the general experience of bushmen, the settler may have been justified in killing the black. He may have been simply treating him according to the blackfellow's own rule in war time. But although we may acquit the settler of blame by such reasoning, the existence of such conditions as to necessitate such a war is not the less deplorable. The whites all carried arms when travelling, and even while working about their homes. Shepherds and other workmen went in pairs. There was no safety anywhere outside the cleared lands round the larger towns. Reviewing the whole situation from our present standpoint, it is difficult to say what other measures could have been adopted than those tried by the Government. The authorities were apparently incapable of controlling the bushrangers, nor could they prevent convicts from running away, and these outlaws appear to have always considered the blacks as fair game. Mr. Robertson tells us that a convict known as "Carrots" boasted shortly before his death that, "having killed a native in his attempt to carry off the black's wife, he cut off the dead man's head and obliged the woman to go with him carrying it suspended round her neck."[24] Is it any wonder that even such "passive and inoffensive creatures" as the Van Diemen's Land blacks are said to have been, should have been aroused to fury by such methods? But although the Government had no control over the convicts in the bush, and such outrages as this were not known of until long after they had occurred, it can scarcely be said that even Governor Arthur, in spite of his earnest desire to protect the blacks, was altogether blameless. The whole policy of the Government in relation to the blacks was weak and vacillating. Governor Arthur promised a native, known as Teague, a boat on condition that he should assist in the capture of some bushrangers. The black performed his share of the work, but he never got his boat, and is said to have fretted himself to death in consequence. The Sydney black, Musquito, was forced "into the bush" by the failure of the Government to protect him against the persecution due to the manner in which he had been employed in the service of that Government. In September, 1826, two blacks were hung in Hobart Town "to impress the others." Nothing could be more absurd than this, and it was far more barbarous a method of reprisal than the shooting of a "poor cowering black." But the Government was not even consistent in its savagery. At the trial of Eumarrah Mr. Robertson pleaded that the black was justified in resisting the invaders of his country in any and every way; and, on his undertaking to remove Eumarrah to Flinders Island, where he had collected about thirty-eight blacks under the charge of missionaries, the plea was accepted and the prisoner was handed over to him. By this time, however, the war had become so vindictive that even the authorities in London recognised that the blacks must be captured