been brought there untutored savages, and that they were, on the whole, as happy and contented as could have been expected of such exiles by necessity. The fatal extinction of the race was wrought out there by causes engendered long before. They came there a dying people.
We will hear what Captain Stokes, the explorer, has to say of some who were trained on Flinders Island. He visited the place soon after my arrival in Hobart Town. He speaks thus of two whom I afterwards knew:—"Walter and Maryann, a married couple who had recently returned from Port Phillip, where they had been living in the family of the former superintendent, Mr. Robinson, were so civilized and proficient in all the plain parts of education, that they possessed great influence over their countrymen, who, incited by the contemplation of their superiority, were apparently desirous of acquiring knowledge. The barracks in which the Natives dwell form a square of good stone buildings; but Walter and his wife have a separate cottage, with a piece of land attached. Maryann is a very tolerable needle-woman, and capable of teaching the others." In Dr. Jeauneret's time the pair dwelt in a hut apart from the rest.
I have now before me the original letter addressed by Walter George Arthur, commonly called King Walter, when he sought to buy a piece of land near the aboriginal station of Oyster Cove. When I knew him, he was keeping a boat there, taking charge of the mail, and waiting upon passengers desirous of landing from the steamer. The letter occupies more than three pages of note-paper, and has been rather roughly struck off in a hurry. It has been kindly presented to me by Sir Richard Dry, who thus permitted Mr. Surveyor-General Calder to keep a certified copy in the office. Walter entreats Dr. Milligan, the Protector, to get a certain eight-acre block for him, and, as he says, "ascertain from the Government what would they charge for it, the 8 acres." He gives his reasons for the purchase, and is generous enough to use the plural number in the first person; for his wife, Maryann, being a scholar, and weighing nearly twenty stone, was a partner demanding consideration. "We would very much like to have it," he continues, "to make it a little homestead for ourselves. My reasons for Troubleing you so much is that there is no distance from the water's edge, and that it is more Dryer than the other Piece of ground up the creek by Claytons, and
