fifty-four individuals."
--STRZELECKI'S NEW SOUTH WALES, p. 352

Respecting the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land, who were thus forcibly
removed, Mr. Chief Protector Robinson (who removed them) observes
(Parliamentary Report, p. 198), "When the natives were all assembled
at Flinders Island, in 1835, I took charge of them, and have continued
to do so ever since. I did not find them retaining that ferocious
character which they displayed in their own country; they shewed
no hostility, nor even hostile recollection towards the whites.
Unquestionably these natives assembled on the island were the same who
had been engaged in the outrages I have spoken of; many of them, before
they were removed, pointed out to me the spots where murders and other
acts of violence had been committed; they made no secret of
acknowledging their participation in such acts, and only considered them
a just retaliation for wrongs done to them or their progenitors. On
removal to the island they appeared to forget all these facts; they
could not of course fail to remember them, but they never recurred to
them."]

In April, 1843, or only six and a half years after South Australia had
first been occupied, the Protector of the Aborigines in Adelaide
ascertained that the tribes, properly belonging to that neighbourhood,
consisted of 150 individuals, in the following proportions, namely, 70
men, 39 women, and 41 children. Now, at the Murray, among a large number
of natives who, until 1842, were comparatively isolated from Europeans,
and among whom are frequently many different tribes, I found by an
accurate muster every month at Moorunde for a period of three years, that
the women, on an average, were equally numerous with the men, from which
I infer that such is usually the case in their original and natural
state. Taking this for granted, and comparing it with the proportions of
the Adelaide tribe, as given above, we shall find that in six years and a
half the females had diminished from an equality with the males, to from
70 to 80 per cent. less, and of course the tribe must have sustained also
a corresponding diminution with respect to children.

[Note 105: This result seems to be generally borne out by the few accurate
returns that have hitherto been made on the subject. In Mr. Protector
Parker's report for his district, to the north-west of Port Phillip (for
January, 1843), that gentleman gives a census of 375 male natives, and 295
female, which