of the State. It does not appear that they lacked henceforth any material comfort. But the fierce savages who had long harassed the outlying settlers, and who possessed considerably more "bulldog" in the way of courage than their continental congeners, refused to thrive or multiply when "cabined, cribbed, confined," even though they had alternation of landscape in their island home, and but the restless sea for their encircling boundary. They pined away slowly; but a few years since the last female of the race died. The monotonous comfort told on health and spirits. It was wholly alien to the constitution of the wild hunters and warriors who had been wont to traverse pathless woods, to fish in the depths of forest streams, to chase the game of their native land through the lone untrampled mead, or the hoar primeval forests which lay around the snow-crested mountain range.
The missionary diplomatist displayed an amount of nerve and astuteness which would have led to promotion in other departments. He crossed the straits to Victoria, and, if I mistake not, held council with Mr. La Trobe. Whether propter hoc or only post hoc, an aboriginal protectorate was established, and Mr. Cox had the honour of giving up a property worth now say about £ 100,000 for the presumed advantage of the black brother.
It was no trifling loss. Even in those days the "Mount Rouse Stones" was an expression which made the mouth of a cattleman to water. It was the richest run in a rich fattening district. The conical hill, so named, was an extinct volcano, which towered over a wide extent of lava country and
