"When Writing Down, Therefore, My Journal, I Considered It Unnecessary To Make A Full Statement Of All That Had Come

To my knowledge since the month of March, concerning that most horrid event, or even to relate it as something

New, as it was not only known several months since to the respective authorities, but also as almost every one at Moreton Bay supposed that an investigation would take place without delay.

"I have, etc. "(signed) "WILLIAM SCHMIDT, "Missionary.""S. Simpson, Esq., "Commissioner of Crown Lands, "Eagle Farm."

"WOOGAROO, MORETON BAY, 6TH MAY, 1843.

"Sir, - I have the honour to report, for the information of his Excellency, that during my excursion to the Bunga country, I have taken every opportunity of instituting an inquiry as to the truth of the alleged poisoning of some Aborigines at a sheep station in the north of this district. A report of the kind certainly exists among the two tribes I fell in with, namely, the Dallambarah and Coccombraral tribes, but as neither of them were present at the time, they could give me no circumstantial information whatever on the subject. The Giggabarah tribe, the one said to have suffered, I was unable to meet with. Upon inquiry at the stations to the north, I could learn nothing further than that they had been using arsenic very extensively for the cure of the scab, in which operation sheep are occasionally destroyed by some of the fluid getting down their throats; and as the men employed frequently neglect to bury the carcases, it is very possible that the Aborigines may have devoured them, particularly the entrails, which they are very fond of, and that hence some accident of the kind alluded to may have occurred without their knowledge.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 601 of 914
Words from 167764 to 168056 of 254601