The country on either side of the Darling was now alive with natives, and though a sort of armed truce was kept up, it was at the cost of constant care and watchfulness, and the tactful submission to numerous annoyances, including much petty pilfering.

A former civil officer named Van Dyck had a very fine peach orchard which caused him no little annoyance on account of the constant pilfering of the Indians.

This continual pilfering, I was assured, was a serious tax on the cultivation of the estates around.

I told him that I considered his whole class as fair game for literary pilfering.