also, says: "The report in the Colonial Times respecting the Natives plundering Mr. Bostock's shepherd is entirely false; and I am sorry to say similar falsehoods are daily spread, which oftentimes leads the parties astray who are in pursuit of the Blacks. Not a Black has been seen in these parts for two months past."
An old settler of the interior once told me that he had been confined to his bed with a splinter in his foot. Hearing Natives coo-ey, he sent a lad to reconnoitre, with injunctions to return, and not to call out. The lad was terrified, and hid himself. Johnstone got up, and looked out upon the advancing party. Forgetting his lameness, he rushed out and ran four miles off to Salt Pan Plains to where a shepherd kept a flock. The splinter came up through his foot with the violence of his running, but without his consciousness. Another informed me that he escaped through wearing an old shirt His hut had been fired, and, as he tried to escape, he was seized by his shirt sleeve. The piece gave away, and he managed to get clear off.
A fine hill rises suddenly from the plain at the junction of the Blackman and Macquarie rivers, and goes by the name of Don's Battery. A man, called Don, being chased by some Natives, reached this rampart, and from its top defended himself for hours with such courage and success, that the wearied attacking mob left him the victor.
The most remarkable circumstance connected with the Black War is this, that, though the native women had been so cruelly treated by the Whites, the male Aborigines, though ready to inflict death by the spear, singularly enough abstained from outrages upon the persons of our females. A good authority has distinctly stated, "In all the incursions made by the Blacks into the settlements, it has never been known that a single white woman has hem violated by any of them." The only approach to this crime has been made by the half-civilized Natives, who invariably became the greatest ruffians in the war. It would seem that not until they became acquainted with the usages of Christians in warfare, could they be guilty of the atrocities that have stained the arms of Europe even in Christian lands themselves. The horrors of the Peninsular and Thirty Years' wars were heightened by this dreadful addition to the sufferings of women.
Spear-wounds, inflicted by a sharpened point of wood, were
