48 widows. 



at this time was cold, and she was evidently suffering 

 from its keenness; her countenance was haggard 

 and woe-begone ; she complained of sickness and of 

 hunger, and bitterly reproached the tribe who had 

 thus deserted her in the hour of calamity and priva- 

 tion ; feeling more than all the unnatural conduct of 

 her son, who had even stripped her of her kaross, as 

 she was driven from her home, the recollection of 

 which seemed to produce an agony of grief. Struck 

 with her emaciated appearance, as she bent over the 

 embers of an expiring fire, the tears flowing rapidly 

 clown her furrowed cheeks, I held out my hand to 

 relieve her distress, when she raised her eyes towards 

 me, and betrayed such a sad expression of wretched- 

 ness and want as I never before remember to have 

 witnessed. Turning to the interpreter, she exclaimed, 

 with apparent surprise, " Is this for me ? What 

 could a stranger see in such a poor unhappy creature 

 to bestow on her so many beads V I could hear, as 

 I left her, the joyful exclamation of gratitude for this 

 unexpected relief ; and I could not but in return 

 entreat the protection of Him who " tempers the 

 wind to the shorn lamb," on behalf of one so utterlv 

 destitute and ready to perish. 



Mr. Shaw relates a similar circumstance that fell 

 under his observation, but of a still more aggravated 

 character. One of the petty chiefs commanded that 

 his mother, an aged and infirm creature, should be 

 taken by some of his people to the bush, and there 



