when unable to force the leafy, thorny breastworks, stood, like the modern artillerymen upon the Crimean heights, and threw a heavy fire upon the fortress which they could not gain. A continual discharge of musketry would, it was conjectured, drive out the concealed foe; and, once in the more open glade, his capture would be certain. The anxious Governor directed the assault here and there, with encouraging enforcements of Roman virtue, and hopeful expectations of a triumphant return with hand-cuffed captives.
Alas! when the exhausted troops entered this Sebastopol of the forest, they find it deserted of man, and silent but for the crackling of the flames. The enemy had yielded the fortification, and had retired to even stronger Redans.
This severe disappointment was not the only trial. As the few big, pattering drops give warning of the coming storm, so rumours of movements in the rear of the Line indicated the outburst of new and more appalling outrages. Word came that defenceless homes were attacked by the enraged and hunted Natives. A hut near Jerusalem was robbed, and a poor woman speared to death. Fires began to redden the sky, and shrieks of terror told the tale of woe. A letter from Perth said that one hundred and fifty had burst through the Cordon, and were plundering to the rear of Major Gray's, at Avoca. Thirty were seen and chased by the intrepid John Batman, who was successful in securing a good part of them, and without bloodshed.
The Launceston papers were annoyed at the defenceless state of the north, and asked why all the effort of the colony should be directed, to the alarm and desertion of settlements, for the capture of two tribes—those of Oyster Bay and Big River—as if others were not as sanguinary elsewhere.
The settled part was then divided into the two counties of Buckingham on the south, and Cornwall on the north. Launceston, the old Dalrymple, once had hopes of supremacy over Hobart Town, and for a time had its Lieutenant-Governor, independent of the other Lieutenant-Governor on the banks of the Derwent. Disappointed ambition may have strengthened feelings of antagonism toward their more fortunate southern rivals, for the Cornwall colonists had little sympathy with the men of Buckingham. Hence we can appreciate the utterance of a northern magistrate, when two men were speared, a couple of miles out-
