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Rh were, I think, the only three white men with the cattle, but the myalls readily helped them, and were wonderfully quick in finding out how to make themselves useful. He gave them one or two calves too young to travel, and he assured me they never attempted to touch any others. He parted company with this tribe on arriving near the junction of the Thompson and Barcoo, and travelled up the latter river to his country. This was at the time apparently a sort of debatable land between different tribes—and it was certainly frequented by the blacks who hunted further up the river, where they had been hunted down and shot like dogs for years before Welford's death. When he told me what I have narrated above, Mr. Weford had sufficiently established himself on his country to be able to leave the cattle in charge of others. He was quite confident that he would be able to manage the blacks safely, but foolishly refused to recognise the danger he incurred by the action of the whites further up the river, and more especially by the extension in his direction of the 'patrols' of the black police. No man knows the exact particulars of his death, which occurred some considerable time afterwards, for he was alone at the time, having sent his only white companion away on an errand. His body was found floating in the waterhole, with the marks of blacks clubs on his head. But we, who were camped on the country even before he reached it, incurred no loss but some trifling pilferings, checked easily, and, except in one instance, without effusion of blood, and this I am thoroughly convinced was due to the fact that the black police had not reached us, and the camps were under the charge of conscientious men, who would not permit unprovoked molestation of the savages. But further up the river this was not the case. Blacks were shot—well, simply because they were blacks. The police extended their 'patrol,' and I need not tell you what that means. In consequence of all this poor Welford was killed, probably by a tribe that had been 'dispersed,' and were seeking for the first unsuspecting white they could find to revenge the death of their friends. It is the same old story that goes on repeating itself to the present day. The man who shoots blacks to try the range of his rifle, or to gratify the mere pleasure that some men seem to experience in hunting down human beings as a sort of game, escapes punishment. He never falls under the blacks' spears or clubs. But his neighbor, who is an upright and humane man, pays the penalty. He knows the blacks—he knows that in their natural state they have a clear idea of justice, and relies on it in his dealings with them. But his calculations are upset when the tribe in whose country he is living is driven mad by experiencing the sort of 'justice' the native police and some of the white settlers give them. The blacks pay the Europeans a high compliment—they abandon their own habits and adopt ours—and they show what apt scholars they are by braining the first unoffending and friendly white man they can find. Until some equitable system such that proposed by the Queenslander is adopted, outsiders must die as poor Welford died, or take part in the disgusting and murderous hunting down of the wretched feeble savages that is constantly going on. The Barcoo, for some years before Mr. Welford's death, admirably illustrated the working of the different systems. The head of it was occupied in the first instance by gentlemen who did what the Queenslander urges—they defended their own property, but let the blacks when harmless rigorously alone. There were few wild blacks killed, and only under conditions that the tribes themselves would admit were just. The whites lost no lives, and little property. In a very short time the myalls understood the conditions of peace, and from that time forward there was absolute safety for the whites. I lived in that part of the district, and have slept alone in a log hut, with a big hole in the logs, within 400 yards of a camp of probably as many blacks, the majority being pure myalls, who were in a state of furious excitement over some tribal quarrel, and was never in a moment's danger of being disturbed. I have ridden alone and unarmed among hundreds of them, miles from any other white man, and far from the road or track, where they could easily have knocked me over—indeed, I have pulled up my horse to talk to individuals, and had scores of them crowding round, all naked, painted, and with their spears and nullas in their hands. Yet I was quite safe, simply because the blacks knew that if they touched me they would be severely punished, but that if they left the whites alone they would be safe. And, what will seem to town readers more strange, I knew well a black 'boy' who bore the scars of his master's bullets, fired at him when he was a myall, as punishment for having taken part in spearing some cattle. That black and his tribe had from the first admitted the justice of the punishment, and the squatter who shot him had no more attached follower in after years—when the tribe was let in—than the young man who bore the mark of his bullet. And although this occurred a good many years ago, and the gentleman in question must have exposed himself hundreds of times to