work we pay them to do. Riding on their tracks he found, first a young girl, apparently about 15, lying stretched on the ground, with a bullet wound in her head. Going on he saw another woman also dead, and also with a bullet wound. This was done, not by Circassians or Bashi Bazouks, acting under the orders of a Moslem ruler, but by a force maintained, equipped, and paid for by the church-going Christian people of Brisbane and Queensland.
A man who accompanied a police officer in a northern district was present at a raid upon some blacks. He shared the officers' tent. The troopers were of course round them. They had a prize, a young black girl, little more than a child. This man, an old bushman, but not so seasoned as our own officers are, could not sleep because of the yells, cries, and moans of the unhappy child as each brutal savage, clad in the uniform of our Government, violated her in turn. They did not finish by shooting her, but left her in the morning in a dazed agonised condition for her tribe to tend her—and be disposed towards friendship with the whites by the spectacle.
In concluding this particular paper it is necessary to warn readers against feeling indignant with the native police. We equip the force, and send it out to do the work which is described in these columns. We refuse to have any report of what is done; all we ask is that they shall do what they please and say nothing. We arm ferocious savages and send them out under single white men, who are only blamed if they are dilatory in shooting blacks. For us to blame the force that does the work would be as improper as it would be for a man who fired a gun into a crowd to cast blame for the wounds inflicted by the bullet on the weapon. —Queenslander, June 5, 1880.
IV.
The Western Champion, published at Blackall, in its issue of the 26th ultimo, has an article commenting on our proposals for dealing with the aborigines, and the incidents narrated in this column. The editor takes a different view from ourselves, but writes moderately and in a reasonable spirit. He is, however, mistaken in doubting the accuracy of one incident in the first article of this series. He says:—"The story of the young gentleman who was gaining colonial experience on a western station, is in the main correct, but the tribe who were punished for their depredations were not station blacks as the new chum believed. Probably his slight acquaintance with the aborigines made it unable for him to distinguish between the wild and tame article." We repeat that the blacks shot on the occasion were station blacks—that is, blacks who camped when not out hunting near a head station, that they could talk broken English and were known to the troopers, and finally that they were well known not to belong to the tribe that committed the hut robberies which led to the police raid, being in fact quite innocent of any injury to the whites. We fancy the "new chum" referred to, an experienced bushman now, will be rather indignant at being told that he did not know blacks from a tribe with which he was perfectly familiar. And, "new chum" as he was, it is probable that he had as many opportunities of knowing and distinguishing blacks, at the time the affair occurred—about two years after his arrival in the district—as the editor of the Champion himself.
In another part of the same article the writer says:—"The tragic end of Mr. Welford, who attempted to introduce the civilising plan proposed by the Queenslander, was sufficient evidence that such a plan was a mistake, and probably made the whites understand that the only chance of saving their lives and property was to drive the enemy out of the district." To this statement we have received the following reply by a contributor:—
"The Western Champion quite misunderstands the circumstances under which poor Welford met his death, which, on the contrary, illustrate the necessity of the reform advocated by the Queenslander. I knew Welford personally, and was camped on his country, at the place he afterwards made his main camp, some three or four months before he occupied it with his cattle. He was a man who always got on well with the blacks, treating them justly and firmly; and if his neighbors had acted in the same way, and the black police had been kept away from the lower Barcoo, would have been alive now, or at least would not have died under the nulla nulla strokes of exasperated savages seeking revenge for the slaughter of their friends. He told me himself how on bringing his cattle round by Cooper's Creek to his country—he was compelled to take a very circuitous route from Elizabeth Creek to get water, as the drought of 1868 had not quite broken up—he travelled for a week or two in company with a small tribe of myall blacks. These savages, not having had any experience of the whites, and only knowing the black police by repute, were inclined to be friendly, as they generally are. Mr. Welford, and partner and stock-
