198 
WRONGS OF 
state, that while searching the man’s wallet, he 
seized hold of one gun, and when the other police- 
man came up to wrest it from him, he the native 
grasped the other gun too. In the scuffle that 
ensued, one of the guns went off, when the other 
natives who had fled returned and presented their 
spears. They then shot the native who held the 
gun. 
“Now this statement is a very strange one, when 
it is considered that the native was a very spare and 
weak man, so that either of the police ought to 
have been able to keep him at arm’s length ; but to 
say that he seized both their guns is beyond all 
credibility. The natives were sitting down when 
the police arrived. How they could therefore find 
a wallet upon the murdered man, I cannot conceive ; 
since the natives never have their wallets slung, 
except when moving ; and it certainly is not pro- 
bable, that the man, in spite of the fright he is 
admitted to have been in, should have thought of 
taking up his wallet. 
“ The wallet is said to have contained some sove- 
reigns, taken from the cutter Kate, which was 
wrecked some time previous to this affair, about 
forty miles up the coast, and to have been one of 
those marked by the police, at a native camp near 
the wreck from which the natives had been scared 
away, leaving all their things behind. But if the 
murdered native had taken the sovereigns, why 
were they not then in his wallet, or why was the 
