"His excellency thinks it right further to inform the public that each succeeding despatch from the secretary of state marks in an increasing degree the importance which her Majesty's government, and no less the parliament and the people of Great Britain, attach to the just and humane treatment of the aborigines of this country, and to declare most earnestly and solemnly his deep conviction that there is no subject or matter whatsoever in which the interests as well as the honour of the colonists are more essentially concerned." His excellency was soon called upon to bring his professions of impartial justice to the test. A few weeks only after the date of the proclamation, seven monsters in human shape, convicts who had been assigned as stockmen to some of the settlers in the interior, influenced, it would seem, by no other motive than a fiendish determination to exterminate the unhappy natives, set out on horseback in pursuit of their victims. One Charles Kilmaister was their leader. They were traced in their progress, inquiring after blacks, and at last it appeared they arrived at a hut near the Orawaldo, commonly called the Big River, beyond Liverpool Plains. Here they discovered a little tribe of about thirty natives, men, women, and children, including babes at their mothers' breasts, assembled in the bush, unsuspicious of danger, and unconscious of offence. It was on Sunday. They immediately approached their victims, who, terrified at their manner, ran into Kilmaister's hut, crying for protection; but they appealed to hearts of stone. The bandits having caught them as it were in a trap, dismounted and followed them into the hut, and, despite of their entreaties, tied them together with a rope. When all were thus secured, one end of the rope was tied round the body of the foremost of the murderers, who, having mounted his horse, led the way, dragging the terrified group after him, while his infamous companions guarded them on all sides. Onward they were dragged till a fitting place in the bush was reached, when the work of slaughter commenced, and unresisting, these hapless wretches, one after the other, were brutally butchered. Fathers, and mothers, and children, fell before the previously sharpened swords of their executioners, till all lay together a lifeless mass, clinging to each other even in death, as with the throes of natural affection. But one shot was fired, so that it was presumed one only perished by fire-arms. The precise number thus immolated has not been accurately ascertained, but it is computed not less than thirty lay stretched on their own native soil. The demon butchers then placed the bodies in a heap, kindled an immense fire over them, and so endeavoured to destroy the evidence of their unheard-of brutality. The eye of providence, however, was not to be thus blinded; and although for a time the miscreants imagined they had effectually disguised their horrible work, circumstances led to their apprehension.