native and dropped him dead at once. Of course, he never told at the house what he had done. It was only two or three days after that that the attack upon the premises took place, and thus the wicked conduct of the lad had nearly caused the destruction of all the family.
Many narrow escapes are recorded. A stock-rider found himself suddenly beset by a mob in the Abyssinian Marshes. Rising in his stirrups, and setting spurs to his horse, he charged in upon the masses with his formidable weapon, the stock-whip. Loud cries followed his rapidly administered strokes, and the field became his own.
Nothing can be more sickening than the many tales of cruelty to women and children. Thus we read in the Gazette: "The Aborigines plundered the hut on the Lake river of everything in it, and murdered Mary Daniels and her two infants in cold blood." The Rev. J. West tells us of a Mrs. M'Alister, who received a spear wound from the Natives, and hid herself in a corn-field. But, missing her children, she came out crying after them. The savages saw her, came down, and murdered her. Ferguson narrates the story of some constables having protected a farm, and left from a conviction that no Natives were abroad in that locality. No sooner had they gone, than the house was invested and the mistress and her children killed. A similar circumstance occurred in another place, also deserted by some constables who had been keeping guard there. The farmer and his servants were engaged in a field not fifty yards from home when loud cries called them, but too late, to the house of death; for upon their entrance they saw the corpses of the mother and all her children. A friend gave me the following sad story of a settler near Jericho. A number of Natives had for three days been watching for an opportunity of exercising their bloody propensities. At length, the man, unguardedly, left his house without his musket. He was immediately surrounded and murdered. The people then went up to the homestead, and dashed out the brains of the wife and her seven children.
Occasionally they found even females too much for them. Between Lovely Banks and Spring Hill, some forty miles north of Hobart Town, a beautifully wooded region, there dwelt in the olden times a worthy settler upon a moderate-sized farm. Taking advantage of his temporary absence from home with his
