such a commerce, quarrels have happened, and murders been perpetrated, we may trace these as much to the depraved taste of the aboriginal as to the moral turpitude of the Whites." His harsh estimate of their character is thus summed up: "Such a race merits little compassion, unless it should be said that the greatest degree of sin is entitled to the highest degree of compassion."
In treating of this subject, I feel with Dr. Coke, writer of the work on the West Indies, that "the author who records their miseries will be almost deemed an incredible writer; and while his narrative will be perused with astonishment, it will perhaps be associated with the marvellous, and consigned to the shelves of romance." The catalogue, though one of horrors, is too important to be altogether passed by. A few stories can be strung together without attention to order of time.
In July 1827, a man was killed by the Blacks up in the country, near the Western Tiers. He had been long familiar with the tribe, having lived among the Natives of New Holland for some years, but had incurred their displeasure at last. The neighbouring settlers gathered together for a chase after the criminals, and took revenge indeed for the death of one; for the Colonial Times declares: "They report that there must be about sixty of them killed and wounded."
A party of the Richmond police were passing through the Bush in 1827, when a tribe, seeing them, got up on a hill and threw stones upon them. The others fired in return, and then charged them with the bayonet. We have Mr. G. A. Robinson's authority for stating that "a party of military and constables got a number of Natives between two perpendicular rocks, on a sort of shelf, and killed seventy of them, dragging the women and children from the crevices of the rocks, and dashing out their brains."
A wretched man, named Ibbens, was accustomed to go persistently after the Eastern tribe with a double-barrelled gun, creeping among them at dusk, until he had killed the half of them. One man boasted that he had thrown an old woman upon the fire, and burnt her to death. The Colonial Times speaks on one occasion of a party of soldiers and others approaching within thirty yards of their night-fires, and killing "an immense quantity of the Blacks." Well might Dr. Marshall tell Lord Glenelg, "The
