I really was not sorry then to find that they still continued, for I had made arrangements for having a little amusement in that case, although their object in lingering there was nothing less than to kill us when asleep. Accordingly at a given signal Burnett suddenly sallied forth wearing a gilt mask and holding in his hand a blue light with which he fired a rocket.* Two men concealed behind the boat-carriage bellowed hideously through speaking trumpets, while all the others shouted and discharged their carabines in the air. Burnett marched solemnly towards the astonished natives who were seen through the gloom but for an instant as they made their escape and disappeared forever; leaving behind them however rough-shaped heavy clubs which they had made there in the dark with the new tomahawks we had given them, and which clubs were doubtless made for the sole purpose of beating out our brains as soon as we fell asleep. Thus their savage thirst for our blood only afforded us some hearty laughing. Such an instance of ingratitude was to me however a subject of painful reflection. The clubs made in the dark, during a very cold night, with the tomahawks I had given them, enabled me to understand better what the intentions of the natives had been in other similar cases; and I was at length convinced that no kindness had the slightest effect in altering the disposition and savage desire of these wild men to kill white strangers on their first coming among them. That Australia can never be explored with safety except by very powerful parties will probably be proved by the treacherous murder of many brave white men.** (*Footnote. The use of these masks, which I on several occasions displayed with success, was first suggested to me by Sir John Jamison.) (**Footnote. A distressing instance of this hostility towards the whites on the part of the aborigines has since occurred not far from the very spot where I wrote the above portion of my journal. Our line of route soon became the high road from Sydney to Port Phillip, and it appears by the Sydney newspapers (see Appendix 2.3) that the natives attacked a party of fifteen men proceeding with cattle into these recently explored regions. Although the whites had firearms the blacks killed seven of them, leaving another so severely wounded that his recovery was deemed hopeless. The winding swamp where this sudden attack by aboriginal natives took place is marked Swampy River on the map, and from the assembling of such a number at that point, exactly midway between the Murrumbidgee and Port Phillip, therefore the most remote from settled parts, and especially from the SUDDENNESS of that attack, the reader may imagine the perilous situation of my party on the Darling and the lower part of the Murray where, had any such attack but commenced successfully, it is extremely improbable that any white man would have returned to the settled districts.) October 8.