THE ABORIGINES AND THEIR TREATMENT 239 



at 350 ; while, on the other side, the number of white men killed 

 by the natives did not exceed fifty. Spread over a period of ten or 

 twelve years, and covering the penetration of unknown wilder- 

 nesses, and the confronting of wild tribes who had never before 

 seen a man of a different colour to themselves, the figures are not 

 startling. Very largely the fatalities were unavoidable, and they 

 compare most favourably with the experience of other countries 

 under similar conditions of occupancy. 



The substitution of more than a million of industrious and 

 peaceful people for a roaming, fighting contingent of six thousand 

 cannot be said to be dearly purchased even at the cost of the violent 

 deaths of a fraction of the most aggressive amongst them. The re- 

 grettable murders of harmless and inoffensive natives, which did 

 occasionally take place, were the work of criminals, with which 

 every community is infested, and to which this community in its 

 infancy was very specially exposed. 



There is no serious stain necessarily resting upon the reputation 

 of the colony from the retrospect of its treatment of the aborigines. 

 It has been shown that costly and continuous efforts were made 

 for the amelioration of their condition, and that these failed, not 

 from neglect, but from the absolute incompatibility of the native 

 character with even the primary conditions of civilisation. 



