I do not know that they were as desperate as they are now--not so ready to take life, without provocation.
You see, there was a very much larger run of country open to them; and many convicts who escaped, and took to the bush, were content to have gained their freedom.

Some of them took black gins, and never troubled the colonists again; beyond, perhaps, coming down to a station and carrying off a sheep or two, or a bullock, when they got sick of kangaroo meat and wanted a change.
"You see, the first settlers were generally poor and hard-working men.

Young men with a little capital had not as yet been attracted here, so there was but little inducement for the escaped convicts to meddle with them.

There were, of course, some notorious scoundrels, who seemed to murder for the pure love of the thing.
The worst of them, I think, was a fellow who went by the name of Cockeye.

What his real name was, I never heard.
"That man was a perfect devil; and was, for a long time, the terror of the settlers.