#4. A Free Settlement.#--Whilst the squatters were gathering all round, a change took place at Brisbane itself. We have seen that about 1840 the English Government had resolved to discontinue transportation, except to Van Diemen's Land. The word, therefore, went forth that Brisbane was no longer to be a place of exile for criminals. It was to be the home of free men and the capital of a new district. In 1841 Governor Sir George Gipps arrived from Sydney, and laid out the plan of what is now a handsome city. Blocks of land were offered for sale to free settlers, and eagerly bought. The Governor also laid out a little town, now called Ipswich, farther inland. Meanwhile the township of Drayton, and that which is now much larger, Toowoomba, began to gather round two wayside inns established for the convenience of travellers. Captain Wickham was sent up to assume the position of Superintendent of Moreton Bay, which thus became practically a new colony, just as Port Phillip was in the south, though both were then regarded as only districts of New South Wales.
#5. The Natives.#--In these early years the squatters of the district were scattered, at wide intervals, throughout a great extent of country, and, being in the midst of native tribes who were not only numerous but of a peculiarly hostile disposition, they often found themselves in a very precarious situation. The blacks swarmed on the runs, killing the sheep, and stealing the property of the squatters, who had many annoyances to suffer and injuries to guard against. But their retaliation oftentimes exhibited a ferocity and inhumanity almost incredible in civilised men.
The Government troopers showed little compunction in destroying scores of natives, and, strange to say, the most inhuman atrocities were committed by blacks, who were employed to act as troopers. On one occasion, after the murder of a white man by two blacks, a band of troopers, in the dead of night, stealthily surrounded the tribe to which the murderers belonged, whilst it was holding a corrobboree, and, at a given signal, fired a volley into the midst of the dancing crowd--a blind and ruthless revenge, from which, however, the two murderers escaped. On another occasion the shepherds and hutkeepers out on a lonely plain had begun to grow afraid of the troublesome tribes in the neighbourhood, and cunningly made them a present of flour, in which white arsenic had been mixed. Half a tribe might then have been seen writhing and howling in the agony of this frightful poison till death relieved them. On such occasions the black tribes took a terrible revenge when they could, and so the hatred of black for white and white for black became stronger and deadlier.