Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land, 1830-1840 - Page 263
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[Page 263]
Throughout Mr Evans's whole narrative, and that of Lieutenant Jeffries we find abundant charges made against stock keepers and others of exceptional cruelties towards the Aborigines, particularly on the scores of their women. I am far from being prepared to join the clamour. I have called for dates and proofs, for some specific acts perpetrated by the Whites, but can find nothing which could justify me in assailing the general character of my countrymen in the Colony. Neither time nor places can be ascertained, the public archives are silent on the subject, and the Colonists cannot inform me. I am not prepared to allow with Abby Raynal, that in our days a European, and particularly an Englishman changes his very nature when arriving in one of the Colonies. I feel convinced that some very cruel barbarous and wanton acts of cruelty have been by some of the brutal part of our population committed on the Blacks, but in the absence of positive proof I cannot, as a faithful historian place my opinion on record as facts that which I can only express as an opinion.
Mr Evans relates an anecdote of a sable heroine which it would indeed be unjust to pass over in silence, the writer relates when speaking of the females: "In some instances, their young children the offspring of their illict illicit intercourse with the Europeans, are forcibly taken from them and thrown into the fire where they are destroyed. An instance of this kind, in which however, the child was saved from immediate death by the affection and