cerning the natives are two. The first is dated December 17th. A great many natives, two naked and painted red amongst them.' The other is dated December 27th. 'Henry Chapman and Dawson started for the Swan. We sent letters from Charles to Mr. Leake, and from Len to the Governor, with depositions.'

Such are the bald day-by-day entries in which Bessie Bussell set down the events of a winter of strife, a local phase of that fearful struggle between the invaders and the invaded', which Sir James Stirling had predicted. In their directness her entries remind one of the AngloSaxon Chronicle-' Aelle and Cissa beset Anderida, and slew all that were therein.' But no day-by-day record can tell the accumulating hatred which the virtual absence of government permitted. Here were communities attempting to live upon the same land, between whose methods of life there was a fatal conflict. Powerfully armed strangers, living by a careful husbandry of tamed beasts had built their farm-houses in the very centres of the natives' hunting-grounds. The strangers were staking their all on gaining there, half a world remote from their base, pastures on which the herds might browse and multiply in peace. At Augusta they had tried and failed. On the Blackwood peninsulas they had failed a second time. On these new and fairer fields the black spearsmen alone barred an open road to success. The spearsmen must be taught, by some means, to pass by and spare the white man's beasts.

The lesson could not wait. No training of young natives, on European lines, to a future respect for property could answer the instant purpose. In the interim, before such a policy bore fruit, the older warriors, accustomed to spear all animals they found in the tribal forests, would have destroyed the last resources of the colonists, their daily

source of food. A distant Home Government, though it bade them forbear from violence, and treat every black man as a fellow-subject, would not at once recoup the losses likely to occur before the experiment succeeded. It might mean to do so, but the settlement would have come to final disaster before it could hear of the need, let alone act in remedy. Fear, argued every colonist, was the only motive that would inhibit the age-long habits of the hunter.

There could be no compromise. Hunter or farmer must hold the land. If the hunter, the colonist must go. If the farmer, he could provide, out of his increased production from the soil, a better and steadier living for the black man. But first, before the ideal of providing for the invaded could be within reach, the live-stock of the colonist, without which they could not live, must be secure.

In such a clash of opposites, the potential government being distant and slow-moving, war was almost inevitable, failing the exercise of exceptional tact. A fiery, reckless old warrior, Gaywal, spears a calf. If the crime goes unpunished, pride and the admiration of his fellow-hunters for such daring will prompt him to repeat the coup. Police, says the Governor, must be named to keep the peace by civil means, and to prevent a fearful upheaval. Big Dawson has been named as constable; he sets off with a posse of settlers and soldiers to arrest the culprits. It is hardly the country for handcuffs, and the Government Resident is at Augusta.

Oft had they heard of Jeddart law,

How in the morn they hang and draw,

And sit in judgment after '!

On this wild border the sense of isolation, and the barriers of race, language and mode of life are at a maximum,

the restraint of a common law non-existent. The chief culprit escapes, but nine of his tribe are shot down, to enforce the white man's taboo upon his stock. The constable and a soldier set out next day to report the unpleasing intelligence' to the magistrate. Retaliation being the supreme rule of the huntsmen's code of honour, the constable, in due course, is speared by stealth. Each side tries stratagem in an effort to ambush the other, and impose its will by a crushing blow. ' Everyone' among the whites may be as 'unwilling to take life' as Miss Bessie believes, but such a guerilla warfare, once begun must, for the safety of the whites, be quickly stamped out. Intimidation by the guns of the white men is inevitably the means employed. This, for a time, is achieved by the fresh shootings on 30th July, when more women suffer than men, and the avengers return' amidst crowds of savages.' A fortnight later, however, a valuable horse disappears, and again the settlers take the warpath in search of the elusive spearsmen. They are seen, fired upon, but escape. The vendetta simmers down slowly. 'Depositions' are sent to percolate through Perth to the Colonial Office. Gaywal is still in the bush, but Bettina' foals in safety, the ladies visit an American whaler in Geographe Bay, and the barrels of butter are sent off as usual to Jingling Geordie ' at the Swan River.

VIII

WILD JUSTICE

INFORMATION about the Vasse and its people during 1838 is very scanty. In January Charles writes from Perth to John in England: 'You have heard of our row with the natives. The whole affair was admirably conducted, and by the blessing of God no European suffered. It did not, however, meet with the entire approbation of the Government, but it was none the less well done on that account. . . The folly of the measures that have been adopted on the Swan and at York* is too apparent not to strike anyone gifted with a grain of common sense. Most atrocious acts are going on even to this day because they have been played with, while at Pinjarra a set of natives once the most formidable in the colony have been by measures properly severe, rendered peaceful and even useful to the European.' Once started on the Whiggish notion' of criticizing Government, Charles proceeds to denounce the abominable selfishness of the human race', including Governor Stirling himself, in that he had established a town at the other end (from Busselton) of his large grant on Geographe Bay. This was Port Leschenault, afterwards known as Bunbury. To it three soldiers were removed from the Augusta-Vasse establishment.

* The York natives, two of whose tribesmen had been shot in the act of thieving from a farmhouse, had retaliated by spearing isolated settlers. The Colonial Office, after the 'battle of Pinjarra', had instructed Governor Stirling that natives were to be treated in all respects as British subjects and given similar treatment at law. As the evidence against the York natives was incomplete they went unpunished.

This dispersal of the defensive strength of the white community was a small evil, however, in comparison with the departure of Governor Stirling, and his replacement, after an interregnum, by 'the Radical Mr. Hutt', early in 1839.

Sir James Stirling was a man who saw with his own eyes. He had been through the mill' with the firstcomers, had planned, improvised and persisted in face of every disappointment with them. There came in his stead a man with a theory, the theory that the blacks were being wronged, and that their wrongs could be righted by civilizing them and giving them equal treatment. No doubt the blacks were being wronged. Their freedom to kill any beast they could find, and to avenge blood by shedding more blood, was being taken from them. How else could colonization proceed? But Governor Hutt had no heart for the task of imposing government upon the natives, and smashing, by the inhibition of fear, the cult of retaliation as a sacred duty. He thought, rather, in terms of schooling for the native children, and protectors for their fathers. Schools and official protectors were good, no doubt, but they did not put an end to private war.

The atmosphere created amongst the settlers by Governor Hutt's civilizing measures may be sensed in two reports made early in 1840 by his new officials, the 'protectors of natives'. Peter Barrow, protector at York, thus sums up his first quarter's work, ending 31st March 1840.

'Since my residence in York, I have seen and conversed with many natives, to all of whom I have clearly expressed, through the medium of interpreters, the nature of my duties, and the benevolent object for which Her Majesty's Government had sent me among them. But in return for all my efforts to impress in their minds the advantages of