470 TREATMENT OF NATIVES. 



should increase and multiply and replenish the face 

 of the land. Their destiny is accomplished. In 

 obedience to a necessity — of man's creating certainly, 

 but still a necessity — they have been expatriated for 

 thoir own preservation ; to restore them, would be 

 but to ensure their speedier destruction; and all we 

 can do is to soothe their declining years, to provide 

 that they shall advance gently, surrounded by all 

 the comforts of civilization, and by all the consola- 

 tions of religion, to their inevitable doom ; and to 

 draw a great lesson from their melancholy history,— 

 namely, that we should not leave, until it is too late, 

 the aborigines of the countries we colonize exposed 

 to the dangers of an unregulated intercourse with 

 the whites ; that, without giving them any undue 

 preference, without falling into the dangerous ex- 

 treme of favouritism — an error of which the most 

 high-minded and generous are susceptible in the 

 case of a depressed race — we should consider, that 

 in entering their country we incur a great respon- 

 sibility, and that it behoves us at once to establish 

 distinctly the relation in which they stand to the 

 government, the colonists, and the soil ! 



Mr. Fitzmaurice's examination of the coast to the 

 westward extended to Dial Point, distant twenty- 

 nine miles from the Tamar. In this space there 

 are no less than five rivers, all with very short 

 courses, and not navigable except by boats and small 

 craft ; and by these only, on account of the surf on 

 their bars, in fine weather. The first empties itself 



