Page:Last of the tasmanians.djvu/123

96 so obliging and gentle, so honest and careful, and so thoroughly devoted to his master. He spoke English perfectly, and could read and write. In his attendance at church, and general deportment, he gave promise of true civilization. But in an evil hour Mosquito made his acquaintance. He poisoned his mind against Europeans, representing them as the enemies of his race. He pictured the hopelessness and aimlessness of his future. What could he ever be but the slave of the Whites? Could he get a wife among them? Would they admit him on an equality with themselves? Did they not look upon him as a black dog? and would they not treat him very soon accordingly? Then temptations were placed before him. He was incited to drink. He was admitted into the licentious orgies of the roaming tribe. The master and mistress saw the change coming over him, and strove to counteract the evil, but in vain. His regard for them was too strong and real to permit him to wrong them, or suffer their property to be injured by his vicious friends. But he could not stay. He bolted to the Bush, and was then recognised as a bold robber of the forest, and an active accomplice of Mosquito's.

Although the rascally chief long kept his own neck out of the halter by his duplicity and unscrupulous sacrifice of his confederates, poor Tom Birch was soon captured. His old employer was able to preserve his life from the law's demands, but he was sentenced to the dreaded convict settlement at Macquarie Harbour. He escaped thence through his fertility of expedients, and associated himself with the Abyssinian Mob, then engaged in the Black War. It was while Tom was out the second time, that he was connected with several robberies and murders near the Shannon. Mr. G. Taylor, writing to the Hobart Town paper of November 11th, 1826, refers to the hut of Mrs. Simpson being robbed of supplies, and to Tom having speared a man-servant in the hand. In his indignation he says, "They are a lawless, brutal mob, under the guidance of this Black Tom, who had at a former period voluntarily become a member of this community, who lived many years as a free servant to one of our settlers, and who now, with the basest treachery, turns the very weapons which he then acquired, to the destruction of that society which he had deceived into confidence. He is, therefore, not a deserter, but a rebel, a civil and