A CIRCUMSTANTIAL STORY.

Colonist, Volume LIII, Issue 13051, 10 March 1911, Page 4

A CIRCUMSTANTIAL STORY.

REPORTED MASSACRE BY NA-

TIVES;

[Press Association —Copyright.]

Sydney, March 9. A /.Thursday Island story is being circulated stating that the. missing Administrator, Mi1 Stanifo.rtH Smith, had reached ilie Purari river, built rafts, and tegun the descent towards the coast. Oil the way the natives of the party wciit in search of food and did not return. The others followed, and met a tribe of natives and were killed.

Little is known of those- natives except that they behead their victims and wear the heads as trophies of valour on a string round the waist. It is believed that tho authorities are aware of the fact that all of the party are dead nxcept twti natives, who lair away and reached Goarbari. Absolutely no official news is available, however, at Melbourne, and this story appears to be a repetition of that told by Goariba-ri. pilots, oxcept that the disaster is transferred from the Upper Kikori to the Purari river, which is not in the direction in which the expedition was proceeding. To reach t the expedition would have had to turn right about, go 150 milns, and on a course never contemplated.