r
carbines. The commissioner had seen nothing to shoot at, but his
blacks soon showed him two of the natives a few yards in front, both
mortally wounded. Mr. Tyers sent a report of the affair to the
Government, and that was the end of it.

This manner of dealing with the native difficulty was adopted in the
early days, and is still used under the name of "punitive
expeditions." That judge who prayed to heaven in his wig and robes
of office, said that the aborigines were subjects of the Queen, and
that it was a mercy to them to be under her protection. The mercy
accorded to them was less than Jedburgh justice: they were shot
first, and not even tried afterwards.

The settlers expelled from the sandbank at the Old Port required some
spot on which they could put up their huts without giving offence to
the superior powers. The Port Albert Company excised a township from
their special survey, and called it Victoria; Mr. Robert Turnbull
bought 160 acres, the present Port Albert, at 1 pound per acre, and
offered sites for huts to the homeless at the rate of 1 pound per
annum, on the condition that they carried on no business. The stores
were removed from the Old Port to the new one, and the first
settlement in Gippsland was soon again overgrown with scrub and ferns.
Mr. Reeve offered farms to the industrious at the rental of one bushel
of wheat to the acre. For some time the township of Tarraville was a
favourite place of residence, because the swamps which surrounded
Port Albert were impassable for drays during the winter months; the
roads to Maneroo and Melbourne mentioned in Mr. Reeve's advertisement
were as yet in the clouds. Captain Moore came from Sydney in the
revenue cutter 'Prince George' to look for smugglers, but he did not
find any. He was afterwards appointed collector for Gippsland, and
he came down again from Sydney with a boat's crew of six prisoners, a
free coxswain, and a portable house, in which he sate for the receipt
of Customs.

For a time the commissioner resided at Tarraville, and then he went
to the lakes and surveyed a township at Flooding Creek, now called
Sale. His black troopers were in some cases useful, in others they
were troublesome; they indulged in irregularities; there was no doubt
that they drank rum procured in some inexplicable manner. They could
not be confined in barracks, or remain continually under the eye of
their chief, and it was not always possible to discover in w