THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. 21 



Phillip indeed did his best to conciliate them ; and though, until 

 Macquarie came, his successors showed little interest in their 

 condition, peaceful relations were customary. In law the native 

 could claim equal protection with the white man, but this 

 equality was difficult to enforce even in the Courts. Amongst the 

 out-lying population, when a black man stole the corn or fruit 

 of a settler, it was often impossible to prevent the injured party 

 from wreaking summary vengeance upon a whole tribe, and that 

 brought in its turn indiscriminate reprisals. The Governors 

 attempted, with varying success, to put an end to all private 

 punitive expeditions, and to secure that black and white should 

 both be brought to justice. The worst offenders against the 

 natives were the escaped convicts who sometimes led precarious 

 lives in the forests. 1 On the whole the blacks suffered little. 

 Missionary efforts were made to teach them Christianity, 

 husbandry and the advantage of clothes and regular food. 

 They learnt very little, and though some of them hung about 

 the settlement, the greater number continued to wander through 

 the forests where each tribe kept within its roughly marked 

 boundaries, and where, save for occasional depredations on 

 lonely farms, they interfered little with the colonists. 



Such were the people and such their ways of living when 

 Macquarie started on his difficult task of restoring peace and 

 establishing good government after the long distractions which 

 had led up to and followed the deposition of his predecessor, 

 Captain William Bligh. 



1 See notes of a conversation with Rev. S. Marsden in a volume of Essays 

 Geographical, Commercial and Philosophical, published anonymously in 1812. 

 Royal Colonial Institute. 



