Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/372

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344
FEMALE ORPHAN INSTITUTION.

wronged. White spectators saw the ordeal. Musquito "defended himself against sixty-four spears, all thrown with rancour and malignity, and seventeen of which went through the target, some to a depth of nearly two feet. The sixty-fifth and last thrown at him entered the calf of his right leg and penetrated six inches through. This was cut short before it could be extracted." The dark race could furnish a show, as the Dacians of old amused their conquerors in the amphitheatre.[1]

It is a pleasanter task to chronicle King's efforts on behalf of orphans. Before he formally assumed office in Sydney in 1800 he strove to remedy the evils which abounded. Though he arrived in April, he did not assume the government until 28th Sept. In July 1800 he had written to say that for a Female Orphan Institution he had bought, for £1539, a house belonging to Captain Kent, of H.M.S. Buffalo. On 9th Sept. he pleaded the cause of the orphans to the Duke of Portland:

"The necessity of some steps being taken to save the youth of this colony from the destructive examples of their abandoned parents, and others they unavoidably associate with, for want of an asylum to draw them from those examples, and the assurances I have of the success which has attended an institution of that kind which I formed some years ago at Norfolk Island,"

had induced him to make conditional purchase[2] of Kent's house, and to appoint a committee of management. Most of the children were of an age when instruction and example, either good or bad, have full force. He humbly submitted the propriety of sanctioning the purchase of the house.

Funds for management would be obtained from subscriptions, duties on entry and clearance, on landing goods, watering vessels, quit-rents, fines, and penalties. In a few

  1. ↑ Vide supra, p. 95. There must have been several natives called Musquito by the colonists. The Sydney Gazette of Jan. 1806 states that a black of that name in that month slew another black in a desperate battle with clubs, in which he laid open his enemy's skull, and that in the night Musquito was treacherously speared, and died in the hospital from the wound. At this time, according to King's despatch, the Musquito first-mentioned was at Norfolk Island.
  2. ↑ The Duke of Portland lost no time in approving the purchase, and in Jan. 1802 Lord Hobart praised all the arrangements made, and promised his own support.
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