tisement (March 1829) £50 a year to "a steady man of good character." Robinson offered to take the post, but pointed out that £50 would not support his family, and Arthur gave him £100. His great difficulty was to contend against the debauchery of the whites, who interfered with his black prisoners of war. But he revolved greater things within his mind than the mere custody of the unhappy few saved from slaughter. In 1829 he volunteered to go unarmed into the bush, to win the fellow-creatures of whose language he had learnt something. "I considered," he said afterwards,
"that they were rational, and although they might in their savage notions oppose violent measures, yet if I could but get them to listen to reason, and persuade them that the Europeans wished only to better their condition, they might become civilized, and rendered useful members of society, instead of the bloodthirsty, ferocious beings they were represented to be. This was the principle upon which I formned my plan."
The government tactics ill-paved the way for Robinson's; but Arthur permitted the experiment to be tried. With some of the Bruni Island blacks and others, recently captured, to act as guides, Robinson sought Port Davey. The boat provided for him had been wrecked, and he walked overland. He met some blacks and appointed a meeting for the following day. "They were very suspicious, having been fired at by Europeans; and though I carried no fire-arms, nothing in fact but bread, and endeavoured to explain my pacific intentions, they left me without any sign of desire to repose trust in me." Arthur wrote to England (27th Aug. 1830), "All Mr. Robinson's efforts to hold a conference have hitherto failed." He traversed the west coast to Cape Grim. Early in 1831 he was on the north-east coast, and though unsuccessful on the mainland released eighteen black women who had been trepanned by white men, who, engaged in seal-hunting, carried these women by force to island prisons and kept them there. By such acts he established his reputation for truthfulness; and these rescued women and others, with their husbands, were his chief guides to success.
Meanwhile the Governor resorted to other advisers. Availing himself of a visit from Archdeacon Broughton (of Sydney) he appointed a Committee of Inquiry of eight persons, three of whom were ministers of religion. In
