Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/265

 treacherous warfare of the North American Indians, and the ferocious and implacable contests which used to take place among the ci-devant man-eating New Zealanders.

Acts of treachery sometimes occur between individual natives, but these acts, though they involve the tribe, to which the offending party belongs, in war with the other tribe, are always punished, as the offender has always to bear the brunt of the engagement, and stand for some time alone, unassisted by his companions, as a butt for the spears of the immediate relations of the man whom he has killed or wounded.

It seems to be a regular principle with the Australian Aborigines, that blood must be shed for blood; and as an example will better illustrate the warfare of the natives, than a general description, I will give a short account of a quarrel among some MacLeay river tribes, during my stay there.

Three young men, belonging to the Yarra-Bandini tribe, which was also the name of our cattle-station, (as that locality was the head-quarters of this tribe,) had descended the river in a canoe to Verge's station, which is within the limits of the boundaries of the Calliteeni or Kempsey tribe. The object they had in view, was to kill a Tryal bay native, whom the sawyers had nicknamed Cranky Tom, from his comical hilarity:—for it would appear that Cranky Tom had some time before killed one of the relations of these men in a