Besides, it were easy to prevent the depredations of
these poor creatures--easy to drive them off without having recourse to
violence.
The humanity and forbearance, however, which such a mode of proceeding
with the aborigines would require was not to be found in my master.
Fierce repulsion and retaliation were the only means he would have
recourse to in his mode of treating them; and the consequence was, his
inspiring the natives with a hatred of him, and a desire of vengeance
for his manifold cruelties towards them, which was sure, sooner or
later, to end in his destruction. It did so. One deed of surpassing
cruelty which he perpetrated accomplished his fate.
One day, seeing two or three natives, amongst whom was a woman with a
young infant on her back, passing within a short distance of the house,
not approaching it--for he was now so much dreaded by these poor
creatures that few came to the door--my master, as usual, ran in for his
rifle, and calling his dogs around him, gave chase to the party.
The men being unencumbered, fled on seeing him, and being remarkably
swift of foot, were soon out of his reach. Not so the poor woman with
the child on her back: she could not escape; and at her the savage
ruffian fired, killing both her and the infant with the same murderous
shot.
This double murder was of so unprovoked, so cold-blooded, and atrocious
a nature, that it is probable, little as the life of a native was
accounted in those days, that my master would have been called upon to
answer for his crime before the tribunals of the colony; but retribution
overtook him by another and a speedier course.
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