heights a large body of the Aborigines, and not very far from the spot where Bass and Flinders held friendly parley with one of the tribe; so that there was no reason to suspect hostile intentions. Women and children were there. The officer in command ordered the soldiers with him to fire upon the advancing hunters, and numbers were slain.
One person states that the event took place while the Lieutenant-Governor Bowen was on a tour, and that the Natives came down the hill shouting and singing, in full pursuit of some kangaroos. Another eye-witness mentions the fact of the man Burke, living just outside of the camp, running in great alarm with his wife to the soldiers, at the sight of the five hundred Blacks, whose women and children were with them. It is well known that when a savage people contemplate mischief they invariably send their women to the woods. Thus, then, we have a guarantee of their peaceable intentions. The same evidence records the death of, at least, fifty of various ages and of both sexes. There is, also, the assertion that the people came on in a semicircle down the hill, with loud cries, driving the kangaroos into a bottom, where they could be easier caught and destroyed.
The Aborigines' Committee, a body of gentlemen appointed by the benevolent Governor Arthur to watch over the interests of that unhappy people at the time of the Black War, when engaged in an investigation as to the causes producing the hostility of the dark race, took certain evidence which bore upon this historical question. One Edward White, who had been servant to W. Clark, and who had erected the rude hut or house inhabited by the commanding officer, Lieutenant Bowen, stated before the Committee that, on the 3d of May, 1804, he was engaged hoeing some ground near the creek at Risdon, when looking up at the shouting, he saw about three hundred Natives coming down the Tiers in a circle, men, women, and children, with a flock of kangaroos between them. He then declared:—
"They looked at me with all their eyes. I went down to the creek, and reported them to some soldiers, and then went back to my work. The Natives did not threaten me. I was not afraid of them. Clark's house was near where I was at work, and Burke's house near Clark's house. The Natives did not attack the soldiers. They could not have molested them. The firing commenced about eleven o'clock. There were many of the
