Colonists' hopes of peace rose over the summer of 1830-31 as Aboriginal attacks fell to a low level and the Colonial Times newspaper speculated that their enemy had either been wiped out or frightened into inaction. But the north remained a dangerous place: on 29 January a Dairy Plains woman was murdered—three months after her husband had died in a similar attack—and in March a mother carrying her infant was fatally speared while working in her garden on the East Tamar. Though the number of attacks in 1831 was less than a third of those the previous year—a total of 70, compared with 250 in 1830—settlers remained so fearful that many men refused to go out to work.[55]