Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/51

Rh good nature of visitors, to obtain drink, or as they called it "giblee." Here for several years they were under no other supervision than that of a petty constable or two, and menials, while their paid superintendent was pursuing his elegant studies and follies in Hobart Town, 20 miles off. He was removed from his office, or probably retired, in 1855, but not until the demoralisation of the natives was completed, and the natives had become, when I and many others saw them, nothing better than a horde of lazy, filthy, drunken, listless barbarians; and in everything except the practice of theft, a good deal the inferior of the gipsy.