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awaiting rain for two years past.
Since our last, intelligence has come to hand of four murders recently committed by the blacks. At Cotherstone (Mr. Thorne's), a Chinese shepherd has been killed and his flock of sheep driven away into the Broadsound ranges. From Collaroy (formerly Mr. Connor's station), on the Connor River, we have the bare announcement of the murder of two men; and from Burton Downs reports have come of another man being killed. A very large muster of blacks threaten Lake Elphinstone (eight miles from Brighton Downs), and further outrages are dreaded. The police have been sent for from all directions, but the squatters are beginning to find that they must protect themselves and not trust to the Native Police, which is not a preventive but a retributive force. There has been such a scarcity of water throughout the country of late, that the blacks have been compelled to satisfy their thirst at the settlements of the white man. In this way they accumulate in large bodies till the force of numbers makes them bold enough to gratify their sanguinary tastes by the destruction of unfortunate shepherds and their flocks. For some time the blacks have been a constant source of trouble in the Lower Belyando District, and within the past week the native police have been summoned to Craven.
The latest tax is a bank charge of two and a-half per cent for [collecting] [...]