Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/369

 reluctantly compelled'' to direct that the natives shoald be shot, and two (he said) were killed, Marnden and Arodell could hope to pacify the hlack more easily than the wliifce race. A settler at Portland Head presented to King a memorial "said to he signed hy all the KettlerK in that dietrict, requesting they oiight he allowed to shoot the natives fre- quenting their grounds.*' On inqniry it was ** found that none of the settlers had authorized the man to put fcheii* signatures to the paper/' and that his fears had actuated him. The attempted imposition was punished hy im- prisonment. "Wishing to be convinced myself (King wrote) wbat cause there was for these alarms, three of the imtiv ea from that part of the river readily came on being sjent for. On qiieBtioiiing the cause of their disacreemeut with the ne^' settlers, they very ingeniously answered that they did not like to be driven from the few places that were left on the banks of the river where alone they could prtxuire food ; that they had gone down the river AS the white uien look (jHoaseasion ; if they went across white men's grounds the settlers fired upon them or were an^ry ; that if they eould retain some places on the lower part of the river they would be satisfied, and would not trouble the wliite men. The observation and reqniiat appeared so just and ecpittable that I (L»sure<l them no more settlements aboitld he made down the river. With that assurance they appeared well satisfied, and promised to be quiet^ in which state they contmue/' Some compunction was felt, and a paragrapli in the Sydiieif Gti-t'ttf in 1804 waB well litted to sharpen it. Some years previously a black child had heen seized at Toongahbe, when its father and mother were shot. A man named Bath pitied and reared the hoy, who never spoke any language hut English, and, as was usual with native children so circumstanced, had bo hankering fur the life of his fore- fathers* So vile a pariah had the child of the soil become on its native land that we are told he " testiiied a rooted ^nd imconquerable aversion to all of his own colotu', alao esteeming the term natlvfi as the most illiberal and severe reproach that could ever be uttered," He was named (by his foster-father) James Bath, and died in 1804, having given '* undoubted proofs of Clnistian piety, freipiently repeating the Lord's Prayer shortly before his dissolution J' Thus touched by the words of the Healer, James Bath vanished from the evil days. In April 1805 King reported farther outrages. He was
 * 'contitlent that the settlers had been eKkeoielY IvWx^jJ^^i^