Your Lordship has been informed that some of the convicts have been killed and wounded by natives, but that has I believe, never happened but when the convicts have been the aggressors. I have always found the natives friendly, and still retain the opinion I first formed of those people, that they do not betray a confidence placed in them.
In December 1788, one of the natives was seized for the purpose of learning the language and reconciling them to us, as mentioned in my former letter to your lordship, none of the natives having for some months come near the settlement. The man who was taken for that purpose appeared to be about 24 years of age and in three months was so reconciled that he was freed from all restraint and lived with me perfectly satisfied with his situation.
In the beginning of the following April, numbers of the natives were found dead with the smallpox in different parts of the harbour. It is not possible to determine the number of natives who were carried off by this fatal disorder; it must be great. And judging from the information of the native now living with us, and who had recovered from the disorder before he was taken, one half of those who inhabit this part of the country died. And as the natives always retired from where the disorder appeared and which some must have carried with them, it must have been spread to a considerable distance, as well as inland as along the coast. We have seen traces of it wherever we have been.
That they have some idea of a future state appears from their belief in spirits and from saying that the bones of the dead are in the chase, but the body in the clouds. And the question has been asked, do the white men go thither?
