Having in previous numbers brought the long and calamitous history of the conflicts with the blacks on the Murray River, from the threatened attack on Captain Sturt in his boat expedition in the year 1830, down to the fight between the blacks and the whites on the Rufus Junction in 1841, I think it will be as well to give a short summary of the contest ending with the severe punishment of the blacks as recorded in the previous number, before I shall bring to the notice of readers allusions to more pleasing pictures of the intercourse of the whites' associations with the benighted race.

Before the severe encounters I have recorded, a few trifling attacks by detached bodies of blacks on overland parties with stock had been previously made, but had been repulsed on the fall or wounding of one or two of the assailants. When, however, the passing of white men with flocks of sheep down the bank of the river commenced, the wild natives saw their greater chances of success, and the detached tribes associated together and made their first combined and successful attack on Mr. Inman's party, and secured the 7,000 sheep on the 16th April, 1841, as before written.

On the day following the arrival of this surpassing news, Governor Gawler dispatched Major O'Halloran, a doctor to attend the wounded white man, and a small body of mounted police, but recalled the force before they arrived at scene of strife. This was the first party sent out.

Second. Small party of volunteers under Lieutenant Field, R.N., badly armed, beaten back by the natives.

Third. Large body of police and volunteers under Major O'Halloran arrived at Rufus in time to save Langhorne's party except four men killed, but no prisoners were taken, sheep recovered, nor punishment inflicted.

Fourth. A small well-armed party of police (with Dr. Moorhouse present as Protector of Aborigines) under Sub-Inspector Shaw, who met Robinson's party with cattle and sheep at Rufus Junction and there encountered the blacks, who in their bravery, and filled with contempt for the white man's previous exhibitions, placed themselves between two fires, and received ample punishment, as retailed in the previous number.

Then comes the enquiry of the Bench of Magistrates under Governor Grey's orders, whose report fully justified the action of Dr. Moorhouse and the Inspector, and respectfully soliciting the Governor to place an armed party in the vicinity of Langhorne's Ferry on the Rufus, for the protection of overland parties."

There we have nothing advised but firearms and force, to govern and manage poor ignorant natives. On this recommendation Governor Grey appointed Mr. Eyre as Stipendiary Magistrate, to reside at Moorundee with police support, the post being about 200 miles from the Rufus.

As to this appointment I have no adverse remarks to make, and only desire to bring such an incomplete plan into contrast with the infinitely superior system inaugurated by Archdeacon Hale, and commenced in a great measure with his own private funds, and which has since attained a decided success, viz., the Aboriginal Mission at Poonindie, Port Lincoln, founded after the grievous murders committed in that district on different white settlers and their servants by the natives.

I have great pleasure at this time in giving a few cheering particulars of the good work accomplished by this mission ; fuller details hereafter, when I come to the narration of the third sad page in our history, where has to be recorded the hanging at different times of twelve natives, who after being tried in Adelaide at the Supreme Court were conveyed to their own districts, and suffered there the extreme penalty of the law in presence of their tribes.

I may here mention that the Government after the Milemnura outbreak applied the same principle of overawing the natives as they did afterwards in the Rufus affair, having appointed a sort of deputy protector of the Lake tribes, who was ordered to reside at Wellington to keep those tribes in order with carbine, sword, &c.; but no attempt was made by Government to instruct or form any establishment or home in which to train the wandering human beings in habits of industry and civilisation even, not to mention religious training.

Of Corporal Mason, the Sub-Protector, it is admitted he fulfilled his limited duties to the best of his ability, his chief influence arising from the miserable dole at distant stated times of blankets and rations, and here the duty of Government was allowed to end.

It is a pleasure to me to record that in this portion of the colony also private benevolence afterwards stepped in to establish an institution and home for the dispossessed aboriginal tribes in the Point Macleay Mission, which, as far as its means extend, is effecting good work, placed as it is on very inferior and unprofitable land.

Strangers will naturally ask how is it that a Government composed of professing Christian people has not appropriated and set apart suitable blocks of land of sufficient extent in the several districts for such establishments? Well, if such an appropriation of what may be called their own land as, say, 5 percent, of the whole, or even infinitely less, in blocks, and encouragement had also been given by the Government, many other such, establishments as the two I have mentioned might have been formed, and have become self-supporting as Poonindie has been for some time, as will be shown hereafter.

I have enlarged upon this matter at the end of the history of the Rufus contest to lead to what I consider the Government should do in making a grant of land on the banks of Lake Victoria, or in that neighborhood, for the benefit of the strong tribes in the district where such fatal conflicts have occurred. And to show its suit-ability I quote from Major O'Halloran's diary of his official visit to that part of our province:—

" Lake Victoria is a noble expanse of water, with rich alluvial flats of considerable extent along its banks, and fit for dairy purposes as pasture land, or for agriculture, about 260 miles from Adelaide. The lake appears to me to be about 40 miles in circumference, and one-half of it, at least, must be in the province of South Australia, the remainder belongs to New South Wales. Two or three special surveys might here be taken up with great advantage, and a town formed. I know not the spot in the colony that I should like to locate on as the Lake Victoria."

There is the opinion of a gentleman who had early entered into farming and stockkeeping. This land at the present time, I understand, has not been alienated.

Eyre, Dutton, Forster, and other writers of the history of South Australia have stated, as follows, their opinions on the native race, i.e., after the first abortive and insufficient means had been adopted for their amelioration by the Colonial Government under instructions from Home. I first quote from Mr. Dutton :—

" The black inhabitant gradually dwindles away before the blighting effects of civilization, and another half century will most probably also see the end of the Australian aboriginal race."

Eyre says : —

" It has already been stated that, in all the colonies we have hitherto established upon the continent, the aborigines are gradually decreasing in number, or have already disappeared in proportion to the time their country has been occupied by Europeans. We are almost in spite of ourselves forced to the conviction that the first appearance of the white man in any new country sounds the funeral knell of the children of the soil."

In quoting from writers who record their opinions as to the hopelessness of attempting to ameliorate the condition of the natives, or to save them from certain extinction, I do so to precede the publication, of the very different and satisfactory results which I purpose to show have attended the two principle private (as they may be called), establishments now at work in this colony, and so to set up unanswerable arguments with which to force chums on Government to continue and confirm the appropriation of the land now occupied at Poonindie and Point McLeay, and to obtain much larger and more equitable grants in other localities, which cannot be abrogated: or interfered with, through or by uncompromising, greedy white 'subjects of Her Majesty.'

To support this view of our duties I quote from a despatch of Lord Stanley to Sir Geo. Gipps in 1842:—

" I cannot conclude this despatch without expressing my sense of the importance of the subject of it. My hope is that your experience may enable you to suggest some general plan by which we may acquit ourselves of the obligations which we owe towards this helpless race of beings. I should not without extreme reluctance admit that nothing could be done; that with respect to them alone the doctrines of Christianity must be inoperative, and the advantages of civilization incommunicable. I cannot acquiesce in the theory that they are incapable of improvement, and their extinction before the advance of the white settler is a necessity which it is impossible to control. I recommend them to your protection and favorable consideration with the greatest earnestness, but at the same time with perfect confidence ; and I assure you that I shall be willing and anxious to co-operate with you in any arrangement for their civilization which may hold out a fair prospect of success."

Mr. Dutton speaks thus of the Government post at Moorundee under Mr. Eyre :—

" Mr. Eyre has certainly succeeded in an eminent degree in effecting the object contemplated, as the whole length of the River Murray, from the Great Northern Bend to the coast, is occupied at the present moment with sheep and cattle stations, and no single outrage of a fatal nature, has since the establishment of that post been com-mitted by the natives ; whilst at the same time a great moral control and influence has been obtained over the more distant and warlike tribes, who were either periodically visited in their own districts by Mr. Eyre, or used to come down to Moorundee to receive the meagre distribution of flour and blankets now and then allowed them, by the Government."

As to any of the higher objects, which should have been aimed at through Government posts, Mr. Dutton wrote in 1846:—

" Of the protectorate posts in New South Wales, after costing the large sum of £80,000 since 1821 in keeping up a widely ramified establishment of protectors, that plan has, I believe, been abandoned in despair, as being productive of no good. Had that money been annually dropped into the sea outside the Sydney Heads the loss could not be more regretted than its resultless application in redeeming the savages, and it would have saved both Sir George Gipps and Lord Stanley the trouble of writing the immensity of despatches they did; and, although the experiments in South Australia have been made on a far more moderate scale, no better results can he shown with us than in the neighboring colonies; but the effects of our civilising influence is shown (as Mr. Eyre says) ' in their diminished numbers;' nor is it in my recollection that throughout the whole length and breadth of New Holland a single real and permanent convert to Christianity has yet been made amongst them."

This as the result of the protectorate system ! Forster in his later history says :—

" The Aborigines of New Holland are fast disappearing from the face of the earth. The occupation of the country has injuriously affected them. in many ways without conferring upon them any compensating advantages. It has broken up their tribal arrangements, by which the land was parcelled out into hunting districts that could only be encroached upon by strangers under such penalties as savages are wont to inflict on one another. Civilization has in fact impressed its vices, with very few of its virtues, and tended to sink to a still lower depth the already degraded inhabitants of the soil. In saying that no advantages have been bestowed on the natives for the loss of their territory, I do not mean to imply that no attempts have been made to benefit them, or that they have been ruthlessly left to perish by the Government and colonists without protection and without sympathy. It was a special instruction of the Home Government on the establishment of South Australia that they should be properly cared for; and for that purpose a Chief Protector of Aborigines was appointed in Adelaide and Sub-protectors were sent into the country districts."

Yes; and with such results as before set forth ! Then, under what responsibilities do the inhabitants now remain ? New systems have been adopted, which are calling aloud as successful experiments for the support of every man and woman according to their means and influence. It is almost past credence that at this time a member of Parliament, at the instance of one or more greedy constituents, should have moved in Parliament to deprive the trustees of the Poonindie institution of the occupation of the land on which a large number of civilised and Christianised natives are leading a respectable, useful and happy life - families permanently residing in a model village, occupying neat cottages, and in all respects conducting themselves as well or better than any white community in the province.

In this mission township at this time the number of native or half-caste inhabitants is 88.There are 44 children regularly attending the school, who are clothed and fed. Medical attendance also provided to all who require the same gratuitously. No public grant of money has been received since 1866, at which time there was a debt owing of over £800, since paid ; and under the management of the last appointed trustee, G. W. Hawkes, Esq., the mission has not only become self-supporting, but in addition to contributions from the colored inhabitants to several charitable objects, grants from the profits of the farm and flocks have for some time been made annually to the Point McLeay Mission.

When these papers reach the date at which the establishment at Poonindee was founded by Arch-Deacon Hale I propose to give a detailed history, in the meantime I will add in this place a few pleasing facts which have recently occurred or are now taking place there. The natives when employed on the farm or station receive regular wages. The following amounts of money wages were paid to colored laborers: — In the year 1875, £697 7s. 11d.; 1876, £6411 3s. Id.; 1877, £720 5s. 8d. The men when not employed on the station take contract jobs of shearing sheep, grubbing, or any other rural work from settlers, sometimes in amounts of £50 and £70, and employ under them bush blacks from wild tribes.

At this present shearing Mr. A. Tennant has engaged on contract five shearers from Poonindie after they had finished their home work. By Mr. Tennant they were sent up to his station on the Middle-back Ranges under contract, to shear, sort, and pack the wool of four thousand sheep, without superintendence, at 30s. a hundred with rations. This work was also done by black men last season from Poonindie, to the perfect satisfaction of the flockowner. Tom Adams, one of the men, is allowed to be unsurpassed as a shearer in that district; and although the quantity shorn in a working day by blacks does not average that made by a white party, the work done by them is equal to or superior in quality. Tom Adams turns out in a day from 80 to 90.

The above particulars I acknowledge with thanks to have received from G. W. Hawkes, Esq., that firm friend of the native races as well as of all other benevolent institutions.

I conclude this number with an appeal to all colonists to exert their influence to procure for the future ample appropriation of land on which to establish native missions. (To be continued.)