Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/75

Rh four tribes, each numerically reduced to insignificance, partly through the ravages of the sealers, but chiefly from causes quite apart from war, except, perhaps, tribal war. These men had made many incursions into the estates of the company, plundering their outstations, and lulling their servants, with more than usual impunity, but had received one or two checks lately from a small Government party, acting under a person named Alexander M'Kay, formerly one of the most active and useful attachés of the aboriginal embassy under Robinson, from whom he had shortly before parted in anger, at some neglect he felt he had received at the hands of his leader. This man, when acting under Robinson, had taken several natives himself, and handed them over to his superior. He had also performed other meritorious services, which received no recognition whatever, nor were placed to his account in any manner. He was not a man to bear with this kind of treatment, and refused to remain in his service any longer, and, proceeding to Hobart Town, made a report of his own services to the Governor, who always had a high opinion of him. There was mutual dislike between the master Robinson and the servant M'Kay; and that of the former was greatly increased by the spirited action of the other, and he was very little pleased to hear that, directly after his interview with the Governor, he was placed in charge of a small roving party who acted independently of himself. M'Kay was a resolute, active, and persevering young man, and, perhaps, the best bushman who ever traversed the wilds of Tasmania. He soon effected good service, and took several men of the same tribes whose remains Robinson himself was now in pursuit of, for which he received the complimentary acknowledgements of the Government, that were conveyed to him by the manager of the Van Diemen's Land Company's Estates, Mr. Curr.

Robinson, like the race he subdued, never forgot an affront; and had such a dislike of this useful servant of the government, that many of his after reports teem with abuse of him; and every failure of his own against the tribes M'Kay had visited are ascribed to his rash and imprudent attacks, as he call them on the natives which he constantly asserts had thrown the tribes of this quarter, and those of the whole of the West Coast also, into such a state of excitement, that for a time they would hold no intercourse with him, and refused (like Rachel mourning for her children) to be comforted with his assurances of protection, redress. &c. He magnified the defensive action of this man into a barbarous aggression, and a felling blow that he dealt one of