Mr. Rowland, in his book “The New Nation,” tells an amazing story, which I cannot resist repeating here, from the simple fact that it shows so plainly the way that the wits of the black fellows are, in some cases, more than equally balanced against those of the white. In the time of Governor Arthur a drive of natives was attempted, so that they might be separated from the white populace in camps under close supervision, and the constant evils of massacre and outrage between the two races be put an end to. Some 2,000 soldiers, convicts, and settlers were engaged for the task, and a cordon was slowly drawn, in the toils of which it was implicitly believed that every single native in the district must of necessity be confined. Some £30,000 were spent over this human net, with the idea that, once drawn, all the troubles with the natives would be for ever at an end. At last, after many days, the sides of the vast semicircle closed one upon another, and amid the breathless excitement of the entire colony the catch was counted—one boy and one man, at £15,000 a head. It is odd, in the face of the strenuous All-White Australian policy of to-day, to find that at one time—in South Australia, at least—there was an idea that all the difficulties between the blacks and whites could be settled by intermarriage—an idea even then, I should imagine, held only by the minority, though, unfortunately, they happened in this instance to be representatives of the Crown—and a regulation was actually passed by which any white man marrying a lubra got a grant of ten acres of otherwise free ground. Just about as much as a lubra could work, I suppose they thought. Nowadays marriage with the blacks is not even thought of—much less provided for—though any tampering with a black woman on the part of a white is regarded as a criminal offence, and is punishable by imprisonment; while the sooner all lubras in the Northern Territory are separated into strictly guarded native settlements, the better, judging from appalling medical reports which occasionally reach the public ear. In Victoria nowadays the black fellows are few, and ravaged by the diseases which the white man has brought to them, and by smallpox and consumption. But in Queensland and the Northern Territory they are more numerous, more virile, and more like their old selves, and therefore it is to the people who have known them in these places that we must turn to satisfy any curiosity or human interest that we may feel; for humanity to Mrs. Æneas Gunn’s beautiful and sympathetic books, “The Little Black Princess” and “The Never, Never Land,” and for more exact and scientific knowledge to Professor Gregory’s book, “The Dead Heart of Australia,” among many others.