Chap. XV. EVIDENCE RELATING TO THE MASSACRE. 395 
companies of whalers, had discovered 17 of the dead 
bodies, and having no alternative, had already com- 
menced their interment on the spot, according to the 
rites of the Church of England. 
The bodies of Captain Wakefield, Mr. Thompson, 
Captain England, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Howard, 
Bumforth, Cropper, Gardiner, and Coster, were found 
near the spot where the last of those who escaped left 
them alive, lying within 20 yards of each other, in 
their clothes as they fell. Captain Wakefield's coat 
and waistcoat alone had been stripped off. Under his 
head the murderers had placed a piece of bread, and 
a pistol across his throat. Mr. Ironside thus explained 
this in his evidence : — ■" When you found the body of 
" Captain Wakefield, did you see a bit of bread or damper 
" placed under his head ?" — " Yes ; I did." — " Are you 
" aware of any native custom which would account for 
" this being done ?" — " The head of a chief is held 
" sacred, and nothing common should come near it ; 
'* and therefore bread, being common, and being placed 
*' there, it was intended as an insult." The skulls of 
all had been cleft with tomahawks, and generally dis- 
figured with repeated blows, struck with such ferocity 
that every one must have been more than sufficient to 
have produced instantaneous death. No gun-shot wounds 
were perceived in any of the bodies which were not in 
other respects mutilated. One body lay a little to the 
right lower down ; another about 100 yards up the 
hill : and near it Brooks's, dreadfully mangled ; Mr. 
Cotterell's in the manuJca bush lower down, where he 
surrendered himself. All these were placed side by 
side in one grave. Tyrrell's and Northam's were 
brought across the stream, and laid with ^'mith's in a 
second ; and two bodies found in the water, in a third 
near the last. Mr. Patchett's was buried alone where 
