ldness_."--March
19, 1819.]

[Footnote 6: Dual, mentioned by Bigge, was transported from Sydney, for
chopping off the right arm of his wife: he said she should "make no more
_dough-boy_." The whites persuaded the natives, that the lighter hue of
their half-caste children resulted from the too free use of flour.]

SECTION III.

It would be useful to mankind, to trace the causes which led to that
long and disastrous conflict, in which so many lives were sacrificed,
and a people, all but a fading fragment, became extinct. Among those
mentioned by the government, was the admission into the colony of Sydney
blacks, and the ascendancy which one of them acquired.

The emigrants of 1822 remember a number of natives, who roamed about the
district, and were known as the "tame mob;" they were absconders from
different tribes, and separated from their chiefs. They often entered
the town and obtained bread, tobacco, and even rum from the inhabitants.
Their importunity was troublesome, and their appearance offensive: the
eruptive disease which covered their skin, especially on the legs, most
exposed to the heat of their fires, added to their squalor and
wretchedness. They are thus described by the Rev. Mr. Horton: he saw
them at Pittwater, crouching round their fires, and entirely naked--a
company of demoralised savages.

Musquito became their head. He was transported from Sydney to this
colony for the murder of a woman. For some time he acted as a
stock-keeper; he was then employed as a guide, in tracking the
bushrangers, having the keenness of vision, and almost canine instinct,
by which in the slightest traces he discovered a certain clue. For this
service, it is said, he was promised restoration to his country--a
promise, unhappily, forgotten. He was odious to the prisoners, who
taunted him as a _nose_ for the hangman; his resentful nature could not
brook the insult, and he struck down a convict who thus reviled him. He
was then taken into custody; in alarm, he escaped to the bush. The
muscular strength and superior skill of this man were supposed to have
recommended him to the natives as their chief. He was seen, by
Robertson, to cut off the head of a pigeon with a stick, while flying.
Musquito answered Mr. Horton with intelligence, when that gentleman
represented the misery of a vagrant life; he said that he should prefer
to live like the white man, tilling the ground, but that none of his
companions would join him. B