222 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



ease prevalent, and births ceasing. As a consequence the blacks 

 have disappeared from all our old settlements long since." 



This was fully borne out by the experience of the tribes whose 

 camping-grounds were within a radius of fifteen or twenty miles 

 around Melbourne. Stringent as were the provisions against sup- 

 plying the natives with intoxicants, they were continually evaded, 

 and once the black man had acquired a taste for that form of excite- 

 ment, his degeneration was rapid and his doom was sealed. He 

 could never be restored to his pristine simplicity, and all sense of 

 self-respect or self-help was transmuted into a state of whining, 

 wheedling beggardom. Shiftless and nerveless, he was ready to 

 descend to any depths of meanness and dishonesty for the sixpence 

 that would procure him the means of gratifying his ever-present 

 and over-mastering craving. 



The methods by which the Government sought, with such 

 lamentable ill-success, to effect the salvation of this primitive type 

 of humanity, may be summarised here from Parliamentary Blue- 

 books, and the official reports of Protectors and Aboriginal Boards 

 of Control. 



The interminable despatches which passed between the English 

 Secretary of State and the respective Colonial Governors teem with 

 suggestions for the protection, the industrial training and the Chris- 

 tianising of the natives. So far as Victoria is concerned, the first 

 practical step, apart from the tentative efforts of the Port Phillip 

 Association, originated with the Episcopal Church Missionary Society 

 in Sydney, which succeeded in inducing the Government to set aside 

 a reservation on the Yarra for a Mission Station, and to appoint Mr. 

 Geo. Langhorne to take charge of it. The site selected was that 

 now occupied by the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, and, being little 

 more than a mile from the town, had in it the seeds of failure which 

 Mr. Curr has indicated. The guiding principle of this establishment 

 was the reclamation of the young from their wandering life ; to train 

 them in some useful occupation ; to teach them English, and grad- 

 ually to fit them for absorption into the labouring classes of the 

 European population. Established in December, 1836, it was visited 

 in November, 1837, by Mr. Backhouse, the Quaker missionary from 

 England, who described it as consisting of a few buildings of mud 



