idea flashed upon him, "all of a moment," as he afterwards expressed it, that eventually enabled him to pluck one of them quite to his mind.
To this end he either wrote a letter, or got some convict law clerk to do it for him, addressed to himself, purporting to be written by the executors of a lately deceased person. This letter, after acquainting him that a rich uncle of his had given up the ghost, proceeded to congratulate the fortunate Mr. Lowe on his accession to a considerable fortune, and concluded by advising either his immediate return to England with the necessary credentials of identity, or to forward a power of attorney to some friend to act for him, &c., &c. The letter was entrusted to a seaman in the plot who was returning to England, by whom it was posted in London, and in due time it reached the hands of the quondam convict, and incredible as it may appear to us now, he actually found someone to advance a good sum on the faith of this letter of advice, and Lowe having given the necessary acknowledgement of indebtedness, took ship to England, and has never been heard of from that day to this.
Since the foregoing narrative of the early history of the woman Truganini—the very last of the aboriginal people of Tasmania—went to the press, she too has "gone to her long home," having died on Tuesday the 8th of May, 1876, at the age of about sixty-four.
As it will be found in another part of this history of the extermination of the blacks, she was one of those whom Mr Robinson employed to induce them to surrender, and whom he never could have subdued but for her and a few others of her race. To him it undoubtedly is that the merit belongs of devising and executing the plans that led to their removal from the mainland of Tasmania; but to others, and chiefly Truganini, was entrusted the perilous duty of negotiating with the tribes to lay down their arms, and submit themselves to the paternal custody, such as it proved to be, of a Government happily long since extinct.
I hope there are none amongst the readers of this narrative who have not perceived, that in the performance of the task thus assigned her, she was powerless to evade it. Acting under the guidance of a man who, astute as he naturally was, was himself greviously deceived by false representations of the ulterior designs of the Government on the liberties of this people, which were doubtlessly communicated to his employees, she followed his leading almost necessarily. To this it has to be added, that
