WITH THE ABORIGINES. 
171 
What must be the natural impression produced 
upon the mind of the natives by treatment like 
this ? Can it engender feelings otherwise than of a 
hostile and vindictive kind ; or can we wonder that 
he should take the first opportunity of venting those 
feelings upon his aggressor ? 
But let us go even a little further, and suppose the 
case of a settler, who, actuated by no selfish motives, 
and blinded by no fears, does not discourage or repel 
the natives upon their first approach ; suppose that he 
treats them with kindness and consideration (and there 
are happily many such settlers in Australia), what 
recompense can he make them for the injury he has 
done, by dispossessing them of their lands, by occu- 
pying their waters, and by depriving them of their 
supply of food ? He neither does nor can replace the 
loss. They are sometimes allowed, it is true, to fre- 
quent again the localities they once called their own, 
but these are now shorn of the attractions which 
they formerly possessed — they are no longer of any 
value to them — and where are they to procure the 
food that the wild animals once supplied them with so 
abundantly ? In the place of the kangaroo, the emu, 
and the wallabie, they now see only the flocks and 
herds of the strangers, and nothing is left to them but 
the prospect of dreary banishment, or a life of misery 
and privation. Can it then be a matter of wonder, 
that under such circumstances as these, and whilst 
those who dispossessed them, are revelling in plenty 
near them, they should sometimes be tempted to 
appropriate a portion of the superabundance they 
