Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1913 — TAMED BLACKS BY KINDNESS [ARTICLE]

TAMED BLACKS BY KINDNESS

Remarkable Success of Englishman Who Manages an Island on the Australian Coast. J. Cooper, manager of Melville island, on behalf of E. O. Robinson, the lessee, was in Melbourne this year. Thirty-two years ago he went across, th'e Australian continent, south to north, with horses. Ever since he has been in the north, prospecting, stock hunting and buffalo shooting. Has shot and skinned countless buffalos. Lost count years ago as to how many thousand. In the earlier days all this hunting was on foot, but now it is on horseback. Horsemen dash into the herds and lay out the buffaloes.

Cooper has administered Melville Island for many years. He has for a long period been the only white man on the island among numerous blacks. Yet those blacks were reported to be desperately ferocious. Sir G. Bremer tried to make' an English settlement there in 1824. He liad soldiers, but the natives drove the party away. In 1892 Robinson leased the island. Subjugated by kindness, and indeed had practically no other weapon. The Island is of 1,500,000 acres, together with Bathurst island, separated by a Jong narrow straJt, fordable at one end. At the other there is a harbor fit to receive a war fleet. Bathurst is pbout five hundred thousand acres, and the natives roam over both. They number about five hundred. They have successtally repulsed the Malayan and every admixture. Apparently a separate type to the Australian in many respects.

About seventeen thousand buffaloes on Melville island, and at least two hundred thousand on the mainland of Australia. All descend from sixteen buffaloes placed by Bremer on the island and sixteen on the mainland. It is stated that buffaloes has swum across the intervening thirty miles. Melville island is only that distance from Port Darwin. What use a force could make of it! The natives had never touched a buffalo till Cooper came. Now they have as much beef as they can eat. The island is splendidly watered with ever flowing springs, which give rise to fine creeks, and there are a couple of rlvera. Altogether well grassed and timbered, with numerous fertile valleys and much arable land. All experiments with tropical plants have succeeded, but little has been done beyond shooting about a thousand buffalos every year for their skins. —The Imperialist.