location.  The character and spirit of these people is entirely misunderstood and undervalued by the learned in England, and the degraded position in the scale of the human species into which they have been put, has, I feel assured, been in consequence of the little intercourse that had taken place between the first navigators and the aborigines of the Australian Continent.  I have seen them under every variety of circumstances—­have come suddenly upon them in a state of uncontrolled freedom—­have passed tribe after tribe under the protection of envoys—­have visited them in their huts—­have mixed with them in their camps, and have seen them in their intercourse with Europeans, and I am, in candour, obliged to confess that the most unfavourable light in which I have seen them, has been when mixed up with Europeans.

That the natives of the interior have made frequent attacks on the stations of the settlers I have no doubt; very likely, in some instances, they have done so without any direct provocation, but we must not forget their position or the consequences of the extension of boundaries of location to the aborigines themselves.  The more ground our flocks and herds occupy, the more circumscribed become the haunts of the savage.  Not only is this the inevitable consequence, but he sees the intruder running down his game with dogs of unequalled strength and swiftness, and deplores the destruction of his means of subsistence.  The cattle tread down the herbs which at one season of the year constituted his food.  The gun, with its sharp report, drives the wild fowl from the creeks, and the unhappy aborigine is driven to despair.  He has no country on which to fall back.  The next tribe will not permit him to occupy their territory.  In such a state what is he to do?  Is it a matter of surprise that in the confidence of numbers he should seek to drive those who have intruded on him back again, and endeavour to recover possession of his lost domain?  It might be that the parties concerned were not conscious of the injury they were inflicting, but even that fact would not lessen the fancied right of the native to repossess himself of his lost territory.  Yet on the other hand we cannot condemn resistance on the part of the white man; for it would be unjust to overlook the fearful position in which they are placed, and the terrible appearance of a party of savages working themselves up to the perpetration of indiscriminate slaughter.  No doubt many parties have gone to take up stations in the interior, with the honest intention of keeping on good terms with the natives, and who in accordance with such resolution have treated them with hospitality and consideration; but, it unfortunately happens that a prolonged intercourse with the Europeans weakens and at length destroys those feelings of awe and uncertainty with which they were at first regarded.  The natives find that they are men like themselves, and that their intrusion is an injury, and they perhaps