In throwing the spear they are very expert; indeed, of late,
their audacious atrocities have been lamentably great, although, at
the same time, I have little hesitation in saying, they have arisen
from the cruel treatment experienced by some of their women from the
hands of the distant stock-keepers. Indeed, these poor mortals, I
know, have been shot at merely to gratify a most barbarous cruelty....
After killing a white man, the natives have a sort of dance and
rejoicing, jumping, and singing, and sending forth the strangest
noises ever heard. They do not molest the body when dead, nor have I
ever heard of their stripping or robbing the deceased. Among
themselves they have no funeral rites; and those who are aged or
diseased are left in hollow trees, or under the ledges of rocks, to
pine and die. These people are subject to a disease, which causes the
most loathsome ulcerated sores; two or three whom I saw were
wretched-looking objects. I remember a very old man, who was thus
affected, being tried and hung, for spearing one of Mr.
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