45 



who had been left with over one hundred convicts and about 

 twenty soldiers. These were all safely embarked on board the 

 Ocean by the 18th of May, and three days later they cleared the 

 Heads, but owing to unprecedentedly severe weather only reached 

 Hobart on the 25th of June, in a sadly strained and battered 

 condition. 



Thus were the shores of Port Phillip once more left to the 

 solitude of nature, disturbed only by the occasional visits of the 

 feeble and scattered natives, the alarming legends of whose prowess, 

 numbers and cannibal propensities had doubtless helped to intensify 

 in official minds the " unfitness " of the country for settlement. 

 Of the four hundred Europeans who had recently been waging a 

 half-hearted contest in misdirected efforts to subdue the wilderness, 

 only William Buckley remained, and as the years rolled on in their 

 recordless monotony, he gradually relapsed into the barbarism that 

 surrounded him. If his statements can be relied on, chance visitors 

 of his own kind, probably vagrant parties of sealers, occasionally 

 appeared on the scene, abducting the black women and fighting the 

 men. Indeed, one of his statements indicates the possibility of 

 deeds of violence in these lawless solitudes akin to those which 

 marked the career of the old buccaneers. He alleges that two 

 white men were brought ashore by four or five others from a vessel, 

 and having been tied to a tree, were shot, and their bodies left bound 

 as they died. 



However inefficient Governor Collins may have been as an 

 explorer, he bore the reputation of being a humane and honourable 

 man, of strong social instincts and cheerful temperament. He has 

 been described by his contemporaries as possessing a handsome 

 person, extremely prepossessing manners, a high standard of culture 

 and a fondness of literary pursuits. His Account of the Colony of 

 New South Wales is a monument of careful industry, and is written 

 in a simple unaffected style. Victorians owe him a great debt, not 

 only for his abandonment of the settlement and the withdrawal 

 of his undesirable subjects, but for his having inexplicably ignored 

 an important part of his instructions from Governor King, instruc- 

 tions which, though decidedly mandatory, he never even alludes to 

 in his despatches. They were embodied in a letter addressed to 



