Then the Bricklayer—­that wonderful man—­proposed to go out into the wilderness, with no weapon but his tongue, and no protection but his honest eye and his humane heart; and track those embittered savages to their lairs in the gloomy forests and among the mountain snows.  Naturally, he was considered a crank.  But he was not quite that.  In fact, he was a good way short of that.  He was building upon his long and intimate knowledge of the native character.  The deriders of his project were right—­from their standpoint—­for they believed the natives to be mere wild beasts; and Robinson was right, from his standpoint—­for he believed the natives to be human beings.  The truth did really lie between the two.  The event proved that Robinson’s judgment was soundest; but about once a month for four years the event came near to giving the verdict to the deriders, for about that frequently Robinson barely escaped falling under the native spears.

But history shows that he had a thinking head, and was not a mere wild sentimentalist.  For instance, he wanted the war parties (called) in before he started unarmed upon his mission of peace.  He wanted the best chance of success—­not a half-chance.  And he was very willing to have help; and so, high rewards were advertised, for any who would go unarmed with him.  This opportunity was declined.  Robinson persuaded some tamed natives of both sexes to go with him—­a strong evidence of his persuasive powers, for those natives well knew that their destruction would be almost certain.  As it turned out, they had to face death over and over again.

Robinson and his little party had a difficult undertaking upon their hands.  They could not ride off, horseback, comfortably into the woods and call Leonidas and his 300 together for a talk and a treaty the following day; for the wild men were not in a body; they were scattered, immense distances apart, over regions so desolate that even the birds could not make a living with the chances offered—­scattered in groups of twenty, a dozen, half a dozen, even in groups of three.  And the mission must go on foot.  Mr. Bonwick furnishes a description of those horrible regions, whereby it will be seen that even fugitive gangs of the hardiest and choicest human devils the world has seen—­the convicts set apart to people the “Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station”—­were never able, but once, to survive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and struggling, and fainting and failing, ate each other, and died: 

“Onward, still onward, was the order of the indomitable Robinson.  No one ignorant of the western country of Tasmania can form a correct idea of the traveling difficulties.  While I was resident in Hobart Town, the Governor, Sir John Franklin, and his lady, undertook the western journey to Macquarrie Harbor, and suffered terribly.  One man who assisted to carry her ladyship through the swamps, gave me his bitter experience of its miseries.  Several