truganina guided across the river. Subsequently even these poor creatures were peacefully enticed, and in 1834 it was supposed that only two families remained at large. In Dec. 1834 the last captives were supposed to have been made at the Western Bluflf. Four women, a man, and three boys, — outcasts on their native soil only one generation after its first invasion by the whites, — seeing Mr. Eobinson's natives, rushed forward and embraced them. They had, they said, thought of surrendering before, but shots were fired at them when they approached the white man's dwellings. They had fled to the less inhospi- table mountains covered with snow. With their friendly captor they entered Hobart Town on 22nd Jan. 18.S5. A subscription, richly deserved, and grants of land were given to Eobinson. His captives meanwhile had been located in various places. Sir John Pedder, the Chief Justice, denounced the project of transporting the natives to an island where they must pine away ^»wd Aifc. ^^^xsNSRi^