sm by stating, is the
description of an actual occurrence which took place not many years ago
in the town of Brisbane, and, if I mistake not, the principal actor in
which is still living, and in this country. Captain Jones' marriage,
its results, the poisoning, murder, and protection society, are all
drawn from life; though, as I've said before, varied in their
arrangement. Neither have I indulged in any flights of the imagination
in depicting the horrible, but rather subdued the poignancy of the
original; particularly in the case of the murder, which in my hands has
received considerable detrition. Though the proceedings of "the society"
may be said to be the "coinage of my brain," I have not hazarded such an
accusation, as is contained in their narration, without being possessed
of sufficiently authentic information to warrant me in doing so. After
the melancholy event, from which I borrowed the idea of the Strawberry
Hill massacre, it is known for a fact that the blacks mysteriously
disappeared from the country; while the squatters were out in arms for
weeks scouring the bush, and made no secret of their enrollment for a
mutual protection. At the same time I have heard a settler of the
district, and one of considerable means and standing, when alcohol had
stimulated his nerves and courage, boast that he had shot _hundreds_ of
blacks; and have also heard others speak of such an action as merely an
unpleasant necessity. I must caution my readers, however, from imagining
that, because the tragical event which immediately precedes the
_denoument_ of my plot occupies so conspicuous a place in the narrative,
such dangers are incidental to a residence in the bush. Far from it.
Security reigns supreme; and I merely engrafted the too well known
catastrophe to my compilation to add interest to the tale. Such
visitations are, happily, not to be heard of once in a generation, and
then only on the extreme borders of civilisation. Convicts are no
longer noticeable, and bushrangers are only known as myths or scourges
of historical notoriety.

The peculiar idiom of the blacks, in their conversation with the
settler, I have introduced to give some idea of the unintelligible and
periphrastic jargon the whites have to adopt to make themselves
understood. And so accustomed do the squatters, and their men, become in
its use that they naturally fall into it whenever they experience any
difficulty in making themselves understood by any one