This page has been validated.
THE NATIVE AMAZON.
115

complained of the treatment his wife received from the soldiers of the party; that is, "was actuated by a strong feeling of jealousy." It is then said that Jack started off from the party, accompanied by his wife. She was retaken. He scorned their invitation, and leaped into the Clyde. Corporal Hares fired, and missed, for the man dived below. But each time the head reappeared on the surface, a shot was ready. The aim was at last fatally successful.

It is very grievous to hear of children suffering. In a valley among the tiers of the central interior, and not far from Jericho, lived a farmer named Hooper, with his wife and seven children. The Blacks, for reasons not explained, waited three days to catch the man away from his house without his gun. When helpless, he was surrounded, and killed. The others then proceeded to the log-hut, and destroyed all its inmates. Another farmer, residing in one of the most secluded parts of the island, called " The Den," had gone into his fields to labour, leaving behind his wife who had recently been delivered of twins. Looking back, he fancied he saw the door of his place opened and shut too quickly. He feared the worst, and ran home. He arrived to find his beloved ones bathed in their blood, by the spear and waddy wounds they had received.

A woman named Walloa, gin to a chief in the north-west, became a terrible foe to the Whites. She had been stolen by a sealer, and learned in the island to use fire-arms. Ultimately she escaped, and returned to her tribe. Her nature was changed by her cruel bondage, and her spirit of contradiction and vehemence made such quarrels among her people, that they permitted another sealer to have her. Again escaping, she raised a band of discontented, or heroic spirits, and led them to every species of outrageous cruelty against the solitary dwellers of huts. She boasted of her bloody work among the "Black Snakes," as she termed her European foes.

As some relief to the darker shades of history, let the following incident be told. A number of Blacks came to a lonely hut, and found no one there but a woman. When they were about to spear her, they were arrested by an aged chief, who noticed the appearance of approaching maternity, and forbade the slaughter of the woman for the sake of her unborn child.

There is a narrative given by Mr. M'Minn at an inquest in