eemed to increase their activity, moving to various
places with almost incredible swiftness. It is said, that they would
travel fifty miles in a day. Their superior knowledge of the country
enabled them to reach stations more remote in appearance than reality. A
colonist, of the present time, by better acquaintance with the road, can
pass in a few hours to places, once several days journey distant. Such
rapid progress may perhaps be doubted, but it was sufficient to give
them the appearance of ubiquity; and since they now were no longer
casual but habitual robbers, the havoc and alarm they created had rather
augmented, as their numbers declined. The colony, then prosperous in its
general affairs, was deeply depressed by their continued outrages:
shepherds would no longer tend their flocks, unless accompanied by armed
companions. On the slightest signal of the approaching foe, they would
flee with precipitation: ten times a day the quiet of domestic life
would be broken by the fears, feigned or real, of the workmen. If they
idled on the road, it was the blacks that retarded them: if they lost
provisions, the hut had been robbed by the blacks. Often, too, these
vexations were tinged with the ludicrous: the rumour would reach the
township that an unfortunate had been speared, who, when more closely
examined, was found dead drunk. Some imaginative settler would return,
with the sure information that the blacks were lurking in the woods: the
cautious whites, well armed and skilfully disposed, would march round
the hiding place, and stealthily approach a stump of more than usual
likeness to animated nature.

An officer, newly arrived, when the depredations were most alarming and
frequent, looked from the window of his cottage, in the twilight, and
discerned many blacks crouching among the stubble of a corn field
lately reaped. He hastened and ordered out his men: they cautiously
crept round the inclosure, and were gratified as they drew nigh to
discover that the enemy had not moved. Another small party of soldiers
observed a body of fifty or sixty, on the borders of a creek, flowing
into Oyster Bay: as they were approached by the British, they made for a
point of land. It was, apparently, a certain capture: the soldiers and
constables rushed on, when the foe took the water. In these adversaries
the colonist will recognise the black stumps, left by imperfect farming,
and the black swans which adorn our waters. Notice was brough