Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/226

 152 DISCOVERY OF THE MURDERED PEOPLE. of the Coorong. On the 30th they continued their voyage up the Coorong, and at last came to a spot which was pointed out by one of the Encounter Bay natives named Peter, as that on which some of the murders took place. This, he had no doubt ascertained from the blacks who were implicated, as they have a name for every nook and corner of the shores of the lakes; so the party landed on the shore of the Coorong which is towards the sea, and a sickening spectacle presented itself. There, partially covered with sand, lay legs, arms, and portions of several human bodies. Upon gathering these remains together, they, by the aid of the doctor who was with them probably, made out that there were the bodies of two men, three women, and a female child of ten (one woman’s body was almost denuded of flesh, except on the hands and feet), two male childrenone apparently about fifteen years of age and the other ten; and at a little distance lay the body of a female infant. All were dreadfully bruised about the face and head, and they were stripped of every rag of clothing. They removed the weddingrings which they found on the fingers of the women, and then reverently buried the remains of the poor murdered people. This occupied the party till evening, and it is easy to imagine with what indignation they left the vicinity of the scene of such an atrocity. It should be stated that, the Coorong is a long, narrow sheet of salt water, running out of the lower part of Lake Alexandrina towards the south-east, and separated from the ocean by a peninsula of sandhills about two miles wide. Some of these sandhills are of white sand, without any vegetation, while others are covered with shrubs and creeping plants. Between them there are small flats of pasture-ground. The scenery on the Coorong is very wild and peculiar. There is the solitary-looking sheet of water, stretching for sixty miles, and presenting, as its waves dance in the breeze, beautiful tints of blue and green. On the right are the white and sombre hills of sand, and on the left green plains dotted with clumps of the dark sheoak. The waters abound with fish and game; consequently the shores were in