"

In the year 1844 Mr. Latrobe was required to send to the Council in
Sydney a return of all blacks and whites killed in the Port Phillip
district since its first settlement. He said forty whites had been
killed by the blacks, and one hundred and thirteen blacks had been
reported as killed by the whites; but he added, "the return must not
be looked upon as correct with respect to the number of aborigines
killed." The reason is plain. When a white man murdered a few
blacks it was not likely that he would put his neck into the
hangman's noose by making a formal report of his exploit to Mr.
Latrobe. All the surviving blackfellow could say was: "Quamby dead
--long time--white-fellow--plenty--shoot 'em."

He related in eight words the decline and fall of his race more truly
than the white man could do it in eight volumes.

It is not so easy a task to justify the white men who assisted the
squatters to diminish the numbers of their stock. They were
principally convicts who had served their sentences, or part of them,
in the island, and had come over to Gippsland in cattle vessels.
Some of them lived honestly, about one hundred of them disappeared
when the Commissioner of Crown Lands arrived with his black and white
police, and a few of the most enterprising spirits adopted the
calling of cattle stealers, for which business they found special
facilities in the two special surveys.

-------------------------------------

TWO SPECIAL SURVEYS.

A notice dated March 4th, 1841, was gazetted in Sydney to the following
effect:

"Any Holder of a Land Receipt to the extent of not less than five
thousand one hundred and twenty acres may, if he think fit, demand a
special survey of any land not hereinafter excepted, within the
district of Port Philip, whether such Land Receipt be obtained in the
manner pointed out in the 'Government Gazette' of the 21st January
last, or granted by the Land and Emigration Commissioners in London.

"Not more than one mile of frontage to any river, watercourse, or lake
to be allowed to every four square miles of area; the other
boundaries to be straight lines running north and south, east and
west.

"No land to be taken up within five miles of the towns of Melbourne,
Geelong, Williamstown, or Portland.

"The right of opening roads through any part of the land to be
reserved for the Crown, but no other reservation whatever to be
inserted in the Deeds of Grant."

The Port Albert C