I have mentioned that Captain Bromley was appointed as interpreter in place of Mr. Cronk. He might be said to have lived with the blacks, as he had a small cottage at their location on the north side of the river, and opposite to where the gaol has since been built.

Here the Government had erected for the accommodation of the natives, huts or kennels, open towards the rising sun, and which with much trouble some of the blacks were induced to use for a time.

But this was too great a departure from their previous habits, as such permanent sleeping places would require to be kept clean, and then as their bits of fires, according to their custom, were placed in front of the open part, when an east wind was blowing the dwellings were uninhabitable, and they could not effect a change of front, as they do with their customary wurlies, formed of leafy boughs, which they cleanse by putting a fire-stick in them.

Here Captain Bromley lived until he was found dead in a water-hole in the river; and here the blacks congregated when they were not away on hunting and fishing excursions. The Interpreter's duties were to serve out flour, sugar, tea, and blankets at certain times, and report to the Protector anything serious which might happen.

For some little time before the Interpreter's death, great dissatisfaction had been created amongst the natives on account of an inferiority in the quality of the rations with which he had to supply them. At this time flour had become very scarce and dear, and in place of that oatmeal, somewhat damaged, had been substituted. This they threw about in disgust, and with much grumbling and great complaints to Captain Bromley. The sugar also was said to be inferior.

It was Captain Bromley's habit to fetch his own water from the river. On the morning of his death he had as usual gone down with his can, and was afterwards found dead in the waterhole. Suspicions were excited against the blacks; he was found with his hands clenched, but with no marks of violence on his person, and there was no evidence to show that, as some people said, he had been pushed in, and held down under water by the natives, who were certainly at that time in a most angry mood about the altered rations.

The question of the displacement of an aboriginal race has always been attended with great difficulties, but is one of those necessary processes in the course of Providence to bring about the improvement of the human race and the promised latter days. From my own experience with our natives, low as they have sunk, I am convinced that with ample means granted, and time, much good may be worked on them; but at the same time, the introduction of civilised habits seems to be fatal to their continued existence, independently of the vices and diseases we have brought among them, to our disgrace, and which have hastened their destruction.

Shortly after I took up my residence beyond the ranges I became acquainted with a Captain Beevor, who had a small sheep station towards the River Murray. He was a most amiable and gentlemanly man. On one occasion he complained to me of the blacks as being very troublesome to him, and that he had to be constantly on the look out to keep them away from his sheep.

Shortly after this we heard that he accidentally shot a black. All who were acquainted with him were in distress on his account. Whether the occurrence reached the ears of the authorities or not I do not know; at all events no steps as far as I was aware of were taken to enquire into the matter, nor did I ever speak to him on the subject.

Shortly after this occurrence he called on me in passing my place, and told me he was giving up his station, and was leaving for a distant part of the colony, namely, to form a station at Port Lincoln in company with his friend Mr. Dark. The next account I heard of him was that they had gone on an exploring expedition on the Port Lincoln side of the province.

Then in a few years the news came that when he and his friend Dark were encamped on the margin of an extensive patch of scrub, at some distance from Port Lincoln, early in the morning one of them had walked a short distance from his tent, and had sat down, when without any warning he was pierced by a large spear, thrown by an unseen hand, which killed him. No natives were known to be in the neighborhood, nor did any, after this murder, show themselves.

It was not long afterwards that the other party was also killed by the natives. The only explanation I ever heard of the way in which the black man was killed by Captain Beevor was that on his rising one morning early, on looking out, he perceived one native approaching his sheepyard, and that he motioned him to go away; then as the warning was not complied with he fired, not aiming at the man, but the ball striking a stone, ricochetted, and in rising pierced a vital part of the approaching native, who sprang into the air and fell dead on his face. From my own knowledge of Captain Beevor, I accepted this explanation as true, as did his neighbors.

It is a sad reflection that the white man in seeking to occupy the countries the aboriginal races have previously wandered over should have been under the necessity of taking their lives, but I do without hesitation assert that in South Australia the instances of wilful and unjustifiable destruction of them have been few in comparison to the cases of necessity. For myself, I am thankful indeed, that although I was much out in the bush and exposed to danger from the blacks, I was never brought into collision with them. I certainly kept on good terms with them, but I do not assume that my escape was in consequence of my treatment or those who were acquainted with me, but that I kept a sharp look out when likely to meet with strange or wild blacks as we called them.

Although very few instances of unprovoked murder of whites by the natives have come within my own knowledge, I must not omit to relate some such experiences which occurred in the early days, and first, that most unfortunate case of the killing of Captain Barker, on the eastern side of the mouth of the Murray, although it occurred some years before the foundation of our colony, as I believe the tribe by which he was killed also were afterwards guilty of other murders in our time as such took place in the same district.

Captain Barker, a brother officer of Captain Sturt, both of the 39th regiment of the line, then partly quartered in Sydney, was ordered by Sir Ralph Darling, Governor of New South Wales, on his way from Western Australia, to visit and inspect the Gulf of St. Vincent and Encounter Bay, to explore and examine the country, to ascertain if the favorable report of it furnished by Captain Sturt on his return from his boat trip down the Murray river, to near its embouchure, founded only on the distant views which he was able to obtain of the country in passing up and down the river, was borne out by an actual inspection of it.

I gather the following facts from the report of Mr. King who accompanied Captain Barker. It appears that he, with a party, left their ship (we may presume at Holdfast Bay), and travelled on foot to the top of Mount Lofty, from whence it may well be said, he had on all sides of him a most extensive and splendid prospect. From this elevation he made his way, principally through a dense forest, till he came to the exceedingly rich flats on his near approach, to Mount Barker (named after him), and continued on from thence to Lake Alexandrina and the Lower Murray or the Goolwa.

Wishing to get a good view of the outlet to the sea, he left his party and swam across one of the channels, with his compass fastened on his head. From this meagre account, we are led to suppose that he must have cast off the greater part of his clothes, and did not carry arms with him. He was seen after leaving the water to ascend a high sand hummock, and then disappeared from their sight never to be seen again alive or dead by his people.

As he did not return he was subsequently sought for by them, accompanied by a white sealer and a native woman from Kangaroo Island, and they ascertained he had been killed, and that his body was thrown into the stream and was carried out to sea.

Here was a noble man cut down in the performance of the arduous duties he had almost completed. Of him, his comrade and friend, Captain Sturt wrote — "He was in disposition, as he was in the close of his life, in many respects similar to Captain Cook. Mild, affable, and attentive, he had the esteem and regard of every companion, and the respect of every one under him. Zealous in the discharge of his public duties, honorable and just in private life, a lover, and follower of science, indefatigable and dauntless in his pursuits, a steady friend, an entertaining companion. In him the king lost one of his most valuable officers and his regiment one of its most efficient members."

I conjectured he was cast into the rapid swirl with his compass untouched, as they evidently got rid of his remains and all he had about him effectually, as nothing has since been discovered of anything he had with him, and the compass, if remaining on his head, would keep his body from returning to the beach, and I think they dreaded to touch the compass, as they would think it to be some mysterious part of his person, as some of them thought the first man on horseback formed, with the horse, one animal, and, as was related to me by a river black who first saw Captain Sturt in his boat, and the one following him, he believed them to be two animals with "plenty heads and long arms."

When it is considered that the whites, who have taken possession of so much of this fifth quarter of the world, as it has been called, and have spread themselves out so much, we may well wonder that so few lives have been lost, especially as some of us know how careless the majority of the people have been, and in how many instances, as reported in other colonies, our countrymen, to their disgrace, have treated the aboriginals with insult and injustice, as we have also in taking their land without adequate compensation.

Having met with some further particulars on my first visit to Mount Barker about seven years after Captain Barker fell, and and as he was not seen by, or buried by friends, I felt much on the painful subject. Having met with a party of blacks at or near the spot where he left his party and was about to put the crowning finish to his work, as well as to that of his friend Sturt, I questioned the natives I there met with.

Amongst them was a woman who could speak a few words of English. She had been recently stolen from the Adelaide tribe, and had been told by the black who had caught her, by what I could make out, as follows : — That the tribe would not have killed him only he ran away and would not stop, when they gave him friendly signs, and so a spear was thrown at him which made him tumble down. She could not tell me of anything taken from him. I could gather that he was cut off by some who were secreted in ambush, and whom he had passed, so that he could not return towards his party.

I have considered it necessary to introduce the spearing of Captain Barker in this place, as it will be followed by the most heartrending description of the slaughter of the shipwrecked captain, passengers, arid crew of the ill-fated brigantine Maria on the strip of land between the Coorong and the sea, being the country of the Big Murray, or Milemnura tribe of natives, and where also two sailors — Roach and his mate— were killed on visiting the wreck of the Fanny, which occurred some months before the Maria catastrophe.

There is no doubt that these murders; that of Captain Barker included, had all been committed by the same cruel tribe, as they were held in such dread by adjoining tribes that no other blacks could be intruders on their country to perpetrate such deeds.

The prompt action of Colonel Gawler in bringing the principal criminals to punishment had the desired effect in deterring that savage tribe from a repetition of such unprovoked slaughters, as no murders, excepting that of McGrath, by them have been discovered since. By Major O'Halloran and his party two were hung and two shot in attempting to escape.

But severe censure was visited on Colonel Gawler by a certain party at home, and by a small section in the colony in opposition to Colonel Gawler, who made this a handle against him, but were not in the habit of exposing their own precious bodies to dangers in the bush of any kind. I cannot help thinking that the treatment Colonel Gawler met with at home after his recall may be attributed to the mistaken decision arrived at by the party alluded to acting on the Government at home, which party assumes to be especially the protectors of the aboriginal races, who could not see and would not believe that there were peculiar circumstances to justify the irregular but humane mode of action which was ordered by the Governor and carried out by Major O'Halloran in inflicting the punishment then put in force for such crimes.

I am not writing as the apologist of the officials, but have taken on myself the duty of truthfully recording early experiences in founding and settling South Australia; and I call upon readers to form their own conclusions after reading the occurrences of these Milemnura murders, and what I propose to record in future numbers of subsequent attacks by other Murray tribes on parties coming down from Sydney with stock, and of the much heavier punishment in those cases which resulted in a number of the blacks being killed and there was no public agitation respecting these affairs.

As to the Milemnura case, it must be admitted that if such speedy and severe action had not been adopted by Colonel Gawler, the settlers would have taken the law into their own hands, and then who can tell what consequences would have ensued?

I at the time became acquainted with the excited feelings of the parties under Mr. Pullen and Major O'Halloran, and know it must have called for the exercise of all the influence possessed by the leaders to have kept the men from acts of retaliation on their own private account. I conceive it becoming all old colonists, in justice to the memories of the gallant men who were the chief actors in the performance of the retribution, visited on the barbarous murderers, to give their decided opinion that the punishment inflicted was fully justified by the peculiar circumstances surrounding the case, and with the object in view, viz., to deter and prevent a repetition of such horrors, and which object has been successfully attained.

I have much pleasure in concluding this chapter with an extract from a letter published in the Register of the 5th September, 1840, after the two reports had reached the Government. Of the writer it may be said a more humane and Christian man has never occupied a position in office in South Australia than Captain G. Hall, then acting Colonial Secretary. His letter followed Major O'Halloran's report of his expedition against the Big Murray or Milemnura tribe of natives. We who have lived in the colony during the succeeding period of nearly 37 years can certify that his predictions of the effects of the exceptional action taken have been fully realised.

He said as to the report (i.e. Major O'Halloran's): — "Upon this statement of facts I would only remark that there is great reason to believe that prompt execution of the guilty parties, on the spot where their crime was perpetrated, and in the presence of their tribe, who were fully aware of their guilt, will have a very beneficial effect in deterring the natives of that district from making wanton and unprovoked attacks on persons or property of Europeans who are about to settle in that neighborhood. If the offenders had been brought up to Adelaide, to be tried and punished under the English criminal law, the effect of the example would have been lost to the other members of the tribe, who would have been more irritated by the removal of their comrades than awed or impressed by any account which they might hear of the punishment of the offenders."

Success in the attainment of earthly treasures, even where questionable means have been exercised, is, according to a low standard of morality, too often rewarded by the key of admission into good society and by a cloak covering such delinquences if within the line laid down by human laws. But as to the stigma visited on Colonel Gawler on account of his prompt action in accepting the responsibility of deviating from the ordinary processes of the criminal law in ordering, as he did, a Court Martial to be held on the Milemnura murderers and in issuing a warrant, for their execution on conviction, when no other course was open to him with a chance of success in overawing such a blood-thirsty tribe, except that of indiscriminate slaughter. It was not removed from him during his lifetime, although he lived long enough to know, as also resident colonists have experienced, that the most complete success was attained by his treatment of that tribe as evinced by their subsequent conduct. A full account of Mr. Pullen's and Major O'Halloran's expedition will appear in the next number, with extracts from their reports, and from communications made to me by some who served under them.