getting to them, for until this is accomplished, speaking to them is out of the question. There is not a nation or people with whom I have conferred, but what have fled at my approach, as clouds before the tempest, yet I have never left them, until I have eventually succeeded in effecting an intercourse with them." This letter is in his own handwriting; it has its own peculiar orthography and punctuation.
The tribe had yielded as friends, not prisoners. It is true that they laid down their spears, and brought forth from hidden places sixteen stand of arms, which they had taken in the war; but the captors had prudently as well as generously returned their spears, so needed for hunting purposes. At an easy rate the mixed parties proceeded toward the settlement of Bothwell, situated to the westward of the main line from Hobart Town to Launceston. They arrived there, to the great alarm of the inhabitants, on the 5th of January, Mr. Robinson guaranteeing the peaceable behaviour of his wild charge. When visiting the little township in 1842, I was shown the site of the encampment, and I heard the tale of unnecessary fears.
On the road thither the Conciliator conversed with his sable companions, and heard many sad stories of the sufferings of the tribes, and vehement denunciations of the cruelties of the Europeans. They showed him their wounds. They all, "men, women, and child," he said, "had dreadful scars." He went to the Bothwell Inn, and had the unwonted luxury of a bed, with no apprehension of the tribe leaving him in the night.
From Bothwell he addressed this letter to head-quarters, on January, 5th, 1832: "On the 31st ultimo, I succeeded in effecting a friendly communication with these sanguinary tribes. Their whole number was twenty-six, viz. sixteen men, nine women, and one child, including the celebrated chief Montpeilliatter of the Big River tribe. I fell in with these people thirty miles N.W. of the Peak of Teneriffe."
The forty miles to Hobart Town passed merrily enough. Arriving at Constitution Hill, nearly thirty miles north of the capital, the leader addressed another letter to the Colonial Secretary. It was written under difficulties, causing me some trouble to decipher. The information given is this: "I beg to inform you for the information of the Lieut.-Governor, that . . . arrived
