“At Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly.  The Blacks crept stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he slept.”

One could guess the whole drama from that little text.  The curtain was up.  It would not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was determined—­and permanently: 

“There was treachery on both sides.  The Blacks killed the Whites when they found them defenseless, and the Whites slew the Blacks in a wholesale and promiscuous fashion which offended against my childish sense of justice.

     “They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some
     cases were destroyed like vermin.

“Here is an instance.  A squatter, whose station was surrounded by Blacks, whom he suspected to be hostile and from whom he feared an attack, parleyed with them from his house-door.  He told them it was Christmas-time—­a time at which all men, black or white, feasted; that there were flour, sugar-plums, good things in plenty in the store, and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had never dreamed of—­a great pudding of which all might eat and be filled.  The Blacks listened and were lost.  The pudding was made and distributed.  Next morning there was howling in the camp, for it had been sweetened with sugar and arsenic!”

The white man’s spirit was right, but his method was wrong.  His spirit was the spirit which the civilized white has always exhibited toward the savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom.  True, it was merely a technical departure, not a real one; still, it was a departure, and therefore a mistake, in my opinion.  It was better, kinder, swifter, and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment.  That is, it does not wholly justify it.  Its unusual nature makes it stand out and attract an amount of attention which it is not entitled to.  It takes hold upon morbid imaginations and they work it up into a sort of exhibition of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our civilization, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had no such effect because usage has made those methods familiar to us and innocent.  In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him to death; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it.  In many countries we have burned the savage at the stake; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death is loving-kindness to it.  In more than one country we have hunted the savage and his little children and their mother with dogs and guns through the woods and swamps for an afternoon’s sport, and filled the region with happy laughter over