the herd of Mr. J. Beaumont, at the Tea Tree Brush, and have not been since heard of." On the dreary Salt Pan Plains—so called from salt being found at the bottom of dried-up lagoons there—a bullock-dray party were that year stopped by fifty dark marauders. A shot from a pistol frightened off the wild men to their scrub. This led the editor sagely to observe: "This makes good an old adage, 'That no man ought to go in the woods without his gun.'" A little later, October 19th, that gentleman volunteers his counsel: "We would caution persons travelling between the Settlement (Hobart Town) and Port Dalrymple (Launceston) not to proceed without fire-arms, as from the late hostile manner evinced by the Natives much danger may be apprehended."
The next year is no great improvement upon the last, for the paper has two misdemeanours to record. That in March was an attack upon a cart by three civilized Blacks. These tutored individuals profited by their residence among convicts, in going upon their expedition with suitable arms, like white Bushrangers. They stuck up the travellers, and robbed them, at the Green Water Holes, afterwards known as the pretty township of Greenponds, about thirty miles north of the capital. The other attack is characteristically narrated by the Press of May 25th, 1817:—
"On Saturday last, whilst Robert Rosne, overseer to Captain Jeffreys, was searching for sheep strayed from his flock, he promiscuously came upon fifteen native women and children assembled around a fire on the Sweet-water Hills. Considering them to be an inoffensive tribe, and his mind dwelling on his pursuit, he carelessly approached them to light his pipe, pleased with his reception. But upon leaving this peaceable group he met with a number of savage men, whose ferocity had been nearly his death. One of these untutored beings hove a stone at him, which struck him violently on the mouth, and staggered him. But little time was given him to recover from this blow, when an ill-fated volley of stones dislocated his shoulder, and by repeated hostility severely bruised him. Fortunately, however, he was suffered to leave them alive.' I found this paragraph copied into the Sydney Gazette of June 7th.
The year 1817 was signalized by the romance of Michael Howe and the native girl Mary Cockerell. The desperate
