y to take water from it.
Indeed, the main difference between the property of the native and
that of the colonist, consists in the very dissimilar uses to which
the parties apply their possessions. The one holds his lands for a
cattle-run or a farm, the other employs his in feeding kangaroos or in
growing wild roots. But both agree in punishing intruders, both profess
alike to esteem the rights of property to be sacred; and yet how
questionable, how opposite to these professions must the conduct of
Europeans seem, when they fix themselves upon certain spots, without
taking any notice of the vested rights of the former inhabitants, and
then threaten, or even shoot them, if they are found lingering among
their old haunts, upon their own estates! Or, if no open violence is
offered, "the sheep and cattle," to borrow the words of a kind-hearted
traveller, "fill the green pastures, where the kangaroo was accustomed
to range until the stranger came from distant lands, and claimed the
soil." The first inhabitants, unless they remove beyond the limits of
the colony, are hemmed in by the power of the white population, and
deprived of the liberty of wandering at will through their native wilds,
and compelled to seek shelter in close thickets and rocky fastnesses;
where, however, if they can find a home, they have great difficulty in
finding a subsistence, for their chief support, the kangaroo, is either
destroyed or banished. In 1772, when the French discoverer, Monsieur
Marion, was exploring Van Dieman's Land, he found the coast well
inhabited, as the fires by day and night bore witness, and on anchoring
in Frederic Hendrick's Bay, about thirty men assembled upon the shore.
And now, only seventy years later, what has become of the grandchildren
and descendants of those unfortunate natives? Let the reply to this
inquiry be made in the very words given in evidence before a Committee
of the House of Commons, in 1838.[55]--"_There is not a native in Van
Dieman's Land._ The last portion that was secured was sent to a small
island called Gun Carriage Island, where they are maintained at the
expense of government, and I believe some attempts at civilisation have
been made.--There has been a lingering desire to come back again; but
they have no means of getting back; the island is some distance from Van
Dieman's Land; they are pining away and dying very fast.--I believe more
than one half of them have died, not from any positive disease, bu