and the less I say about the cleanliness of this neglected asylum the better. In fact, the edifice is as badly adapted for the purpose it is used for—a place of shelter for a people whom the viscissitudes of war have made us the natural guardians of—as could have been found.
In selecting a residence for them, it should have been remembered that they have not been nurtured like ourselves in houses, and the close unwholesome atmosphere of such low-roofed abodes must be peculiarly unsuited to a race of people, who, down to the time of their surrender, lived wholly abroad, breathing only the pure and uninfected air of their own glens.
This establishment is in a place so secluded, so completely away from all the chief thoroughfares of the island, and so rarely visited except by the inhabitants of the by-district it is placed in, chiefly sawyers and splitters, that I doubt if its very existence is known to the great bulk of the community; or that on the shores of an unfrequented bay are still to be found the remnants of those men who for so many years successfully held their ground against their powerful invaders, with a pertinacity that will long be remembered by the colonists; and if it is recorded of them that they committed many acts of aggression on the settlers, it will be at least admitted that it was not by their hands that the first blows were dealt, or the first blood drawn.[1] These circumstances, now that the strife is past, should make them the objects of our peculiar solicitude. Is there, then, nothing that we owe them beyond a naked sustenance and a deserted barrack? Should we be satisfied with voting them a few hundreds annually to prevent them dying of want? or at knowing they are at liberty to wander where they like in the bush, exposed to the demoralisation inseparable from constant contact with the restless community of bush sawyers, &c., whose acquaintance with the simple-minded women of the blacks is notoriously impure? or that we pay a non-resident superintendent to protect them, who might as well be in Spitzbergen as where he ever is, that is, absent from his post enjoying himself at head quarters? True, there are some inferior persons here, but whose care for the natives is confined, I believe, to the mere issue of such supplies as the Legislature allows the blacks and their dogs. But if it ever extends beyond this, all I can say is they are a greatly belied class.
It is a reproach to us that they are under no real supervision, and that nothing is done to raise them above their original condition, or rather that we have allowed them to sink still lower
- ↑ I had not read the Aboriginal Committee's Report when I wrote this.
