1842

( 101 ) March 3rd, 1842. On this day Mr. Brown and his hutkeeper [caretaker] were cruelly killed by the natives. News of this sad event came the following morning,

March 4th, 1842.
brought to the city by Brown's and White's shepherds. A jury was immediately assembled (including myself) to hear the shepherd's testimony, and then the police were dispatched to fetch the body. Late in the evening they arrived with the body and at the same time brought with them the suspicion that Brown appeared to have been shot rather than speared. The following morning,

March 5th, 1842.
the jury was reconvened after the body had been examined by the doctor. All doubts ( 102 ) as to whether Mr. Brown had been speared or shot were removed by the testimony of the doctor, who found a splinter from a spear in the body. The body was buried that same evening.

March 6th, 1842. Sunday.
The Ngulga and Kungka natives came to me today with what appeared to be great sorrow at the murder of Mr. Brown and his guard. They gave the names of the murderers and other circumstances so precisely that Ngulga was suspected of complicity. He claimed, however, that after the murder he met the murderers and that they informed him of what had happened, whereupon he went to Kattabidni or Brown's Station and saw the bodies lying there.

( 103 ) The body of the watchman had not yet been found, in spite of all searches; We therefore decided to go there with Ngulga the following day. Ngulga gave the following as the murderers: Wondata, who first and only speared the guard; also Mulya*, Kunga, Milli, Nganya* [The rest of the page is torn from the diary.]

( 104 ) Rot had become almost completely black and so swollen that it would obviously burst at the slightest touch. Since there was no coffin and, according to the workers, no grave could be made in the stony ground, the body was placed in a crack in the rock and covered [The rest of the page is torn out of the diary.]

( 105 ) March 29th, 1842.
This morning the sad news came to the town that Mr. Biddle, along with [Mr.] Fastin(g)s and Mrs. Stubbs, had been murdered by the natives yesterday and that Stubbs himself had been left for dead, but had recovered. In consequence of this news, about three o'clock in the afternoon I rode with Mr. Bishop and others to Biddles Station, and thence to Pillaworta to Mr. Driver's Station. Mr. White had already fetched old Stubbs from his station in Talalla this morning and laid the dead ones on beds and covered them up, but according to the shepherd's statement,