Correspondence with the Colonial Secretary's Office

occupied between the table and the overturned chair.

3. M^rs Burns had been occupied in needlework at the other end of the table. She had been sitting in an angle of the wall formed by the fireplace, which latter was at her back, and, as it were, behind her left arm. She had been killed by an axe which stood in the fireplace, and the Blacks had seized the moment when she jumped up to assist her husband, and was no longer sheltered by the corner in which she had been sitting, to strike her in the face with the axe. She had been knocked back against the upright post forming the corner of the chimney, and then, staggering into the middle of the room, had been struck again in the face with the axe, and had fallen dead

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M^rs Burns on no account to allow Blacks to enter the hut, when she replied that she and her husband "were" "old hands, and knew better" "Than to let any strange" "Blacks enter the door".

6. By the time I had seen the bodies decently interred, it was eleven o'clock, and, anxious to lose no time, I started on the track of the murderers. In the first ten miles the track was covered with articles which they had taken from the hut, and at one place where they had rested for a short time I found Burns' ration book.

7. It had been arranged between L^t [Lieutenant] Fulford and myself that we should form two parties in pursuit, in case the Blacks had left the scene of the murder in more than