The accounts of this affair differ greatly. By one party they are said to have assailed a man and woman living in advance of the camp, and to have burned their hut. William White, who saw them earliest, and gave notice of their approach, declared they then exhibited no hostility, and were not near the hut before the collision. They came down in a semicircle, carrying waddies but not spears; a flock of kangaroo hemmed in between them. The women and children attended them. They came singing, and bearing branches of trees. This curvilinear mode of marching was noticed by Labillardiere: they probably assembled for a corrobory. "They looked at me," said the witness, "with all their eye;" but they did not attempt to molest him. For the British, it may be alleged that customs, afterwards understood, were then less known. They were ignorant of the language and temper of the blacks, and the preservation of the settlement was the first military duty of Lieutenant Moore, who directed the fire. The action was sudden, and perhaps no statement is exact. The natives were provoked, by the occupation of their common place of resort, and it is no discredit to their character, if even they attempted to expel the intruders. A current report, respecting a conflict on the site of the hospital at Hobart Town, received a curious exposition from the Rev. Mr. Knopwood. It was a tradition, that a party of blacks assembled there, were dispersed by a volley of grape shot, and that several fell. Human bones and grape shot were found; but the reverend gentleman stated that the bones were the remains of persons who came from India, and who were buried there; and that the shot were accidentally dropped when the stores, once kept there, were removed. The consequences of these events were lamentable. The losses of the natives, in their ordinary warfare, rarely extended beyond two or three; but the havock of their new enemy awakened irremediable distrust. The sorrows of a savage are transient: not so, his resentment. Every wrong is new, until it is revenged; and there is no reason to suppose these terrible sacrifices were ever forgotten. In these collisions, no British subject had fallen; but in the succeeding year (1805) a prisoner of the crown was speared, while following a kangaroo; and two years after (1807) another, named Mundy, met with a similar fate. The black had received presents from his hands, and approaching him in pretended amity, trailed between his toes the fatal spear. These facts are given to illustrate the cruelty of the natives; and it may be presumed that, from the slaughter of Risdon, not many could be added to the number. These were, however, the acts of individuals, and without concert or much premeditation. It is conjectured that the first European who perished was Mange, the surgeon of the _Geographe_, in 1802. The attack was unprovoked, and it is said unavenged.