north of Palanna, and one of the natives of Adelaide, who had been sent there as a scout, had even heard the blacks. Meno* therefore went there at night to take them by surprise, but they were no longer found.

April 24th, 1842. Sunday.
It was done on a rest day. Mr. Driver decided to go back to town the following morning to write letters for the "Governor Gawler." I wished I could go with him, which he remarked, then perhaps the innocent natives would all be shot dead.

April 25th, 1842.
At 9 o'clock in the morning we set off on foot for ( 116 ) Coffin Bay, accompanied by Tunba and an Adelaide native. As we approached the beach we heard the natives in the distance, and Tunba's opinion was that they were murderers. Since they were on the southern side of the bay, we crept over the hills and through bushes so that they wouldn't notice us from a distance. The Adelaide native ran so fast that I had great difficulty following them, having to lead my dog by a rope to keep him from running ahead.

As soon as we had the natives between us and the lakeshore, we headed straight downhill towards them. Tunba, whose eyes had seen them earlier than ours, now said: "Leave them alone, it's just Yumba*", but Lieutenant Hugonin ordered him to be silent, and I myself joined in, believing that he only wanted to give them time to escape. As soon as the natives saw us, they jumped up, spread their arms ( 117 ), and said that they were not the murderers. Despite this, one of the soldiers fired a pistol at Yumba, who was standing close to me, but luckily it wasn't loaded. When the Lieutenant saw that the natives showed no hostility, he exclaimed, "That will do, no, no, no," etc., and I myself shouted with all my might not to fire. At first there were three natives, along with two women and a few children; But immediately afterwards a fourth, Numma*, came up, into whom a soldier had put a bullet through the abdomen, so that the intestines came out on both sides. The bullet had gone in under the short ribs on the left side and out of the right hip again. This man had been in the water about 10 - 20 paces from the rest of the natives [and] was busy spearing fish, but the ( 118 ) soldier claimed that he had wanted to spear him, but he contradicted himself in that I heard him say that the same had run back into the water when he noticed that he was aiming at him. I had not noticed this native at all and had not heard the shot fired, as my entire attention was focused on preventing the other three from being shot. How great was my astonishment and horror when Numma came up to me with a wild look, a terrible wound and the declaration that he was an acquaintance or friend and not a murderer. "I Kappler, I very good*", and when he heard that they wanted to take him to Port Lincoln, "I bamba*", (id est: bye and bye, that means: I want to stay) were his moving words. He leaned on two of his friends for a few moments, but soon sank to the ground, leaning his head on another's lap. As we were leaving, he asked for my handkerchief, ( 119 ) with which he covered his face. His eyes were already dull and turned upside down, so that it couldn't take much longer for them