Page:Descriptive account of the panoramic view, &c. of King George's Sound, and the adjacent country.djvu/17

 17 themselves each with a gun, and the elder, engaging Yagan in conversation until his head was in a line with the muzzle of his gun, shot him. The boys did not both escape; the elder was overtaken and speared. Yagan always shewed an inveterate hostility towards the Europeans. He certainly was a dangerous character, and decided steps were necessary to be taken, nor merely on account of his past behaviour, but also of a determination which he expressed, and would have no doubt carried into effect, of taking the lives of three "white men," in revenge for the death of his father, who had been shot by order of Government, upon being tried and convicted of murder. The justice of his death appears to have been recognised by his tribe; for after have propitiated the shade of their chief by taking—not, as had been their practice when one of their number had been killed by the Europeans, a white man's life, but—the lives of two individuals of an unoffending tribe, all hostility ceased, and a friendly feeling was soon established.

Immediately after death his head was cut off by a settler's servant, who suspended it for three months in a hollow tree, over a fire made with the wood of the Eucalyptus. During this process of smoking, the nose and features generally shrunk. The following observations on its phrenological structure have been kindly contributed by, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A., and F.L.S.