some of their white neighbours, and the camp broke up immediately for the haunts of wildness.
The infamous treatment of the poor females was the exciting cause of the bitter and revengeful spirit manifested by the Blacks toward our race. It was not alone that these unfortunates were the victims of their lust, but the objects of their barbarity. If perchance a woman was decoyed to the shepherd's hut, no gentleness of usage was employed to win her regard, and secure her stay; threatening language, the lash, and the chain were the harsher expedients of his savage love. A story is told by Dr. Ross, describing his journey up to the Shannon in 1823. "We met," said he, "one of Mr. Lord's men sitting on the stump of a tree, nearly starved to death. He told us that three days before, a black woman whom he had caught, and had chained to a log with a bullock-chain, and whom he had dressed with a fine linen shirt (the only one he had), in hopes, as he said, to tame her, had contrived somehow to slip the chain from her leg, and ran away, shirt and all" The doctor adds, "I fear his object in chaining the poor creature was not exactly pure and disinterested." The reader will not be surprised to hear that not long after this gentle lover was hanged for exercising his benevolence upon some of his own countrymen. We hear of another who, having caught an unhappy girl, sought to relieve her fears, or subdue her sulks, as it was termed, by first giving her a morning's flogging with a bullock-whip, and then fastening her to a tree near his hut until he returned in the evening. The same fellow was afterwards found speared to death at a water hole.
A settler of the Esk informed me that a neighbour of his, wanting a gin asked him to accompany him on his Sabine expedition. He had heard that a woman had been seen with a small party on an island in the river, and was then on his way thither to seize her. He pointed exultingly to a bullock-chain which he carried, as the means of capture. I was struck with the criticism of an "Old Hand," a rough carter, but one who carried a kind heart beneath a bear's skin. We were talking of the former times, and of the cruelty practised upon the Blacks, especially in the stealing of their women. With no particular admiration for the dark people, some of whom had tried their spears upon his body, he had a sense of manliness within him, and thus expressed his opinion: "If a man was to run away
