about them. She now took her place beside one of her own sex, an extremely handsome young woman, as here and there one of them was, named Nung-in-a-bit-ta, and after a good deal of pleasant chit-chat about matters quite foreign to the real business she was upon, the cunning old faggot, by insensible degrees brought about the subject of the two missing men, and by dint of coaxing and cajolery (after the ways of woman) wormed the whole truth out of the poor simpleton, which was that they had been killed by the men of her own tribe. She spoke of Captain Thomas as "Kandownee," meaning, says M'Kay, a superior person, such as the chief of an establishment which she divined him to be, as distinguished from "Rageo," which meant a common fellow, like a stockkeeper for example, a class of persons whom the natives hated, Rageo being part of the term by which they designated the Devil, "Rageoroppa."[1] "When we had got to be good friends," says M'Kay, "she confessed that they had died by the spears of her tribe, and that two of the three men then in gaol were the most active in the murders, which two she declared to be Macamee and Wowee; and she volunteered to show us the bodies of the murdered men," an offer which M'Kay accepted directly, and he started for Port Sorell next morning, accompanied by the two women, and an active constable of the George Town police, named George Warren.
The party was crossed over the water at Port Dalrymple Heads, and soon reached Port Sorell, which they passed over, on M'Kay signalising his arrival on the shore opposite the landing place. He next reported progress to Captain Moriarty and Doctor Smith, informing them at the same time that the new arrival, Nunginabitta, knew where the bodies of the murdered men lay, but which, from some caprice, she refused to show, if any other except himself, Warren, and Black Sal accompanied her, and her peculiar humour being respected, they started under her guidance, and she led them straight to where they had died. "She took us," says Warren in his evidence, "about two miles into the bush, when they," that is the two women, "stopped and cried, and would not go any further, but pointed to the place where the bodies were to be found," which according to M'Kay's statement to the jury, was about a hundred yards from where
- ↑ Robinson, in one of his reports, gives this word as their equivalent for Devil, but adds that they used the same to express thunder and lightning, which no doubt they connected with the Evil Presence. M'Kay says that nearly all of them declared to him, in the most serious manner, that they had seen the "old gentleman," at one time or another, and were highly offended with him if they caught him even smiling at their credulity.
