We also appointed a protector of the aborigines, Mr. G. A. Robinson, at a salary of 500 pounds per annum.  He took up his residence on the then sweet banks of the Yarra, and made excursions in various directions, compiling a dictionary.  He started on a tour in the month of April, 1844, making Alberton his first halting-place, and intending to reach Twofold Bay by way of Omeo.  But he found the country very difficult to travel; he had to swim his horse over many rivers, and finally he returned to Melbourne by way of Yass, having added no less than 8,000 words to his vocabulary of the native languages.  But the public journals spoke of his labours and his dictionary with contempt and derision.  They said, “Pshaw! a few mounted police, well armed, would effect more good among the aborigines in one month than the whole preaching mob of protectors in ten years.”

When a race of men is exterminated somebody ought to bear the blame, and the easiest way is to lay the fault at the door of the dead; they never reply.

When every blackfellow in South Gippsland, except old Darriman, was dead, Mr. Tyers explained his experience with the Government blankets.  They were now no longer required, as Darriman could obtain plenty of old clothes from charitable white men.  It had been the commissioner’s duty to give one blanket annually to each live native, and thus that garment became to him the Queen’s livery, and an emblem of civilisation; it raised the savage in the scale of humanity and encouraged him to take the first step in the march of progress.  His second step was into the grave.  The result of the gift of blankets was that the natives who received them ceased to clothe themselves with the skins of the kangaroo, the bear or opossum.  The rugs which they had been used to make for themselves would keep out the rain, and in them they could pass the wettest night or day in their mia-mias, warm and dry.  But the blankets we kindly gave them by way of saving our souls were manufactured for the colonial market, and would no more resist the rain than an old clothes-basket.  The consequence was that when the weather was cold and wet, the blackfellow and his blanket were also cold and wet, and he began to shiver; inflammation attacked his lungs, and rheumatism his limbs, and he soon went to that land where neither blankets nor rugs are required.  Mr. Tyers was of opinion that more blacks were killed by the blankets than by rum and bullets.

Government in Gippsland was advancing.  There were two justices of the peace, the commissioner, black and white police, a collector of customs, a pilot, and last of all, a parson—­parson Bean—­who quarrelled with his flock on the question of education.  The sheep refused to feed the shepherd; he had to shake the dust off his feet, and the salvation of souls was, as usual, postponed to a more convenient season.  At length Mr. Latrobe himself undertook to pay a visit to Gippsland.  He was a splendid horseman, had long limbs like King Edward Longshanks, and was in the habit of making dashing excursions with a couple of troopers to take cursory views of the country.  He set out in the month of May, 1844, and was introduced to the settlers in the following letter by “a brother squatter”: