We are, moreover, in possession of a few reports of actual occurrences in which the great love displayed by the parents for their children is shown in its full strength and under the stress of special circumstances. In a battle that took place between some aborigines and settlers, the former were put to flight. They had to cross a river, but in doing so they left a child behind them. It was seized by a Maori who was at the station, and it was shown to the blacks standing on the other bank of the river. The father of the child recognized it at once. He seemed almost frantic, held out his arms eagerly towards the child, making at the same time signs for it to be given to him. The Maori pretended to be willing to give it and made signs to the black to cross the river again. And the black swam across the river to rescue his child. Thus he did not hesitate to risk his life in order to save his child; in the end he was treacherously murdered by the Maori.[560] Another touching story is told by Rob. Dawson concerning a mother's grief after the loss of her son. He says that the woman was utterly transformed by the blow. "Before the catastrophe she was a remarkably fine woman, being tall and athletic beyond any other in the settlement; _now_, she was a truly wretched and forlorn spectacle, apparently wasted down by watching and sorrow. I have seen this poor creature often since our first meeting, at their different camps near us, and she has still the same wretched appearance."[561] These tales show that parental feelings could be as deep and pathetic among the Australian blacks as in any cultured society. We read another story in Howitt,[562] who tells us that when he was living one day in his camp in the Dieri country the father of a lad, who was visiting Howitt's camp the day before, came in a state of utmost alarm and terror. The lad, his son, was missing, and they could not find him. The father was terrified and, suspecting that the white men had concealed the lad and might carry him away, he looked through Howitt's luggage. It may be noted that this occurred among the Dieri, where it is said that individual paternity does not obtain. Nevertheless it was not a group of fathers that came worrying and striving to find the boy; neither was it a group of fathers that risked their lives for the child, nor a group of mothers that was grieving to death for their child. In the few anecdotes reported below with the other statements we see also how strongly paternal affection is marked. So in the story of the old man quite infatuated with his son and disconsolate after his death, and in the story of another man eager to rescue his boy, and the old man in Curr's story, who allowed his boy to do anything he liked.[563] [560] Br. Smyth, ii. p. 311. [561] _Loc. cit._, pp. 92, 93. [562] _Kam. and Kurn._, p. 189. [563] Compare pp. 248, 249; and 269 _sqq._