The treatment of the native races has always been a difficult question. Whenever new districts were settled, the blacks had to move on to make room; the result was war between the races. The white race were the aggressors, as they were the invaders of the blacks' hunting territory. The pioneers cannot be condemned for taking the law into their own hands and defending themselves in the only way open to them, for the blacks own no law themselves but the law of might. The protection of outside districts by the Native Police, was the only course open, although the system cannot very well be defended any more than what was done under it can be. The white pioneers were harder on the blacks in the way of reprisals when they were forced to deal with them for spearing their men or their cattle or horses even than the Native Police. But how were property and the lives of stockmen, shepherds, and prospectors in the north to be protected unless by some summary system of retribution by Native Police or bands of pioneers? The vices and diseases of the white race have been far more fatal to the blacks than the rifles of the pioneers, more particularly when they were allowed about the towns, where they always exhibit the worst traits of their character, becoming miserable creatures, useless for any purpose, and an eyesore to everyone. Those employed on stations as stockriders and horse-hunters become very useful and clever at the business, having a special aptitude for working among stock, and they are, as a rule, well treated, clothed, and fed. The Northern Peninsula up to Cape York is the only territory in Queensland where the natives may still be found in their original state, and on some of the rivers flowing into the Gulf they are still numerous. Their cave drawings show their taste for drawing or sketching to have been of the rudest; just a few marks on their boomerangs, line drawings on water koolimans, and some attempts at drawing figures on rocks in caves are all that have been discovered. The drawings are found wherever sandstone caves are found, and many of these are to be met with on the range about the Normanby River, near Cooktown, where the steep cliffs have been eaten into by the weather or by landslips, leaving hollows or caves in which the blacks have camped and ornamented with figures rudely drawn and coloured with red ochre or pipeclay; many of these drawings represent nothing at all; in some a hand is drawn, occasionally an attempt at some bird, or animal, or tree. Sir George Grey describes some elaborate drawings on the north-west coast of Australia found in caves of a similar nature, and large numbers are found on the coast near the Roper River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and at Limmen's Bight, in the hollows of rocks, where, sheltered from the weather, the face of the stone is entirely covered with their rude attempts.