Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/67

Rh sleeping amongst them around their fires at night, accompanied by a few aboriginals attached to the expedition." (Report, July 27, '30)

"During this visit, one of the women of the party,"" [sic]he says, "espoused a man of the Nine-nees," that is, the Port Davey tribe, and of course followed him no further.

Soon after leaving the Niue-nees, he visited some other tribes with whom he opened an intercourse in his usual manner. "Several of these," he says,, [sic] "evinced a hostile feeling, which was ultimately overcome."

There were persons amongst the natives whom he fell in with on this occasion who had formerly lived with the settlers, and spoke our language well. But they used it only in abuse of him, "making use," he says, "of very scurrilous language." The tribes that these men lived with were, he tells us, the most ferocious of any he visited, no doubt instructed by these "civilised blacks," as this class of natives were not very properly called, and of whom I shall have more to say before I have done with the subject.

I should have said before that Port Davey is situated almost exactly at the south-west corner of Tasmania; and from hence Mr. G. A. Robinson, the native protector, in this expedition proceeded overland to Emu Bay, on the north coast, about 160 miles off, by direct measurement; but in following the tracks of the wandering tribes dwelling in the western hemisphere of Tasmania, his route was so circuitous, and his counter-marches so frequent, that he walked 1,000 miles in all before he reached the bay. How he supported his people during his ten weeks' journey does not appear (for he says the only provision he carried was a little wheat meal); but I presume he roughed it, to use a bush phrase, along with his sable friends, living on kangaroos, wombats, opossums, or anything that came to hand first.

He completed this tedious journey on the 26th July, having sown the seeds of future success amongst more than half the native races, and might have taken pretty nearly as many of them as he thought fit, but he was restrained by his orders, which at this time were to conciliate only. During his absence a general order was issued encouraging the apprehension of the natives, but of this he was ignorant until the opportunity was gone, at least for the presntpresent [sic].

His next expedition was as barren of results as his first one. He this time traversed the East Coast districts, were large bodies of natives were said to have appeared, but could not get on their tracks, and he returned from his wearying enterprise, to experience new proofs of public distrust in lam, by which he was in no way distressed.