She might have been an
English duchess, introducing a pretty daughter to a first ball. It was
seeing the parent in the child, the most marked form of self-flattery.
Actually, tears of joy ran down those black, wizened cheeks. I wouldn't
have had it otherwise, and I was glad I stayed for the young buck.'
Wherever Sir George Grey went in Australia, he found the natives living
from hand to mouth, on roots and the reward of the chase. They were
equally primitive, in a system of punishment, which stood an offender up
as a mark for spears. But they were sportsmen, for it was prescribed that
the quarry must only be chastened in the legs. The tribes also reached
out to civilisation, in that each had its ground marked off, with the
accuracy of a European estate.
'I believe'--Sir George carried this subject wider--'that the cardinal
trouble in the settlement of new countries, has lain in the desire of the
white man to possess the lands of the black man. Perhaps it has been
inevitable, but the thing should be done on a proper method, and that has
not always obtained.'
Sir John Franklin, at Van Diemen's Land, was a brother Australian
Governor to Sir George Grey, but they never met. 'I had correspondence
with him,' Sir George observed, 'and from all I heard he was a most
interesting personality.
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