Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/596

In transmitting the report to England, Arthur wrote (15 th April 1830) that Robinson in the south-west, and Batman on the north-east coast, had recently had friendly meetings with the "miserable beings" who were the victims of "barbarity of railway convicts or detached stock-keepers." Sir George Murray approved the conduct of the Governor, and urged him "in the strongest manner to continue to use the utmost endeavours to give to the intercourse between (settlers and aborigines) a less hostile character, and to employ every means which kindness, humanity, and justice can suggest to reclaim the natives from their original savage life."

But the past was inexorable. Blood would have blood. Few though they were, the activity of the hunted savages made up for want of numbers. While Robinson in the winter of 1830 succeeded in communicating amicably with tribes on the north-west, fresh atrocities were perpetrated in the heart of the island, Eumarrah, a chief captured by Robinson, filled the cup of bitterness for the Governor. More than a year he was in durance. His

"apparently artless manner and strong protestations of attachment were confided in more and more, until at length I felt a confidence that he would be greatly instrumental in carrying into effect the measures so ardently desired for conciliation. I have continually had him at (Government House, . . . but, to my disappointment and sincere regret, he availed himself of the first moment to abscond, and has, I fear, rejoined his tribe with the moat hostile intentions. . . . Failing in every endeavour to conciliate, and the outrages of the savages being more daring, . . . the next measure we are bound to attempt is, I conceive, that which is now in progress, the earnest and hearty cooperation of the whole European population to capture them with the least possible destruction of life, or to drive them into Tasman's Peninsula."

Arthur was "not sanguine" about capturing, but he thought it feasible to "drive the savages" into the peninsula and guard its narrow neck.

On the 9th Sept. 1830, "the inhabitants of the colony at large" were called upon to aid the military. "All minor objects must for a time give way to this one great and engrossing pursuit." For months the scheme for the cordon across the island was in preparation. Twenty-six depots were made for provisions. Twenty-eight paragraphs of a Government Order imposed duties on the inhabitants