Mr. Anstey, and therefore the Government, no less by the regularity and voluminous nature of his reports, than by his dashing activity. A clever, shrewd, but calculating old man, he secured the approval of a few, but earned the indifference or dislike of many. Mr. Robinson in vain endeavoured to dislodge him from the confidence of Mr. Anstey. Others stormed and threatened. He still held on in triumph. But when useful no longer, he was suffered to sink into obscurity, whither his old habits of intemperance had been gradually leading him. An article in a paper would now and then sparkle with his old fire, and amuse by its eccentricity.
After his return from his Native hunting, he prepared a record of his own experience in the Bush, detailing circumstances connected with the "Black War." This manuscript he presented to Dr. Braim, afterwards the learned and much esteemed Archdeacon of Portland, in the colony of Victoria, who very generously gave it to me, in order to assist me with some materials for the present work.
Mr. Jorgenson from the first took a correct view of the disorderly movements of the Roving Parties. These were driving the Natives hither and thither, without any settled and united plan of action. As he properly observed, when addressing his patron, Mr. Anstey, "We should never drive an enemy (unless we absolutely want to get rid of him) from the place where we know him to be, to places where we cannot easily trace him, much less from such a district as Swanport into the interior, where the Natives, if attacked or defeated, might take the selection whether they would fly to the eastward or westward." He proposed the adoption of the Fabian system, "slow and cautious;" knowing that the Government, in doing so, "must bear the taunts of disaffected squatters, and the gloomy ill-will of assigned servants." Both masters and men had been sufficiently tried by their troubles with the Aborigines, and wanted a prompt and certain cure applied.
In a well-written paper he unfolds the various causes of the want of success in the existing arrangements. He thus describes them:—
"1st. Want of a plan of combined operations.
"2d. A total absence of discipline.
"3d. Inveterate laziness, which induces the parties to proceed
