We are not to suppose from the wandering character of the life usually led by them, that these human beings have no notion of property in land. On the contrary, it is an opinion held by men best able to judge, and supported by sufficient proof, that, not only have the various tribes their fixed boundaries of hunting-ground, which they cannot cross without the risk of a quarrel with their neighbours, but that even individual persons possess property of this nature, which is handed down, according to certain laws, from father to son. A curious example of this strictness about property, exceeding even the ideas of Europeans upon the subject, was found upon the banks of the river Darling, where different tribes occupy different portions of the stream whence all equally derive the chief part of their subsistence. One of these tribes desired Major Mitchell's men to pour out the water which they had taken, as if it had belonged to them, and at the same time they dug a hole in the ground to receive it, when poured out. Nay, so strongly are the river chiefs possessed with a notion of the water being their own, that they have been seen, on receiving a tomahawk, to point to the stream, signifying that the strangers were at liberty to take water from it. Indeed, the main difference between the property of the native and that of the colonist, consists in the very dissimilar uses to which the parties apply their possessions. The one holds his lands for a cattle-run or a farm, the other employs his in feeding kangaroos or in growing wild roots. But both agree in punishing intruders, both profess alike to esteem the rights of property to be sacred; and yet how questionable, how opposite to these professions must the conduct of Europeans seem, when they fix themselves upon certain spots, without taking any notice of the vested rights of the former inhabitants, and then threaten, or even shoot them, if they are found lingering among their old haunts, upon their own estates! Or, if no open violence is offered, "the sheep and cattle," to borrow the words of a kind-hearted traveller, "fill the green pastures, where the kangaroo was accustomed to range until the stranger came from distant lands, and claimed the soil." The first inhabitants, unless they remove beyond the limits of the colony, are hemmed in by the power of the white population, and deprived of the liberty of wandering at will through their native wilds, and compelled to seek shelter in close thickets and rocky fastnesses; where, however, if they can find a home, they have great difficulty in finding a subsistence, for their chief support, the kangaroo, is either destroyed or banished. In 1772, when the French discoverer, Monsieur Marion, was exploring Van Dieman's Land, he found the coast well inhabited, as the fires by day and night bore witness, and on anchoring in Frederic Hendrick's Bay, about thirty men assembled upon the shore.