426 
CASE OF MIAGO. 
child in the most barbarous manner, close to the house ; her 
screams were actually heard by the Europeans under whose pro- 
tection, and in whose service she was living, but they were not 
in time to save her life. This same native had been guilty of 
many other barbarous murders, one of which he had committed 
in the district of the Upper Swan, in the actual presence of 
Europeans. In June, 1839, he was still at large, unmolested, 
even occasionally visiting Perth. 
“ Their fondness for the bush and the habits of savage life, 
is fixed and perpetuated by the immense boundary placed by 
circumstances between themselves and the whites, which no 
exertions on their part can overpass, and they consequently re- 
lapse into a state of hopeless passive indifference. 
“ I will state a remarkable instance of this : — The officers of 
the Beagle took away with them a native of the name of Miago, 
who remained absent with them for several months. I saw him 
on the North-west coast, on board the Beagle, apparently per- 
fectly civilized ; he waited at the gun-room mess, was tempe- 
rate (never tasting spirits), attentive, cheerful, and remarkably 
clean in his person. The next time I saw him was at Swan 
River, where he had been left on the return of the Beagle. He 
was then again a savage, almost naked, painted all over, and 
had been concerned in several murders. Several persons here 
told me, — “ you see the taste for a savage life was strong in 
him, and he took to the bush again directly.” Let us pause for 
a moment and consider. 
“ Miago, when he was landed, had amongst the white peo- 
ple none who would be truly friends of his, — they would give 
him scraps from their table, but the very outcasts of the whites 
would not have treated him as an equal, — they had no sym- 
pathy with him, — he could not have married a white woman, — 
he had no certain means of subsistence open to him, — he never 
could have been either a husband or a father, if he had lived 
apart from his own people ; —where, amongst the whites, was he 
to find one who would have filled for him the place of his black 
mother, whom he is much attached to ? — what white man would 
