his compass with him, he was able to calculate distances by the rate of speed of his horse almost as accurately as if he had measured them with a chain.  These distances he committed to paper, and he gave to every squatter whose run he thus surveyed a description of his boundaries, together with a tracing from a chart of the district, which he began to make.  He allotted to Captain Macalister all the country which he claimed, and a dispute between Mr. William Pearson and Mr. John King was decided in favour of the latter.

It was reported in Sydney that Mr. Tyers was rather difficult of access, but it was believed he had given satisfaction to all and everyone with whom he had come in contact, except those expelled from the Old Port, and a few squatters who did not get as much land as they wanted.  There were also about a hundred escaped prisoners in the country, but these never complained that the commissioner was difficult of access.

The blacks were still troublesome, and I heard Mr. Tyers relate the measures taken by himself and his native police to suppress their irregularities.  He was informed that some cattle had been speared, and he rode away with his force to investigate the complaint.  He inspected the cattle killed or wounded, and then directed his black troopers to search for tracks, and this they did willingly and well.  Traces of natives were soon discovered, and their probable hiding-place in the scrub was pointed out to Mr. Tyers.  He therefore dismounted, and directing two of his black troopers armed with carbines to accompany him, he held a pistol in each hand and walked cautiously into the scrub.  The two black troopers discharged their carbines.  The commissioner had seen nothing to shoot at, but his blacks soon showed him two of the natives a few yards in front, both mortally wounded.  Mr. Tyers sent a report of the affair to the Government, and that was the end of it.

This manner of dealing with the native difficulty was adopted in the early days, and is still used under the name of “punitive expeditions.”  That judge who prayed to heaven in his wig and robes of office, said that the aborigines were subjects of the Queen, and that it was a mercy to them to be under her protection.  The mercy accorded to them was less than Jedburgh justice:  they were shot first, and not even tried afterwards.

The settlers expelled from the sandbank at the Old Port required some spot on which they could put up their huts without giving offence to the superior powers.  The Port Albert Company excised a township from their special survey, and called it Victoria; Mr. Robert Turnbull bought 160 acres, the present Port Albert, at 1 pound per acre, and offered sites for huts to the homeless at the rate of 1 pound per annum, on the condition that they carried on no business.  The stores were removed from the Old Port to the new one, and the first settlement in Gippsland was soon again overgrown with scrub and ferns.  Mr.