Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/31

Rh day, and before very long he had the whole of them safe. (I shall presently give the details of this adventure from Robinson's own narrative.) He never fired a shot, or used physical force to a native in his life, and I wish I could add that he is quite free from the suspicion of using deception and making promises to them in the name of the Government, which he should have known could not be kept. It was never quite believed by many of the colonists that he got them all by fair persuasion; this I have heard hinted twenty times or more, and I notice in one of his reports that he pretty well convicts himself of this. He was a diffuse and seemingly careless writer, but no man knew better than he how to frame his letters to the Government so as to leave little trace of error behind him. But in a moment of great and natural elation, just after capturing the very worst and most sanguinary of the tribes, the Big River and Oyster Bay people united, he incautiously lets out the secret of his success. He says, "I have promised them an interview with the Lieutenant-Governor, and told them that the Government will be sure to redress all their grievances." (Report, 5th January, 1832.) On hearing which they gave in without one other word, and followed him rejoicingly to Hobart Town, a hundred miles from the scene of their surrender; from whence, instead of having their grievances redressed, whatever they were, they were immediately consigned to the barren solitudes of Flinder's Island (then a new asylum), where the earthly career of four-fifths of them was ere long fulfilled.

His well-instructed, but unsuspecting sable friends were mere decoy ducks, used by him to bring the wild flight into the net of the fowler; and cleverly did he make them play his game. His black associates numbered amongst them, people of nearly every tribe, and were devotedly attached to him by companionship, and many acts of kindness, which though doubtless spontaneous, served his ultimate ends.

On discovering the smoke of the hostile bands, to which his acute trackers never failed to lead him (except once or twice, when their own fears of their wild brethren so overcame them that they dare not approach until forced on again and again by Robinson), it was his invariable practice to halt his party, and form his camp, where he himself remained, with perhaps one or two of his own race (whom he constantly calls his "Uropeans"), and then sent out his natives to negotiate with them for a friendly interview with himself. After a few hours delay, or at the most a day or two, they returned to him, usually with the good tidings that the natives would receive him, when he went forward, and they met in peace. Their astonishment at seeing him trust him-