om the Canvas-town diggings for Nelson on a certain day, and
the men I have mentioned set out to meet them. One part of their long
journey led them over the Maungatapu range by a saddle, which in its
lowest part is 2,700 feet above the sea-level. The night before the
murder, the victims and their assassins camped out with only ten miles
between them. So lonely and deserted was the rough mountain track, that
the appearance of a poor old man named Battle alarmed Burgess and his
gang dreadfully, and they immediately murdered him, in order that he
should not report having passed them on the road. Between the commission
of this act of precaution and the arrival of the little band of
travellers, no one else was seen. Burgess appears to have shown some of
the qualities of a good general; for he selected a spot where the only
path wound along a steep side-cutting, less than six feet wide, with an
unbroken forest on the upper, and a mass of tangled bush on the lower
side. As the doomed men approached the murderers sprang out, and each
thrusting a revolver close to their faces, called on them "to hold
up their hands." This is an old bushranger challenge, and is meant to
ensure perfect quiescence on the part of the victim. The travellers
mechanically complied, and in this way were instantly separated, led to
different spots, and ruthlessly shot dead.

It was all over in a moment: Burgess and his men flung the bodies down
among the tangled bush, and returned to Nelson rejoicing exceedingly
over the simple and easy means by which they had possessed themselves
of several hundred pounds. Of course they calculated on the usual
supine indifference to other people's affairs, which prevails in busy
gold-seeking communities; but in this instance the public seemed to be
suddenly seized by a violent and inconvenient curiosity to find out
what had become of the four men who were known to have started from
Canvas-town two or three days before. No one ever dreamed of a murder
having been committed, not even when another "swagger" reached Nelson
and stated that he had followed the diggers on the road, only a mile or
so behind, had suddenly lost sight of them at the spot I have mentioned,
and had never been able to overtake them. Instead of leaving the
now excited little town, or keeping quiet, Burgess, Kelly, Levy, and
Sullivan, may truly be said to have become "swaggerers;" for they
loitered about the place, ostentatiously displaying their bags