“Gentlemen, look out.  The jackal of your oppressor has started on a tour.  For what purpose?  To see the isolated and miserable domiciles you occupy and the hard fare on which you subsist?  No! but to see if the oppressor can further apply the screw with success and impunity.  You have located yourselves upon lands at the risk of life and property, paying to the Government in license and assessment fees for protection which you have never received, and your quiesence under such a system of robbery has stimulated your oppressor to levy on you a still greater amount of taxation, not to advance your interests, but to replenish his exhausted treasury.  Should you strain your impoverished exchequer to entertain your (in a family sense) worthy superintendent, depend upon it he will recommend a more severe application of the screw.  Give him, therefore, your ordinary fare, salt junk and damper, or scabby mutton, with a pot of Jack the Painter’s tea, in a black pot stirred with a greasy knife.”

Mr. Latrobe and Sir George bore all the weight of public abuse, and it was heavy.  Now it is divided among many Ministers, each of whom carries his share with much patience, while our Governor’s days in the “Sunny South” are “days of pleasantness, and all his paths are peace.”

No gentleman could accept hospitality like that suggested by “a brother squatter,” and Mr. Latrobe sought refuge at the Port Albert Hotel, Glengarry’s imported house.  Messrs. Tyers, Raymond, McMillan, Macalister, and Reeve were pitching quoits at the rear of the building under the lee of the ti-tree scrub.  Davy, the pilot, was standing near on duty, looking for shipping with one eye and at the game with the other.  The gentlemen paused to watch the approaching horsemen.  Mr. Latrobe had the royal gift of remembering faces once seen; and he soon recognised all those present, even the pilot whom he had seen when he first arrived in Melbourne.  He shook hands with everyone, and enquired of Davy how he was getting on with the piloting.  He said:  “Now gentlemen, go on with your game.  I like quoits myself and I should be sorry to interrupt you.”  Then he went into the hotel and stayed there until morning.  He no doubt obtained some information from Mr. Tyers and his friends, but he went no further into the country.  Next morning he started with his two troopers on his return to Melbourne, and the other gentlemen mounted their horses to accompany him; but the “worthy superintendent” rode so fast that he left everyone behind and was soon out of sight, so his intended escort returned to port.  Mr. Latrobe’s view of Gippsland was very cursory.