good-will, enjoining all parties under your government to live in amity and kindness with them; and if any person shall exercise any acts of violence against them, or shall wantonly give them any interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, you are to cause such offender to be brought to punishment, according to the degree of the offence."
This despatch, at least, exonerates the home authorities from the charge of indifference to the welfare of the Aborigines, while utterly oblivious of their rights to the land, as the humane nobleman was then instructing Captain Collins to appropriate it without consideration. "The order of Lord Hobart stands alone," observes the Rev. John West; "it was the record of intention, not a development of government." Again he writes: "The success of humane suggestions depended on the doubtful concurrence of ignorant cotters and wandering shepherds."
But before the first Governor of Van Diemen's Land established his quarters, the unhappy collision between the Whites and the Blacks had taken place by the river Derwent.
The Calcutta and Ocean had been sent to organize a colony on the shores of Port Phillip. Arriving there in October 1803, the commanding officer saw fit in three months, with the approval of the Governor-in-Chief at Sydney, to remove his establishment to the south of Van Diemen's Land. But before such an event was contemplated, the glowing accounts brought by Messrs. Bass and Flinders to Port Jackson, about the fine climate and country near the river Derwent, had induced the Governor of New South Wales to send a small military party, with some prisoner- workmen, to arrange there for the formation of a new penal settlement. These proceeded a little way up this noble stream, then landed on the sterile and ill-watered left bank, and encamped at Bestdown, now corrupted to Risdon, some five miles from Hobart Town, and on the opposite side of the river.
Van Diemen's Land had also been taken possession of on the northern side, at Port Dalrymple, before the Derwent post was occupied. I copied the following from the Sydney Muster Roll, dated March 29th, 1803: "It being expedient to establish His Magesty's right to Van Diemen's Land, his Excellency has been pleased to direct Lieutenant John Bowen of H.M. ship Glatton to form a settlement on that island," &c.
