e was still at large, unmolested,
even occasionally visiting Perth.

CAUSES OF THEIR ATTACHMENT TO THEIR ROVING AND SAVAGE LIFE.

Their fondness for the bush and the habits of savage life is fixed and
perpetuated by the immense boundary placed by circumstances between
themselves and the whites, which no exertions on their part can overpass,
and they consequently relapse into a state of hopeless passive
indifference.

I will state a remarkable instance of this: The officers of the Beagle
took away with them a native of the name of Miago, who remained absent
with them for several months. I saw him on the north-west coast, on board
the Beagle, apparently perfectly civilized; he waited at the gun-room
mess, was temperate (never tasting spirits) attentive, cheerful, and
remarkably clean in his person. The next time I saw him was at Swan
River, where he had been left on the return of the Beagle. He was then
again a savage, almost naked, painted all over, and had been concerned in
several murders. Several persons here told me, "you see the taste for a
savage life was strong in him, and he took to the bush again directly."
Let us pause for a moment and consider.

Miago, when he was landed, had amongst the white people none who would be
truly friends of his. They would give him scraps from their table, but
the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an equal,
they had no sympathy with him, he could not have married a white woman,
he had no certain means of subsistence open to him, he never could have
been either a husband or a father if he had lived apart from his own
people; where amongst the whites was he to find one who would have filled
for him the place of his black mother, whom he is much attached to? what
white man would have been his brother? what white woman his sister? He
had two courses left open to him: he could either have renounced all
natural ties and have led a hopeless, joyless life amongst the whites,
ever a servant, ever an inferior being; or he could renounce civilization
and return to the friends of his childhood, and to the habits of his
youth. He chose the latter course, and I think that I should have done
the same.

SUGGESTIONS ON THE MEANS OF PROMOTING THEIR CIVILIZATION.

The information I had collected regarding the Aborigines of Western
Australia encouraged me to address a report to Lord John Russell, the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, embracing the general principles
wh