A FORGOTTEN TRAGEDY
It is difficult for the inhabitants of settled districts in Australia, where the villages, surrounded by farms or grazing estates, are now as well ordered as in rural England, to realise the nature of outrages which, in earlier colonial days, not infrequently affrighted these sylvan shades. It is well, however, occasionally to recall the sterner conditions under which our pioneers lived. The half-explored wilds saw strange things, when émeutes with murder and robbery thrown in compelled decisive action. In the year 1836 immense areas in the interior, described officially as 'Waste Lands of the Crown,' were occupied by graziers under pastoral licenses. Caution was exercised in the granting of these desirable privileges. It was required by the Government of the day that only persons of approved good character should receive them. Being merely permissive, they were liable to be withdrawn from the holders for immoral or dishonest conduct. When it is considered that the men employed in guarding the flocks and herds in these limitless solitudes were, in the great majority of cases, prisoners of the Crown, or 'ticket-of-leave' men, whose partially-expired sentences entitled them to quasi-freedom, it is not surprising that horse- and cattle-stealing, highway robbery, ill-treatment of aboriginals, and even darker crimes were rife.
The labourers of the day were composed of three classes, officially described as free, bond, and 'free by servitude.' This last designation, obscure only to the newly-arrived colonist, meant that the individual thus privileged had served his full term of imprisonment, or such proportion of it as entitled him to freedom under certain restrictions. He was
