BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 177 
been disposed to receive the new-comers as friends. Even 
Yagan, who for many years was the terror of the Swan and 
Canning Districts, never hurt a white person except in revenge 
for injuries, real or imaginary, which he or his friends had 
sustained ; and thus he eventually became the murderer of 
six or seven Europeans, soldiers and civilians. Up to the 
time of Yagan’s death, about as many black men had been 
killed by the settlers. But it is a most unfortunate charac- 
teristic of these natives, in common with many savage nations, 
that when they cannot take reprisals on the offending par- 
ties, they wreak their vengeance on the relatives and friends ; 
thus making the innocent suffer for the guilty, too often on 
both sides. Shortly previous to the battle of the Pinjarra, it 
so happened that a Serjeant Barron, of the 63rd regiment, 
the first soldiers sent to do duty at the Swan River, and who 
had become a settler at Perth, went into the bush in search 
of some horses, which belonged to him, near Mr. Peel's 
residence, and was accompanied by a private of the 21st, which 
had succeeded the 63rd. A native whom they met, offered 
his services; but instead of leading the two whites to the 
horses, as he had promised, he conducted them into a 
thicket of Blackboys,* where they found themselves sur- 
rounded by the armed aborigines, who speedily killed the 
Soldier, and would have done the same to the Serjeant, had 
not the fleetness of his horse enabled him to escape. He 
received however, two spears in his body, and there can be 
no doubt he was a marked man, for he had rendered himself 
obnoxious to the black people, while in the army, probably 
in the performance of his duty. I may mention that the 
‘Soldier who was set to flog Yagan, when the latter was a 
Prisoner on the island of Carnac,t had six spears driven 
* The species of Xanthorrhea are so called, because their stout cylin- 
- Ürical trunks are blackened by the natives burning the grass which sur- 
Tounds them, 
_t Carnac is a small island, between Rottenest and Garden Island, whither 
-Yagan and some other natives had been sent as prisoners. Thence they 
“ontrived to give their keepers the slip, and securing a small boat, escaped 
