Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/27

Rh the intercourse they had had with large parties of whalers, stationed for long periods of every year in some of the bays of the island, where they prosecuted, what was then termed the Bay Fishery. These rough fellows, it is well known, cultivated an intimacy with the too facile females of the blacks, conciliating some of the men with presents of food &c., though others were greatly displeased at this intimacy, and indignantly rejected their false friendship; but not so the majority of them. Propriety of demeanour was not uniformly amongst the virtues of the female savage, and very simple acts of good nature propitiated and secured the connivance of, at least, some of the other sex. But all this, though known well enough afterwards, was very little understood at the time. Here, therefore, Colonel Arthur, some time in 1828, formed an asylum for the reception and conciliation of captured blacks who came in slowly enough, and by ones and twos only. From motives of policy, and possibly of humanity, they were well treated—that is, they were clothed, fed, and hutted, as he meant to set them free again, that they might rejoin their own tribes, and spread amongst them reports of his kindness, and of the friendly disposition of the Government towards them. This he afterwards did, as far as he could; and I quite believe that some good resulted from it, in smoothing the way to their ultimate surrender to Robinson. As for this being actuated by any feeling of compassion towards them, or disposition for "the amelioration of this unhappy race," of which he made such a fuss in his proclamations, letters, and official memoranda, on this subject, I don't believe a syllable of them, or that he cared a rap about them, or what became of them, so long as he could get them into his hands, and thus remove the reproach of their existence at large from the history of his Government. For example sake only, he hanged altogether four of these savages, two at one time and two at another; but when he had the opportunity of punishing any of the very few murderers of this people, he never, as far as I can discover, even censured the authors of this wickedness, his public manifestoes breathing vengeance against any and every body who wantonly molested the blacks notwithstanding, which, I believe, they were put forth for after-effect only. Beyond doubt there were instances of the murder of these people which went unpunished and uncensured. Justice metaphorically represented as blind, was literally so in these cases, and no one stepped forth to avenge the criminality of the white against his sable brother. The cruel act of shooting the two disabled and dying savages above recorded, is a case in point. Far from even censuring the author of this inhuman outrage, he never lost his confidence, but for