In these expeditions, natives were often the guides, and were enabled to follow up the track of their countrymen, when the English were confounded. In those troublesome times, individuals of the tribes were often left behind. It was the custom to fix small pieces of stick at short distances, to assist the stragglers in rejoining their main body. For a time, these signals being understood by the black guides, brought them quickly on the route of the fugitives; but the guides soon betrayed or exhausted this device, and though they continued to leave direction sticks, they reversed their meaning, and distracted their pursuers. The Tasmanian allies themselves, were exceedingly uncertain, and prone to escape. They disclosed to their countrymen the plans adopted for their capture, related the expeditions they had witnessed, and added new excitements to rage. Sydney natives were obtained, to assist in the capture: Pigeon and John Crook, under the care of Mr. Batman, promoted the success of the undertaking. Pigeon narrowly escaped being shot: he wandered from his party, and was seen by a stockman in a tree, who fired, in spite of his endeavours to explain. Pigeon then slipped down, and reached his friends, only in time to avoid the second charge of his pertinacious antagonist. The story is worth relating, not on account of the actors, but because it displays how cheap, at that hour, was the life of a native, although peaceably living in the forests of his country. Among those distinguished for the knowledge of the bush, compassion for the natives, and skill in pursuing them, Mr. Batman was the subject of frequent and approving mention. It is said by Backhouse, that his parties killed thirty, and captured five. Occasionally, natives were found in the neighbourhood of Ben Lomond. In one instance, it is recorded, that ten fell, and that two were taken; and in another, that forty received the fire, and left behind them trails of blood, but no captives. On another, fifteen or sixteen were said to fall, out of a party of seventy: three hundred buck shot were poured into an encampment, at twenty yards distance. It would be endless to recite conflicts of this kind: they probably were but a multiplication of a short bulletin, referring to an expedition--"_five shot, and one taken_." Looked at alone, even in the mildest form, these measures are revolting; but to Mr. Batman belongs the praise of mingling humanity with severity: of perceiving human affections in the creatures he was commissioned to resist. His mission cannot be compared with that of his successor, but he certainly began in the midst of conflict and bloodshed, to try the softer influences of conciliation and charity. He received a party into his house, endeavoured to win their regard; fed, clothed, and soothed them; and when some of them disappointed his hopes, by throwing off their garments and retiring into the bush, he still persevered in attempting their reclamation.