For every man they murder, hunt them down, and drop ten of them. This is our specific—try it." The feeling is truly exhibited in the statement of the paper of Dec. 1, 1826, that "the settlers and stock-keepers are determined to annihilate every Black who may act hostilely." The cruelty took an indirect turn with some of these out-station people. Thus, Captain Holman talks about a fellow taking a pair of pistols, one only of which was loaded, and seeking to amuse a native by firing the harmless one at his own ear. Then, presenting the other weapon to the man, and inviting him to try the same funny performance on himself, he had the grim delight of seeing the black fellow's brains blown out.
Let us turn, for relief, to a pleasing story of 1822. A tribe had lighted their evening fires in the Bush not far from a field of corn ready to cut, and the flames were carried by a high wind toward the farm. The farmer writes: "We were doing our best to extinguish it by beating the flames out with green boughs, but our efforts would have been in vain had not the whole tribe of Blacks all at once come forward to assist me. Even some hours afterwards, when the flames again broke out in two or three places, they were on the alert in a moment to put them out. I mention this incident, as it was an act of friendship on their part, and shows that when they have not been insulted, or had cause of revenge, and are able to discriminate their friends from their foes, they are not wanting to reciprocate offices of friendship and humanity.
The Aborigines committee evidently saw another side to the worthy farmer's sketch, when they felt compelled to say, "Few attempts can be traced on the part of the colonists to conciliate the Natives, or to make them sensible that peace and forbearance are the objects desired. The impressions remaining from earlier injuries are kept up by the occasional outrages of miscreants, whose scene of crime is so remote as to render detection difficult, and who sometimes wantonly fire at and kill the men, and at others pursue the women, for the purpose of compelling them to abandon their children."
The Rev. Dr. Lang, in his indignant letter to Earl Durham, narrates a terrible scene. "A spot," said he, "was pointed out to me a few years ago in the interior of the island, where seventeen of these had been shot in cold blood. They had been
