Republican Herald

A Remarkable Talk.—An instance of the blacks' keen sight and scent occurred when I was in New South Wales. A settler on the great western road was missing from his small farm. His convict overseer gave out that he had gone to England, and left the property in his care.—This was thought extraordinary, as the settler was not in difficulties, and a steady, prudent individual; the affair, however, was almost forgotten, when on Saturday night another settler was returning with his horse and cart from market—On arriving at a part of the fence on the road side, near the farm of his absent neighbor, he thought he saw him sitting on the fence; immediately the farmer pulled up his mare, hailed his friend, and received no answer, got out of the cart and went towards the fence; the neighbor (as he plainly appeared,) quitted the fence, and crossed the field towards a pond in the direction of his home, which it was supposed he had deserted. The next morning he went to his neighbor's cottage, expecting to see him; but saw only the overseer, who laughed at the story, and said that his master was then near England—This circumstance was so strange, that the farmer went to the nearest Justice of the Peace, relative to the above, and stated that he thought foul play had taken place. A native black who was attached to the station as a constable, was sent with some of the mounted police, and accompanied the farmer to the rails where the latter thought he saw, the evening before, his deceased friend. The black was pointed out the spot, without showing him the direction which the lost person apparently took after quitting the fence. On close inspection, a part of the upper rail was discovered to be discolored; it was scraped with a knife by the black, smelled and tasted. Immediately after he crossed the fence and took a straight direction for the pond near the cottage; on its surface was a scum which the black took up on a leaf, and after tasting and smelling, he declared it to be "white man's fat." Several times, somewhat after the manner of a blood hound, he coursed round the lake; at last darted into the neighboring thicket, and stopped over a place containing some loose and decayed brushwoods. On removing this, he thrust down the ramrod of his piece into the earth, smelt it, and then desired the spectators to dig there. Instantly spades were brought from the cottage, and the body of the absent settler was found, with his skull fractured, and presenting every indication of having been some time immersed in water. The overseer, who was in possession of the property of the deceased, and who had invented the story of his departure for England, was committed to jail, and tried for murder. The foregoing circumstantial evidence formed the main accusations. He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and proceeded to the scaffold, protesting his innocence. Here, however, his hardihood forsook him;—he acknowledged the murder of his late master: that he came behind him when he was crossing the identical rail on which the farmer thought he saw the deceased, and with one blow on the head, felled him dead,—dragged the body to the pond and threw it in; but after some days took it out again, and buried it where it was found. The sagacity of the native black was remarkable; but the unaccountable manner in which the murder was discovered, is one of the inscrutable dispensations of Providence.