Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/114

109 ethics, there is not any crime sufficiently heinous to warrant confinement, unless it be that of murder, and in that case the trial takes place immediately upon the discovery of the crime. In most cases of the kind, too, the murderer voluntarily gives himself up to be judged.

During our long experience amongst the aboriginal tribes, only one instance has come under our notice of a murderer endeavouring to evade the penalty of his crime by flight; and his endeavour, most wonderful to relate, was in every way successful, for he contrived to ingratiate himself into the favorable notice of a tribe at enmity with his own, by whom he was much thought of and admired. His adoption as a member of the tribe took place ere he had been many days amongst them, after which, as a matter of course, he was safe enough as far as any fear of his being given up to aboriginal justice was concerned.

This red-handed vagabond in after years became the leader of every kind of mischief that was perpetrated on the stock, or persons of those who took up country on the hunting grounds of his adopted tribe in the earlier days of the colony.

His vagabond career, however, was fitly and very abruptly terminated at last by the aboriginal police. These police in charge of a European commandant had been sent by the Government of the day out to the border districts with the view of keeping the wild blacks in some kind of check, making their head-quarters in the vicinity of Swan Hill, on the Murray River, from whence they patrolled the country in all directions. The natives, in their semi-civilised character, used to come to the camp of the police