Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/624

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WESTERN AUSTRALIA. MR. MOORE. YAGAN.

natives in sight of the military quarters. Yagan was wary, but bold. To his inquiries as to the fate of Midgegoro Mr. Moore would give no reply. Yagan said he would take life for life. "There is something in his daring which one is forced to admire," Mr. Moore said. Though close to the encampment, neither Moore nor his companions attempted to capture the chief; but gave information after he was gone. A strong band was sent out, but it was not by them he was killed. A white lad, who was received in a friendly manner at the camps of the natives, went behind Yagan and shot him. The assassin threw away his gun, and ran for his life, but Yagan's companions pursued and speared him.

Mr. Moore reported that the man who afterwards preserved the head of Yagan also flayed from the body a portion of the skin. Englishmen might well be shamed by the doings of their countrymen thus made known to them by a gentleman who held a high position in the colony.

Fortunately for the national reputation, the second Governor of Western Australia, Mr. John Hutt, established a new order of things, though not before many dark deeds had been done such as Mr. Moore described.^[1]

Saxe-Bannister's resignation having been referred to, it may be well to dismiss him from these pages. Chief Justice Forbes owed him ill-will for the advice to the magistrates which (in 1824) excluded ex-felons from jury lists; but Forbes was not paramount with Darling, who, military and loyal, could not tolerate the opprobrious epithets which Forbes was reported to apply to a monarchical form of

↑ Colonel Charles J. Napier, to whom the Government of South Australia was offered in 1835, published in that year a work upon Colonization, in which he denounced the treatment of the natives in Western Australia. He narrated how a party of soldiers, with the Governor, slew "from twenty-five to thirty" and "several of the children:"—he described Yagan as the "noble warrior of the Swan River," no less conspicuous "for generosity than for his courage," and added that "to the hanging of native murderers, if their sentence was a just one, there can be no objection; but to the not hanging of the settler murderers, there are very great objections; . . . the savage has no knowledge of our law . . . the settler acts contrary to the laws of his country; knowing what is right he does wrong, and does so from a brutal disposition; he therefore appears to be a fit subject for the heavy hand of law. . . . "

[1] Colonel Charles J. Napier, to whom the Government of South Australia was offered in 1835, published in that year a work upon Colonization, in which he denounced the treatment of the natives in Western Australia. He narrated how a party of soldiers, with the Governor, slew "from twenty-five to thirty" and "several of the children:"—he described Yagan as the "noble warrior of the Swan River," no less conspicuous "for generosity than for his courage," and added that "to the hanging of native murderers, if their sentence was a just one, there can be no objection; but to the not hanging of the settler murderers, there are very great objections; . . . the savage has no knowledge of our law . . . the settler acts contrary to the laws of his country; knowing what is right he does wrong, and does so from a brutal disposition; he therefore appears to be a fit subject for the heavy hand of law. . . . "

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