But if the authorised system was attended with a sad sacrifice of native life, no one will question the atrocities committed by _commandoes_, first formed by stock-keepers, and some settlers, under the influence of anger, and then continued from habit. The smoke of a fire was the signal for a black hunt. The sportsmen having taken up their positions, perhaps on a precipitous hill, would first discharge their guns, then rush towards the fires, and sweep away the whole party. The wounded were brained; the infant cast into the flames; the musket was driven into the quivering flesh; and the social fire, around which the natives gathered to slumber, became, before morning, their funeral pile.[14] A detail of such facts, is in the hand of the writer, the recital of which would disgrace, without improving mankind; and it is rather in deference to a general principle than personal considerations, that the crimes of amateur assassins are left to oblivion.[15] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: "Unless the blacks are exterminated, or removed, conciliation is in vain. Shall the sons of a country give way before the aborigines, _after having repulsed the arms of France_? They are now shot, with as little remorse as so many crows!!"--_Col. Advocate_, 1828.] [Footnote 13: A party, under Major Grey, went out in pursuit: overtook a few blacks; one was seized; but he was so smeared with grease, that he slipped through the hands of his captors. A paper of the day recommends, that the arms of the pursuer be thrust under the arms of the black; and, the hands being raised, to be firmly clasped over the back of the fugitive's neck--an expedient, that reminds us of the salt specific for catching birds, with which most children have been delighted and disappointed.] SECTION V. However just these representations of individual conduct, and with whatever severity the measures of government bore upon the aborigines, that unhappy people afforded ample reason for apprehension, and even abhorrence. Their crimes were fearful, and the effect of their outrage on the colonial mind can only be imagined. The fierce robbers, of European origin, who had infested the land, were not half so terrible: these were at least restrained by early associations and national sympathies; often by conscience, and even by each other. But the natives now united the antipathy of a national foe, and the rapacity of a banditti, with the spite of individual revenge: they were at once a people in arms, and a distributed band of assassins.