the course taken by the blacks before and immediately after the shooting of Edward, I found that the narrative given me quite accorded with the features of the country; and, what is more important, that the locality of the camp, the tree from which the canoe was stripped, the ledge of rocks at which they camped and where Edward died, could all be identified.
No doubt the usual accurate memory of the blacks for places would be disturbed by haste of the interment and dread of a possible re-appearance of their pursuers. The bush-fires of nine or ten years would, no doubt, have consumed the 'big log,' and the three saplings could no longer be identified as trees. The difference between a beardless youth and a bushy-bearded man might also account for the blacks not identifying the alleged murderer, whom they had before indicated by many concurrent minute circumstances.
What was Bolgan's history from the time when she was carried back to her tribe until I saw her as the wife of 'Paddy Policeman' I do not know. A few years ago—about 1869 or 1870—Bolgan, or, as she was known to the whites, 'Hopping Kitty,' and Paddy Policeman, were missing, and soon dark rumours became current among the blacks of foul-play. A search was made, but without result. At length, months afterwards, during the dry summer, when the lagoons about Boul Boul were drying up, a party of blacks were travelling along the coast, and one of the men, in crossing a lagoon, pushed his feet along in the mud, feeling with his toes for eels. He found a bone, and, lifting it out with his foot, saw that it was not, as he supposed, a kangaroo but a human bone. He called his companions, and they found the remains of a human being pegged down in the mud by three or four tea-tree stakes. This is a practice used by the Aborigines to secrete a body. The head was in this case bent under the breast.
At an enquiry which was held, medical evidence showed that the remains were those of an Aboriginal native—a woman—and that her right thigh had been broken and badly set. Further, that the head had been severed from the body by the cut of some sharp instrument, which had severed part of one of the vertebrae. There could be no doubt that it was the missing Hopping Kitty—poor Bolgan—whose life and whose death had been equally tragic.
Before long a rumour became current among all the blacks as to the manner of the death of Paddy Policeman and Kitty. It seems that the last that was known of their movements was that they, together with two brothers, Charley and William, had gone down the Lakes in a boat together, with a fisherman and his wife. Another addition to the party was a keg of spirits, which was on tap. The consequence was, that in crossing the Lakes all the party were more or less drunk, and that the keg was 'planted' in a reed-bed by the blacks, who soon returned and had a grand carouse. As is usual in such cases, there can be little doubt that in this instance the blacks, when drunk, were no better than mad savages.
Many years before, it seems that Paddy Policeman, when in the native police—whence his name—had been instrumental in shooting a brother of Charley and William. It is said by the blacks that this old feud broke out, and that they quarrelled with and killed Paddy. Kitty escaped, and was
