Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/25

Rh sidering what was the practical action of some of them, I should think they did more to increase than allay enmity, and it is more likely they heard it from the civilised youth of their own race, who so often eloped from the guardianship of the settler.—But the tribes still remained as intractable as ever, until a man who spoke their own language, and was master of their various dialects (of which Robinson says there were six), went boldly amongst them, accompanied by ten or a dozen of their own countrymen, whom he had perfectly subdued to his will, and conciliated into affection for his person, and in about five years of most unremitting exertion and toil brought in the whole of them (except about four) who, to the great astonishment of every one but himself, were found not to number more than 250. The causes of this declension I shall explain in their proper place, taking Robinson for my authority. In his various reports he always maintained that this people was nothing but a remnant of the six or eight thousand who were living in 1804, and his reports of their strength he had from the most accurate sources, viz., the natives themselves (who, though they had no words to express numbers higher than four, could repeat the names of the individuals of the tribes, and thus he learned their real force), which he never rated eigherhigher [sic] than 700—that is, after 1830; and year after year his estimates decreased as they died out, and he then reports 500, and finally 300 or 400, and when he got the last of them they had sunk to the number given above, that is—to about 250.

I hope I shall not be charged with digressing in saying a little about these roving parties, some of whom appear to have wholly neglected their duty, while others quite over-did it. One leader is charged with acting as a land agent whilst in the field, instead of following the blacks—that is, looking up suitable spots for emigrants to settle on for a private compensation; another with gross improprieties with the half-civilised women of the blacks who accompanied him as trackers and interpreters; others, with shooting them when they came on the wild tribes—an odd way of delivering a pacific message; but as some of these charges rest on the report of persons evidently unfriendly to them, they must be read with caution. But when one of these leaders, who was the most active and trusted of the whole of them, tells such a story as the following of himself in an official report to the Government, we have no difficulty in believing that they were not a well-selected set of men for the delicate mission they were entrusted with. He says:—

"On Thursday, the 1st inst. (i.e., September, 1829). I started again in pursuit of the aboriginiesaborigines [sic], who have been committing so many outrages in this district. On Wednesday I fell