[Footnote 8: Select Committee of the House of Commons on Transportation, August, 1838.] [Footnote 9: Despatch to Colonial Office, entitled "Administration of Justice at Norfolk Island, November, 1838."] [Footnote 10: Secondary Punishments discussed by an Emigrant of 1821.--_Launceston Advertiser_.] [Footnote 11: History of Van Diemen's Land from 1820 to 1835.] [Footnote 12: _Sydney Gazette._] [Footnote 13: Dispatch of Governor Bourke to the Colonial Office, 1835.] [Footnote 14: Select Committee of the House of Commons on Transportation, July, 1837.] [Footnote 15: Commission of Enquiry into the state of the colony of New South Wales, 1822.] CHAPTER II. Van Diemen's Land; The First Bushranger; Mike Howe, the King of the Ranges; The Raid on the Blacks; The Black War; Musquito; Outrages by the Blacks; Brutal Treatment of Blacks by Bushrangers; A War of Reprisals; Gigantic Scheme to Capture the Blacks; A Cordon Drawn Round the Disaffected District; Details of the Scheme; Its Failure; Only Two Blacks Captured; Estimated Cost; Fate of the Blacks. The first settlement in Van Diemen's Land was founded in 1803, when a penal establishment, to which the more refractory of the prisoners in Sydney might be despatched, was founded on the banks of the River Derwent. Subsequently other penal stations were opened, and of these we shall hear later. The island continued to be the chief penal establishment of New South Wales until 1825, when it was erected into an independent colony. The first shipment of convicts, direct from England to Van Diemen's Land, took place in 1823, and from that date, until transportation to the island finally ceased, in 1853, 64,306 convicts were sent to that colony from the British Isles. The number sent previously from New South Wales was not large, nevertheless it included the majority of the most turbulent of the convicts and relieved the mother colony of their charge and control. The island was in fact "nothing but a jail on a large scale."[16] The early conditions in the colony appear to have been favourable to bushranging. In 1805 there was such a dearth of food stuffs, owing to the non-arrival of store ships from Sydney, that a famine appeared to be imminent and, to relieve the store, the Lieutenant Governor ordered the liberation of the convicts and sent them into the woods to catch kangaroo and other wild animals for food. When the stores arrived and food became plentiful, the attempts to recall the convicts were only partially successful. Many had learned how to subsist in the bush and disregarded the proclamations issued by the Lieutenant Governor ordering them to return to work. At first the bushrangers or bolters were similar to those of New South Wales and contented themselves with petty thefts. The first proclamation in which reference is made to "a gang of bushrangers" was published in the Hobart Town _Gazette_ by Lieutenant Governor Davey and dated September 10th, 1810. It offered rewards and