Can as much be said of any year since? I think not."
In the year 1844 Mr. Latrobe was required to send to the Council in
Sydney a return of all blacks and whites killed in the Port Phillip
district since its first settlement. He said forty whites had been
killed by the blacks, and one hundred and thirteen blacks had been
reported as killed by the whites; but he added, "the return must not
be looked upon as correct with respect to the number of aborigines
killed." The reason is plain. When a white man murdered a few
blacks it was not likely that he would put his neck into the
hangman's noose by making a formal report of his exploit to Mr.
Latrobe. All the surviving blackfellow could say was: "Quamby dead
--long time--white-fellow--plenty--shoot 'em."
He related in eight words the decline and fall of his race more truly
than the white man could do it in eight volumes.
It is not so easy a task to justify the white men who assisted the
squatters to diminish the numbers of their stock. They were
principally convicts who had served their sentences, or part of them,
in the island, and had come over to Gippsland in cattle vessels.
Some of them lived honestly, about one hundred of them disappeared
when the Commissioner of Crown Lands arrived with his black and white
police, and a few of the most enterprising spirits adopted the
calling of cattle stealers, for which business they found special
facilities in the two special surveys.
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