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236 Well might the good man exclaim in after-times: "In all my difficulties, my sole dependence was on the Omnipotent Being; and I may truly say, I was led in the paths which I knew not, preserved in danger by His power alone. Frequently have I seen the sun go down without any expectation of beholding it again in the morning; and I have been surrounded by savage Blacks, with their spears presented at me, and have been spared when all hope had fled."

In all his laborious Bush enterprises, he so gained upon the affections of the Natives as to retain their confidence. The Rev. John West has an illustration of this in his work; "In the course of one of the expeditions, they ran short of provisions, and had but very scanty food for several days, and yet, though starved with hunger, these Blacks did not desert Mr. Robinson and his party, consisting of himself, with two white servants, and his aboriginal attendants." That successful Fijian Missionary, Mr. Hunt, told a meeting in Sydney: "It is very easy to sit down and write, 'I don't believe the Blacks to be men;' much easier than to go among them, as Mr. Robinson has done, and show that they were not the brutes they are represented to be, but were susceptible of moral improvement, and fully possessed the attributes of humanity."

The work went on. More came in 1833. In October of that year, Mr. Robinson returned to Hobart Town, with his son, bringing thirty Aborigines. These were taken to Government House, royally entertained, and subsequently forwarded to the island retreat in Bass's Straits. Their friend, in his official communication, wrote: "It cannot afterwards be said that these people were harshly treated, that they were torn from their country. No; their removal has been for their benefit, and in almost every instance of their own free will and consent."

In 1834, we find the indefatigable man at his post On February 28th he succeeded in capturing eight, and placing them, for temporary safety, on Hunter's Island, at the western entrance of the Strait, with the help of some sealers' boats. Three others followed on March 14th, and nine on April 12th. These twenty—seven men, five women, and eight younger persons—were then conveyed in the Emerald to Flinders. These were all obtained in the north-western corner of Van Diemen's Land, and were, singularly enough, the remnant of that tribe