From the evidence I have adduced it will be seen that the early bushrangers were very numerous. "In one case it became known," said Mr. James Macarthur, "that a gang of about sixty convicts, employed in the Government gangs in Liverpool, intended to break out on a certain night and take to the bush. It was considered advisable to allow them to break out, proper precautions having been made to capture them. It was the intention to attack our farming stations at Camden. We armed twelve of the best-conducted of our convict servants, but the absconders found that their design had been discovered and did not attempt to put it in force."[14] Thus the bushrangers did not always go out singly, or in twos or threes. Mr. J.T. Bigge says: "At Windsor, and in the adjoining districts, the offence termed bushranging, or absconding in the woods, and living upon plunder and the robbing of orchards, are most prevalent.... At Emu Plains, or the district of Evan, gambling, absence from work, insolence to overseers, neglect of work, and stealing, are the most common offences.... As the population of New South Wales has, until lately, been virtually limited to the occupation of a small tract of land that lies between the Blue Mountains and the sea, and as few temptations to plunder existed in the tracts contiguous to these boundaries, excepting those that are afforded by the wild cattle in the cow-pastures, the offence of bushranging, or continued absence in the woods, has not of late been common. Instances have occurred of the departure of convicts for the purpose of traversing the country with a view to escape, of the escape of some from Newcastle, sent thither for punishment, and their wandering and temporary existence in the vicinity of Windsor; and latterly, a few instances of escape from the road parties in the districts of Liverpool and Bathurst; but there has been no systematic or continued efforts of desperate convicts to defy the attempts of the local Government in New South Wales, or to subsist by plunder, such as have existed until a very late period in Van Diemen's Land."[15] It is in Van Diemen's Land, therefore, that our story of the more serious phases of bushranging first begins. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Evidence of Sir Francis Forbes, Chief Justice of New South Wales. Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, July, 1837.] [Footnote 2: Despatch from Governor Macquarie to Earl Bathurst, June 28, 1813.] [Footnote 3: _Sydney Gazette_, November 20, 1830.] [Footnote 4: Commission of Enquiry into the state of the colony of New South Wales, 1822.] [Footnote 5: Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Transportation, July, 1837.] [Footnote 6: Report by Captain Maconochie, forwarded to the Colonial Office by Sir John Franklin, October 7th, 1837.] [Footnote 7: Select Committee of the House of Commons on Transportation, August, 1838.]