falling in with a company of two hundred, in 1819, quietly camping on Mr. Archer's run, and of seeing that same year a score of Blacks assisting at Mr. Bonner's farm in harvest time, receiving potatoes and damper for payment. Even the Hobart Town Gazette, so late as 1824, contemplating the quiet times, writes: "Perhaps, taken collectively, the sable Natives of this colony are the most peaceful creatures in the world."
But from even early days occasional outbreaks took place. The difference, however, between these and the outrages of later times, lay in the fact that, while most of the former were confined to petty thieving, the latter were more frequently from motives of hatred and revenge, and parts of a combined movement of aggression.
The arrest of amicable relations was owing, as has been stated, to interference with the gins, and the stealing of children. We have been so accustomed to associate kidnapping with roving gipsies, wild Indians, and savage Tartars, as to doubt the charge when attached to our own countrymen. Yet the very proclamations of Government attest to the veracity of the indictment. The first chaplain took some interest in the people; he often had a festive gathering at his house, and described them as being always well behaved. He has had visits of twenty at a time at his cottage. But, after 1814, the numbers dropped off, until his visitors deserted him and his larder altogether. Investigating the cause of the change, he was told by the Natives that they would not go to town again because bad men stole their picaninnies.
When Governor Macquarie returned to Sydney after his memorable tour through the island of his dependency, he issued a Public Notice, June 18th, 1814, thanking the settlers of Van Diemen's Land for their loyal attention, and praising them for their enterprise and progress; but the condition of the Aborigines of the little colony touched his humane heart, and stirred his generous impulses to action. Nobly did he, as Governor-General of the various settlements in those southern parts, labour for the good of the dark race. It was the constant exhibition of brutality toward them that aroused his anger, and called forth the following strong language in this Proclamation, when alluding to some case:—
"Although it was not sufficiently clear and satisfactory to
