r so depraved, as wantonly to destroy a canoe belonging to a
fine young man, a native, who had left it at a little distance from the
settlement, as he thought, out of the way of observation, while he went
with some fish he had to sell. His rage at finding his canoe destroyed
was very great: he threatened to take his revenge, and in his own way,
upon all white people. Three of the offenders, however, having been seen
and described, were taken and punished, and so were the remainder of
them not very long afterwards. The instant effect of this outrage
was, that the natives discontinued the bringing up of fish; and
Bal-loo-der-ry, whose canoe had been destroyed, although he had been
taught to believe[79] that one of the six convicts had been hanged for
the offence, meeting a few days afterwards with an European who had
strayed to some distance from Paramatta, he wounded him in two places
with a spear. This act of Bal-loo-der-ry was followed by the governor's
strictly forbidding him to appear again in any of the settlements; and
the other natives, his friends, being alarmed, Paramatta was seldom
visited by any of them, and all commerce with them was (for the time)
at an end. However, in about two months afterwards, before the person
wounded by him had recovered, Bal-loo-der-ry ventured into the town with
some of his friends, and one or two armed parties were sent to seize
him. A spear having been thrown, it was said, by him, two muskets were
fired, by which one of his companions was wounded in the leg, but
Bal-loo-der-ry was not taken. On the following day it was ordered that
he was to be seized whenever an opportunity should offer, and that any
native attempting to throw a spear in his defence, (since they well knew
why he was denounced,) was, if possible, to be prevented from escaping.
Those who knew this savage regretted that it had been necessary to treat
him thus harshly, for among his countrymen they had never seen a finer
young man. We cannot finish this melancholy history with a more true
reflection than that of Lieutenant Collins: "How much greater claim to
the appellation of _savages_ had the wretches (the convicts) who were
the cause of this, than the natives who were termed so!"

[79] Such are the words of Lieutenant Collins, from whose account of New
South Wales the narrative is taken. When will Christians learn, in their
intercourse with heathens and savages, to abstain from such falsehood
and deceitful