were never
recognised by the crown; yet it is not less certain that they saw with
intelligence the progress of occupation, and felt that the gradual
alienation of their hunting grounds implied their expulsion and
extinction.

Native topography is, indeed, limited; but it is exact. Every mountain,
valley, and river, is distinguished and named. The English have often
been indebted to these primitive surveyors, for guidance through the
forests which they came to divide. The tribes took up their periodical
stations, and moved with intervals so regular, that their migrations
were anticipated, as well as the season of their return. The person
employed in their pursuit, by the aid of his native allies, was able to
predict at what period and place he should find a tribe, the object of
his mission; and though months intervened, he found them in the valley,
and at the time he had foretold. Expectations of this sort could only be
justified by the regularity of their movements, and the exact knowledge
of the guides.[10] Nor were they indifferent to the charms of a native
land. A visitor enquired of a native woman at Flinders, whether she
preferred that place to several others mentioned, where she had lived at
times, and she answered with indifference; but when, to test her
attachment to her early haunts, the querist said, "and not Ringarooma?"
she exclaimed, with touching animation, "Oh yes! Ringarooma!
Ringarooma!"

A chief accompanied the commandant to Launceston in 1847. At his own
earnest request, he was taken to see the Cataract Basin of the South
Esk, a river which foams and dashes through a narrow channel of
precipitous rocks, until a wider space affords it tranquillity. It was a
station of his people; precisely the kind of spot which gypsies, on the
"business of Egypt," would choose for their tents. As he drew nigh, his
excitement was intense: he leaped from rock to rock, with the gestures
and exclamations of delight. So powerful were his emotions, that the lad
with him became alarmed, lest the associations of the scene should
destroy the discipline of twelve years exile: but the woods were silent:
he heard no voice save his own, and he returned pensively with his young
companion. These examples shew, that the native was not an indifferent
spectator of that rapid occupation, which must have appeared prodigious
to scattered tribes.

A further cause of exasperation, consequent on the preceding, was the
destruction of game