they sought to convince him and a mate of the impropriety of their conduct. But the conclusion of the conference is thus told:—
"From the admission of these men, we learned that their reasons for not choosing to marry the women with whom they cohabit is, that, in the event of leaving the Straits, they would feel them an encumbrance; hence unequivocally intimating that they hold themselves bound to these poor women by no other ties than those of convenience or caprice."
The darker side of the picture came before the public at the close of the Black War, when arrangements were being made to exile the Aborigines to an island in the Straits, and when Mr. Robinson, armed with the Governor's authority, sailed among the islands for investigation of sealers' doings, and the rescue of the native women from their captivity. Still other evidence than that of the officers of Flinders Island tends to affix a stigma upon the name of "sealer."
The earlier the period the more disgraceful the stories. Thus, we hear of wretches who boasted of shooting their women. A poor creature was being beaten when, by struggling, she released herself from her tormentor, and fled. The fellow coolly took up his gun and shot her. Being afterwards asked why he beat her in the first instance, he simply replied, "Because she wouldn't clean the mutton-birds."
In 1826 the Hobart Town Gazette claims, in relation to the Straits, "How truly appalling to the contemplative mind was the renewed and alarming accounts of those miserable hordes, compared with whose conduct we consider the ignorant and wild natives of the mountains of Van Diemen's Land innocent and happy!"
We have Mr. Robinson's authority for the statement that a wretched man, named Harrington, had stolen a dozen women and placed them on different islands to work for him. Upon finding insufficient labour done, he would, upon his return, tie them to trees for twenty-four hours in succession, flogging them from time to time. He has been known to kill them in cool blood when stubborn to his will. Captain Stokes tells us of a brutal sealer who volunteered a passage of his autobiography:—"He confessed," says the Captain, "that he kept the poor creature chained up like a wild beast, and whenever he wanted
