Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/72

 ascertained that he had received more than fifty spear wounds in different parts; one spear had transfixed his kidneys, and even the very soles of his feet had been pierced. His arms were dreadfully fractured, evidently whilst he was in the act of raising them to protect his head from the clubs of the natives. A retaliatory expedition was accordingly organized to pursue the aggressors, and endeavour to seize those who had been chiefly concerned in this murder. In the course of the chase, the sawyers, aided by some of the MacLeay river blacks, succeeded in approaching the encampment of the natives in the dead of night; and next morning, on their making resistance, the whites poured a volley of ball and slugs among them, and killed and wounded several. If I may credit the report of an eye-witness, most of the wounded blacks sprang into the water, where some of them were apparently seized by sharks attracted by their blood. Several other affrays had taken place about this time, between the natives and parties of white men, in which the former were the aggressors.

Being aware, that one of the chief causes of the hostility of the wild blacks to parties travelling through the bush, was their indignation at the encroachment of white men on the prescribed haunts of the tribe; which cause would occasion a quarrel between different tribes of the natives themselves, unless their objects in so trespassing were formally explained by an avant courier, or herald; I resolved