The poor girl stood with her back towards her husband, trembling and crying bitterly.

I caught Peerat's arm, picked up a little switch from the ground, and told him to beat her on the shoulders with that.

He gave her two slight blows, or rather taps, in order to know where it was I meant him to strike; but the poor girl cried so bitterly from fear that I stopped him, told her that for this time she should be pardoned, and then called the other woman up, but she had already been severely beaten and had at that moment a little child sitting on her shoulder, who cried piteously when he saw his mother weeping, so I let her also go free.
Before they started however I gave them and the assembled natives a lecture, talking to them in a ferocious style about my future intentions in the event of robbery being committed, and warning them not to judge of me from my present clemency.
During the five months I had been at King George's Sound this was the first act of petty theft, or indeed of theft of any kind, committed by the natives; there had on several occasions been as many as two hundred in the settlement who had no means of subsistence but a chance job from the colonists, and the spontaneous productions of the earth, yet during that period the only criminals had been those above mentioned, namely, a woman, a girl, and a boy, who had rooted up some potatoes from a retired garden, and they had even purposely left the large potatoes and had only taken away the small ones, in the hope that by so doing they would lessen the crime.
RELEASE OF PEERAT'S SON.
In the afternoon I walked up to the jail attended by Peerat, his wives, and a crowd of natives, to release little Dalbean.

Peerat and myself alone entered the jail; I told the jailor to hand him the whip, he took it, and said, "Yes, yes, I will strike him; let not another beat him, Governor." The door of the cell was then opened and the little boy was led out: his father ran up to him, caught him in his arms, and began kissing him; having done this he told him he was going to beat him.

The little fellow did not answer a word, but, standing as firm and erect as possible, presented his back to him, the father gave him one blow, and it was ended--justice was satisfied; the criminals had surrendered to salutary laws, of which they had but a vague and undefined knowledge.