advantage or gratification of their masters. They have even been encouraged to perpetuate their barbarous customs. What, indeed, can be expected at the hands of men who, though nominally Christians, live in open violation of the principles of the Gospel, and have little claim to the appellation of Christians?"
It is not to be expected that the sealers in their course could avoid collisions with the Natives, and come off victorious on all occasions. Revenge for their wrongs the tribes would have. A party of sealers came to steal some women. Unguardedly they moored their boat for the night, and slept on the shore. The Natives, aware of the intention of their enemies, came stealthily upon them as they slept, and murdered them all. Tucker and five others were killed in an attempt to get off some gins, their former women, from Flinders; but, betrayed by a girl, they were similarly caught napping by indignant fathers and brothers.
Often were these rough boatmen the cause of outrages on the main. For injuries received from them, others and innocent ones of their countrymen suffered. One, who was among the most vindictive of the Blacks—the chief Montilangana—acknowledged, when on Flinders, having speared to death four females and seven men of the Europeans. But he had a strong motive for vengeance: he had seen, when a lad, his mother and his two sisters carried off with cruel violence by the sealers.
From a Sydney newspaper of 1824, the particulars of the following tragedy were learned. One Duncan Bell, the leader of a sealing crew, had two or three years before stolen a Tasmanian Native girl, with whom he continued to cohabit. In the month of October 1824, he endeavoured, through the medium of this young woman, to obtain temporary wives for his mates. She seemed perfectly agreeable to the scheme, and engaged to decoy some females of her tribe. Leaving their island home, therefore, the sealers rowed to that part of the main from which the girl had been stolen, and which, from prudent motives, they had since avoided. The captured beauty was with them in the boat, carrying her little child with her. She was landed upon the hunting-grounds of her tribe, and she proceeded in search of her people. After an absence of three days, she returned with the intelligence that she had succeeded in drawing some women near the spot, and that the next day they could be caught. That night she managed to secrete the only musket the Europeans
