not stain the annals of the colony. In
proportion, indeed, as our numbers increased, and the inhabitants began
to possess those comforts or necessaries which might prove temptations to
the idle and the vicious, that high and horrid offence might, in common
with others of the same tendency, be expected to exist; but at this
moment all thought their persons secure, though their property was
frequently invaded. On the 5th of this month, however, John Lewis, an
elderly convict, employed to go out with the cattle at Parramatta, was
most barbarously murdered. The cattle, having lost their conductor,
remained that night in the woods; and when they were found, the absence
of Lewis excited an apprehension that some accident had happened to him.
His body was not discovered however until the Wednesday following, when,
by the snorting and great uneasiness of the cattle which had been driven
out for the purpose, it was perceived lying in a hollow or ravine, into
which it had been thrown by those who had butchered him, covered with
logs, boughs, and grass. Some native dogs, led by the scent of human
blood, had found it, and by gnawing off both the hands, and the entire
flesh from one arm, had added considerably to the horrid spectacle which
the body exhibited on being freed from the load of rubbish which had been
heaped upon it.

This unfortunate man had imprudently boasted of being worth much money,
and that he always carried it with him sewed up in some part of his
clothes, to guard against losing it while absent from his hut. If this
was true, what he carried with him certainly proved his destruction; if
not, the catastrophe must be attributed to his indiscreet declarations.
By the various wounds which he had received, it appeared that he must
have well defended himself, and could not have parted with his life until
overpowered by numbers; for, though advanced in years, he was a stout,
muscular man; and it was from this circumstance concluded, that more than
one person was concerned in the murder of him. To discover, if possible,
the perpetrators of this atrocious offence, one or two men of bad
characters were taken up and examined, as well as all the people employed
about the stockyard: but nothing came out that tended to fix it upon any
one of them; and, desirable as it was that they should be brought to that
punishment which sooner or later awaited them, it was feared that until
some riot or disagreement among themselves should