with my wife, don't you think if I could fall in with him that I wouldn't crack his head for him? I would so."
Old Tom Ward, who was transported in 1818, and who gave me some striking records of the past, said that when up the country in 1820, the stock-keepers of Mr. Stocker's, of Salt Pan Plains, were guilty of abominable conduct toward two Native women. These afterwards told their Coolies or husbands, and the tribe surrounded the hut, and killed two men out of the three. Instances are upon record of murders committed solely with the view of seizing upon the females of a Mob. A lady once told me of a man-servant of hers getting speared after offering some insult to a gin. He narrowly escaped with his life, being long confined to the hut. Repeated cases were known of brutal stock-keepers and shepherds emasculating the males. Horror-stricken by tales of men such as these, the benevolent Mr. Backhouse exclaimed, "They were of such a character, as to remove any wonder at the determination of these injured people to try to drive from their land a race of men, among whom were persons guilty of such deeds."
The Bushrangers of Van Diemen's Land were sore foes to the Aborigines, from a natural cruelty of disposition, and from a fancied fear of their divulging the site of their brigand retreat. Lemon and others, when in a merry mood, bound them to trees, and used them as targets for practice. It was an ex-Bushranger who confessed to me that he would "as leave shoot them as so many sparrows." Another worthy, who had left his country for his country's good, above fifty years ago, declared to me that he heard from a friend of Michael Howe, that that celebrated ruffian would lay down his musket to induce the Blacks to come toward him, but that on their approach he would fire at them from his retreat, pulling the trigger with his toes. The Bushranger Dunn carried off Native women to his lair, and cruelly abused them. So exasperated were the men against the Whites, on account of the cruelty of that wretched outlaw, that they murdered several of the neighbouring and inoffensive settlers. Mr. Melville, the present living father of the press of Tasmania, has the following story in his sketch of the country. "The Bushranger Carrots killed a black fellow, and seized his gin; then cutting off the man's head, the brute fastened it round the wife's neck, and drove the weeping victim to his den." The
