Page:Last of the tasmanians.djvu/204

Rh Hotel, Hobart Town, the enthusiasm increased in vigour at each successive elevation of the glass, until, from the intensity of their emotions, and the undue excitement of their gratitude, many of the guests exhausted their physical natures, and sank back helpless in their chairs. At this banquet, inflated with a grateful sense of a liberal expenditure, one gentleman had the coolness to propose that the forthcoming address to His Excellency be called "The Address of the Traders of Hobart Town." Such base imputation of motives was most virtuously repelled, and the document, laden with uncorruptible names, and redolent with the incense of flattery, was forwarded to Government House, and, in due course, presented at Downing Street, as an evidence of the approval of Colonial policy, and the warm affection of Colonists to the person of the previously calumniated representative of His Majesty.

In the reply of His Excellency, there is another exposition of his humanity and conscientiousness, when he says, in allusion to the Natives, "It is undeniable that they were lamentably neglected in the early colonization of the country, and have been treated with cruelty and oppression by the stock-keepers, and other convicts in the interior, and by the sealers on the coast; and, from the want of due discernment, their vengeance has been indiscriminately wreaked upon the unoffending settlers of the present time. This fact must continue to disarm us of every particle of resentment."

While the loud hurrah of exulting meetings, the jingling of convivial glasses, and the trumpet note of Government House, fell on the ear as symbols of rejoicing after victory, there boomed in the distance the sounds of conflict. From the depths of forests, and from the expanse of plains, a cry of horror was heard. Men returned to their habitations to find but smouldering ruins, and sought their families to behold but ghastly corpses. Wives waited the return of husbands, transfixed with spears. Mothers coo-ed for children, brained by waddies. The wrath of an infuriated race was unappeased, and the memory of their murdered kindred was unavenged. The country, scoured in vain for their presence, now echoed with the shrieks of their victims.

And what were to be the future operations against them? Were fresh commandoes in preparation? Were new and more