were molested by blacks or whites the Governor would take their part. It was clearly pointed out that if they did not procure enough food for their own consumption they must go without. Yet if they wished to leave Mount Eliza they could do so, and come back at their leisure. While there, however, they must behave well, and do as Mr. Armstrong directed them, and if they were not orderly in their habits Mr. Armstrong would not allow them to remain with him. This institution became momentarily popular.
Well-informed people in Great Britain were taking some interest in the results of colonisation in Australia. They were particularly interested in the effects which civilisation had on the aboriginal race. Information was circulated concerning the frays which took place between white and black, and all matters dealing with the condition and habits of the natives were read with special eagerness by church people. It was proposed, both in Glasgow and Dublin, that missionaries should be sent by the Church Missionary Society to the natives of Western Australia. In 1834 these proposals were set aside, as China had been chosen as the next station for their operations. The failure of these applications led to the formation, in Dublin, of a society called the Swan River Mission, the projected objects of which were to send out missionaries of the Church of England, and also schoolmasters, to the aborigines and the colonists. A strong committee was elected to make the necessary arrangements, but owing to difficulties, the basis of the society's preliminary operations was removed from Dublin to London.
The natives early in 1835 showed a charming and humane side to their character. These children of the bush were possessed of such keen perceptive faculties as are impossible to Europeans. Immured in their lonely vastnesses, dependent for their food on their senses, and impelled by their laws to the fine exercise of them, they possessed characteristics which from time to time have proved invaluable to colonists. In the art of tracking game or enemies, and in the fine sense of sound, the Red Indians themselves were not their masters. Observant to the nicety of perfection, not one indication on sand or herbage or bushes escaped them; and they could follow the tortuous wanderings of an enemy or of a lost person as closely as the European detective follows the footsteps of a convict a few yards ahead of him.
The Perth Gazette of 3rd January recounts the story of the adventures of a lost child and of the remarkable adroitness of the natives in following its tracks until the little one was discovered. The incident proved to colonists that the natives were of considerable use in the police force, and they did not fail to largely avail themselves of their assistance thenceforth. On the 11th December, 1834, two children of Mr. Hall, on the Murray, went down to the sea-beach to watch some soldiers fishing. One returned home soon after noon, but the other lost his way in the bush. At four o'clock next morning Mr. Norcott, accompanied by two white men and the natives Migo and Mollydobbin, who were attached to the mounted police corps, went out in search of the child. They soon came upon his track along the beach to the northward. The Europeans were quickly nonplussed, for a fresh wind had covered up the track with sand. Not so the natives. Their practised eyes traced the boy's wanderings four miles along the beach, when they intimated that he had turned into the bush. They followed his movements with astonishing minuteness, and led the way into an almost impenetrable thicket, through which they had to crawl on hands and knees. Loose shifting sand lay on the clear spots amid the bush, and thus their task was fraught with the utmost difficulty.
After about an hour's time the beach was regained, for the boy had only made a circuit inland of 400 yards. There the track was again distinct, and for five more miles, with occasional turnings in and out of the bush, they traced the erratic steps of the poor lad. Eventually even the natives were momentarily at fault, for the boy had entered another thicket which it was almost impossible for them to penetrate. But presently they cried out "me meyal geena," meaning "I see the footmarks." Their progress was now watched with the intensest interest by the white men, who viewed with ever-increasing amazement their acute perception. Through a dense mass of matted bush they forced their curious way, and when Mr. Norcott began to despair of success, the natives inspired his confidence by holding up a cap which was known to belong to the child. Again the track led along the beach until some sand cliffs were reached, where the wanderer had gone to an elevated spot. The wind had entirely effaced all marks of his feet in the loose sand, and it was an anxious moment for the search party. Migo was not daunted. Descending the hill, he persisted in making a circuit at its base, and after a little time he fell in with the track. But even here sand had obliterated most of the footsteps, and for nearly two hours the natives alternately lost and refound them. The party had nearly given up all hope of recovering the child when Mollydobbin saw a track on the side of a deep ravine. The natives went down into the ravine and commenced hallooing, hoping that the child might be asleep in the bush. Next they had to penetrate bushes and thickets more dense than any previous ones, and once again they emerged on the beach. Observing by the tracks that the child had been there but recently they pushed on with great eagerness, and at a distance of about 300 yards were delighted and gratified to observe the boy lying asleep on the beach, his legs idly washed by the surf. Another hour and probably the child would have perished, for the tide was rapidly coming in. Mr. Norcott galloped up to him, and calling him by name, the boy awoke and instantly jumped up.
The joy and delight of the two natives are said to have been beyond description. They had walked for nearly twenty-two miles with their eyes constantly fixed on the ground for ten consecutive hours, and they evinced such great anxiety as to the little one's fate that Mr. Norcott says he could not but applaud the noble disposition of these two savages.
The white people were now using the services of the blacks in work about their farms, paying them in food. When a party of natives appeared at a homestead, the settler gave them a few hours' work. The first trouble in 1835 was experienced at York, where the settlers were pestered with the constant presence of the natives, and suffered slightly in the loss of stock at their hands. On the 25th March numerous natives assembled in Perth. The occasion was a dispute over the adjustment of native land. One tribe had trespassed and killed wallabies on the property of another. The end of the dispute was a battle, when fifteen natives were speared, mostly in the legs, and several single combats were fought. The wounded bore their pain with remarkable stoicism. Numbers of white men stood afar off and watched the progress of this primitive scene.
In comparison with the troubles of 1834, the natives were exceedingly quiet in 1835, and very few depredations were
