two men, the ever-watchful Natives descended from the Tiers. The mother was alone with her two children, a boy and a girl. Being washing-day, a large pot or billy of water was suspended from the chimney-hook over the fire. Immediately upon the cry of "the Blacks," they all rushed into the house, but not before the little boy received a severe wound in his leg. Nothing daunted, the family prepared for resistance, knowing if they could hold out for an hour or two the father would return. The poor mother, then within three weeks of her confinement, seized a gun from over the mantelpiece, and fired at the assailants. Then, keeping watch at an opening in the wall, she waited until her suffering boy had charged the weapon, when she again sent its contents among the cowardly band. This was repeated time after time, the brave boy assiduously helping his noble mother, regardless of his own wound.
Thus unexpectedly repulsed, the enemy prepared, another and more dreaded mode of attack. Fiery Wing-wangs, of lighted bark, were hurled against the bark roof of the hut, while, taking advantage of the withdrawal of attention of the inmates, they made a new rush to the door. But here commenced the heroism of the little girl, who, bidding her mother keep to her post, calmly and resolutely took her station by the fireplace, and with her pannikin at the billy steadily threw water upward upon the ignited bark. The mother, in the meanwhile, dealt another and another blow upon the savages. The contest had thus continued for hours, when, to the great joy of the wearied and suffering besieged, the report of guns outside reached their ears. The enemy disappeared, and the fainting wife was soon in the arms of her delivering partner. Governor Arthur was so pleased with the heroism of the woman, that he presented her with a grant of three hundred acres of land, and undertook to provide for the future of the brave boy and girl.
A man who had some forty-five years ago been brick-making for Mr. Robinson, the apostle of the Blacks, and whom I found a dozen years ago still making bricks, though now by the Yarra-Yarra, gave me some incidents of his career in the island over the way. He spoke of a party out kangarooing who came upon a mob rather suddenly. A fine, tall, naked chieftain was shot, and the others fled shrieking over the Fourteen-Tree Plains. A boy and girl, dropped in the flight, were picked up by the
