een committed by these two boys, yet I could not
help feeling for their sad condition, the miseries and sufferings they
would have to encounter, and the probable fate that awaited them.

The youngest of the two had been with me for four years, the eldest for
two years and a half, and both had accompanied me in all my travels
during these respective periods. Now that the first and strong
impressions naturally resulting from a shock so sudden and violent as
that produced by the occurrences of the 29th April, had yielded, in some
measure, to calmer reflections, I was able maturely to weigh the whole of
what had taken place, and to indulge in some considerations in
extenuation of their offence. The two boys knew themselves to be as far
from King George's Sound, as they had already travelled from Fowler's
Bay. They were hungry, thirsty, and tired, and without the prospect of
satisfying fully their appetites, or obtaining rest for a long period of
time, they probably thought, that bad and inhospitable as had been the
country we had already traversed, we were daily advancing into one still
more so, and that we never could succeed in forcing a passage through it;
and they might have been strengthened in this belief by the unlucky and
incautiously-expressed opinions of the overseer. It was natural enough,
under such circumstances, that they should wish to leave the party.
Having come to that determination, and knowing from previous experience,
that they could not subsist upon what they could procure for themselves
in the bush, they had resolved to take with them a portion of the
provisions we had remaining, and which they might look upon, perhaps, as
their share by right. Nor would Europeans, perhaps, have acted better. In
desperate circumstances men are ever apt to become discontented and
impatient of restraint, each throwing off the discipline and control he
had been subject to before, and each conceiving himself to have a right
to act independently when the question becomes one of life and death.

Having decided upon leaving the party, and stealing a portion of the
provisions, their object would be to accomplish this as effectually and
as safely as they could; and in doing this, they might, without having
had the slightest intention originally, of injuring either myself or the
overseer, have taken such precautions, and made such previous
arrangements as led to the fatal tragedy which occurred. All three of the
natives were we