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For proof that this statement is not overcharged, it is only necessary to refer the reader to the testimony of the Rev. Messrs. Watson and Handt, who were sent out in 1832 by the Church Missionary Society. These gentlemen commenced their labours at Wellington Valley, in the interior of the country; and, in the Church Missionary Record of November 1834, is given the first account of their mission. The following remarks, with which that account is there introduced, but too fully corroborate what has been already stated of the injuries inflicted on the savages, by a penal settlement having been fixed among them:—
“NEW HOLLAND.
“In the following extracts from the communications of the Rev. Messrs. W. Watson and J. C. S. Handt, such particulars only are presented to our readers as are fit to meet the public eye; for we are grieved to say, that such are the miseries, diseases, and degradation, brought on the Aborigines of this vast country by their intercourse with Europeans, that decency would be shocked at the recital of their state. Suffice it to say, that, surrounded by wretchedness of the lowest description, the missionaries and their wives are giving themselves to their work of mercy with zeal and self-denial. Without this, it were impossible ever to hope to see righteousness prevail over a scene of such complete moral desolation!”
Many individuals, as well as societies, it is probable, justify their having turned a deaf ear to the urgent appeals for relief which have doubtless, from time to time, been made to them on behalf of such a complicated state of wretchedness, by the apparent hopelessness of the undertaking; while they have been induced to direct missionary efforts to other parts, such as New Zealand, and the various isles of the Pacific Ocean, where missionaries have long been labouring; though such quarters have not the claims which the natives of Australia have upon us, on the ground of the deep injuries inflicted on their eastern coast, as well as of their being our fellow-subjects. The
