John West

[1643.] At the era of discovery by Tasman, Van Diemen's Land was inhabited. He heard, or thought he heard, the voices of people and the sound of a trumpet: he noticed the recently cut notches, five feet asunder, on the bark of the trees, and he saw the smoke of fires. He inferred that they possessed some unusual method of climbing, or that their stature was gigantic. In the sound, the colonist recognises the vocal cooey of the aborigines, and learns from the steps "to the birds' nests," that they then hunted the opossum, and employed that method of ascent, which, for agility and daring has never been surpassed. Thus, during more than 150 years, this country was forgotten; and such were the limits of European knowledge, when the expedition of Cook was dispatched by Great Britain to explore this hemisphere. No navigator brought larger views, and a temper more benevolent, to the task of discovery. To some nations he opened the path of civilisation and religion: to this race he was the harbinger of death.

[1773.] Furneaux, Captain Cook's second in command, first visited this country. He saw the fires of the natives, ten miles off. They had left their huts, formed but for a day, in which were fragments of fish, baskets, and spears. The British deposited gun-flints, barrels, and nails, in payment for the relics they removed; and they left Adventure Bay, concluding that a most miserable race of mortals inhabited a country capable of producing all the necessaries of life, "and the finest climate in the world."

One year before, Captain Marian, a Frenchman, according to the authors of his country, visited this island. The intercourse was hostile and left traces of blood; and to this may be attributed the absence of the natives when Furneaux appeared on the coast.

[1777.] The descriptions of Cook are founded on his own observations, and are, on the whole, favorable to the natives. The English, while wooding and watering, were surprised by the visit of eight men and a boy. They were unarmed, except that one of them carried a stick, pointed at the end. They were of middling stature, slender, and naked. On different parts of their bodies were ridges, both straight and curved, raised in the skin: the hair of the head and beard was smeared with red ointment. They were indifferent to presents; they rejected bread, and the flesh of the sea elephant, but accepted some birds, which they signified their intention to eat. Cook prevailed on a native to throw the stick at a mark thirty yards distant, but he failed after repeated trial. The Otaheitian, Omai,[1] to exhibit his skill, fired off a musket: at the report they fled, and so great was their fear, that they dropped the axe and knives they had received.

A dead calm retarded the departure of the vessels next day, and the parties sent ashore, were accompanied by Cook. About twenty natives soon joined them: one, who was conspicuously deformed, amused them by the drollery of his gestures, and the seeming humour of his speeches. Some, wore three or four folds round the neck, made of fur; and round the ancles a slip of the skin of kangaroo. Captain Cook returned to the vessel, leaving Lieutenant King in charge: soon after, the women and children arrived: they were introduced by the men to the English. The children were thought pretty; of the beauty of the women the account was not equally favorable. They rejected with disdain the presents and freedoms of the officers, and were ordered by an elderly man to retire—a command, to which they submitted with reluctance.

Dr. Anderson, the surgeon of the Resolution, describes the natives as a mild, cheerful race, with an appearance less wild than is common to savages. He considered them devoid of activity, genius, and intelligence; their countenance, he delineates as plump and pleasing.

[1792.] But though later on the spot, assisted by the remarks of previous observers, LabillardiÈre, of all, was the most assiduous and exact. The naturalist of D'Entrecasteaux's expedition, he saw mankind with the eye of a philosopher. He was pleased to examine the passions of a race, least of all indebted to art; yet the prevailing notions of Citizen Frenchmen, perhaps, gave him a bias, when estimating an uncivilised people. He left Europe when the dreams of Rousseau were the toys of the speculative, and before they became the phantoms of the populace. His observations were, doubtlessly, correct; but his grouping is artistic, and not without illusion. In his work, the Tasmanian blacks appear in the most charming simplicity, harmless and content; an extraordinary remnant of primitive innocence. At first they fled from the French: an old woman they chased, took a leap which, if credible, was terrific; she dashed over a precipice forty feet high, and was lost among the rocks!

LabillardiÈre having landed, with several companions, proceeded towards a lake; hearing human voices, they followed the direction of the sound; the sudden cry of the natives induced them to return for their arms. Then proceeding towards the woods, they met the tribe—the men and boys in a semicircle, with the women and children behind. LabillardiÈre offered a piece of biscuit, and held out his hand, which a savage chief accepted, and smiling drew back one foot, and bowed with admirable grace. He gave to the French a necklace, which he called cantaride, formed of wilk shells, in exchange for articles of dress, a poll-axe, and knives.

The proportions are worth remarking: in a party of forty, there were eight men and seven women; of forty-eight, there were ten men and fourteen women. Thus the females were most numerous, and the rising generation nearly one-third more than the adults. They were generally healthy; one only suffered from cutaneous disease, one from a defect of vision, and several from slight wounds. It will be told, that a sad reverse was afterwards their fate. The French, supposing they subsisted on fish, expected to find leprosy, and concluded, not that other food was procured, but that the doctors were mistaken. The women and girls were the fishers: they plunged amidst sea weed, and raised the shell fish from rocks by the spatula. They killed the cray fish before landing. They could endure the water twice as long as Europeans. In the intervals of diving they roasted their spoil, and warmed themselves between two fires; sometimes feeding their children, or themselves. Thus they continued alternately fishing and cooking, until all were satisfied.

The men seemed indolent; nothing could persuade them to dive: they sauntered about, with the right hand passed behind, and holding the left fore-arm in its grasp. As the elders moved with gravity on the beach, the girls romped and raced with the seamen—repelling, without resenting, their rudeness. They were sprightly and voluble, and chatted on without intermission. On one occasion they were missed, when, turning to a tree, they were seen perched naked in the branches, about nine feet from the ground: an interesting group, remarks the naturalist.

In the incidents of their social life, he saw their character. The children cried! their mothers soothed them with those maternal caresses, which art has not improved. They held them to be decorated by the French, and placed them in their arms. A father corrected a little boy for the ancient diversion of throwing stones at another, and the culprit wept! A lad concealed a basket from a seaman, to amuse by his perplexity and its dexterous replacement! The clothes given by the French they hung on the bushes, but they valued the tin ware, the axes and saws. The liberality of their visitors induced them to take more than was given; but they seemed unconscious of offence, and whatever was required they restored without reluctance. A girl, refusing the French a skin they desired to possess, retreated to the woods: her friends were distressed at her ill-nature. She, at last, complied. A pair of trousers were given in exchange; she stood between two Frenchmen, leaning on the shoulder of each, while they guided her errant legs into these novelties of Europe.

Their refusal of food, for themselves and children, was from distaste rather than distrust; and they only discovered suspicion, when the French penetrated the country. They posted a guard, to give notice of any movement, and when an attempt was made, it was interrupted by the loud screams of the women, and the entreaties of the men. They resisted the intrusion with displeasure, and even menace.

On other occasions, they tended on the French with great kindness, removing fallen branches from their path; and when the ground was sloping and slippery, they walked beside them, and held them up.[2] They rested every half mile, saying medi, "sit down;" then rising again, after a few minutes' rest.

They themselves first saw the French: who, having travelled several miles, lay down for the night near a brook: their fires betrayed them. A native, next morning, pointed to their resting place: laid his head on his hand, and closed his eyes. The good-nature of these people never languished: twice, when the French lost their way, they directed them to their ships. They welcomed their visits by raising their hands over their heads, shouting and stamping on the ground. They greeted them as often as their wanderings brought them in sight of the vessels, and with the same friendly sounds bade them adieu.

[1798.] We owe to Captain Flinders and Dr. Bass the next description of the natives. They were saluted by voices from the hills which border the Derwent; one of these they ascended and saw a man, and two women, who, catching up their baskets, scampered away. The man met them with confidence: they tried, in vain, to converse with him in the dialects of New Holland. They desired him to lead them to his hut; but he hesitated, and moved slowly in the direction to which he had pointed. Consulting his apparent feelings they desisted, and parted in friendship. This was the first man they had seen in the island. His countenance, they describe as unusually benignant; his features less negro-like than common, and his manners frank and open. He exhibited neither curiosity nor fear, nor did he seem attracted by any part of their dress, except their cravats!

Mr. Bass made several expeditions into the country, attended only by his dogs, and meeting no inhabitants he concluded that their numbers were inconsiderable.

The accounts descriptive of native customs, by these authorities, are full of errors; but they are the errors of inference, not of observation: it is useless to repeat, in order to correct them. The colonists have possessed better opportunities, and their acquaintance with aboriginal habits supplies more accurate information, than could be expected in the volumes of navigators.

Such as we have given, is their testimony to the social aspect of the native character: nothing unfavorable is omitted. In a people so gentle and affable, it is difficult to recognise the race afterwards covered with sores, wasted by want and vice, or animated with revenge; and who filled the colony with disgust and terror.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This Otaheitian was returning from England to his native country. In London, he was the lion of the day: he was introduced to the first circles, and saw whatever in a great city could elevate his ideas: his manners acquired the polish of society. Grenville Sharpe (he who secured the decision that the soil of Britain gives freedom to the slave that touches it) endeavoured to improve his moral sentiments. He pointed out the practical injustice of polygamy. Omai replied, "one wife, good—two wife, very good—three wife, very very good;" but he had not misunderstood the argument. Taking three knives, he put two of them side by side, and the other at a distance, and referring to a nobleman who had left his wife for a mistress, said—"there Lord A., and there Miss ----; and there Lady A. lie down and cry." (Life of G. Sharpe.)

But the moment he landed, he resumed all the customs of his countrymen, and employed his knowledge of arms to destroy them. This was the only trace of his civilisation which survived the voyage: he had seen regal grandeur and mercantile power, but he retained his preference for the habits of his then heathen race.

[2] "But these good savages took hold of our arms, and supported us."

SECTION II

The party dispatched from Sydney, to take possession of the island, and who landed in August, on their arrival at Risdon saw nothing of the natives. A solitary savage, armed with a spear, afterwards entered the camp, and was cordially greeted. He accepted the trinkets which they offered, but he looked on the novelties scattered about without betraying surprise. By his gestures they inferred that he discharged them from their trespass. He then turned towards the woods, and when they attempted to follow, he placed himself in the attitude of menace, and poised his spear.

On the 3rd of May, 1804, during the absence of Lieutenant Bowen, the officer in command, the first severe collision occurred. Five hundred blacks, supposed to belong to the Oyster Bay tribe, gathered on the hills which overlooked the camp: their presence occasioned alarm, and the convicts and soldiers were drawn up to oppose them. A discharge of fire-arms threw them into momentary panic, but they soon re-united. A second, of ball cartridge, brought down many; the rest fled in terror, and were pursued: it is conjectured that fifty fell.

The accounts of this affair differ greatly. By one party they are said to have assailed a man and woman living in advance of the camp, and to have burned their hut. William White, who saw them earliest, and gave notice of their approach, declared they then exhibited no hostility, and were not near the hut before the collision. They came down in a semicircle, carrying waddies but not spears; a flock of kangaroo hemmed in between them. The women and children attended them. They came singing, and bearing branches of trees.

This curvilinear mode of marching was noticed by LabillardiÈre: they probably assembled for a corrobory. "They looked at me," said the witness, "with all their eye;" but they did not attempt to molest him.

For the British, it may be alleged that customs, afterwards understood, were then less known. They were ignorant of the language and temper of the blacks, and the preservation of the settlement was the first military duty of Lieutenant Moore, who directed the fire. The action was sudden, and perhaps no statement is exact. The natives were provoked, by the occupation of their common place of resort, and it is no discredit to their character, if even they attempted to expel the intruders.

A current report, respecting a conflict on the site of the hospital at Hobart Town, received a curious exposition from the Rev. Mr. Knopwood. It was a tradition, that a party of blacks assembled there, were dispersed by a volley of grape shot, and that several fell. Human bones and grape shot were found; but the reverend gentleman stated that the bones were the remains of persons who came from India, and who were buried there; and that the shot were accidentally dropped when the stores, once kept there, were removed.

The consequences of these events were lamentable. The losses of the natives, in their ordinary warfare, rarely extended beyond two or three; but the havock of their new enemy awakened irremediable distrust. The sorrows of a savage are transient: not so, his resentment. Every wrong is new, until it is revenged; and there is no reason to suppose these terrible sacrifices were ever forgotten.

In these collisions, no British subject had fallen; but in the succeeding year (1805) a prisoner of the crown was speared, while following a kangaroo; and two years after (1807) another, named Mundy, met with a similar fate. The black had received presents from his hands, and approaching him in pretended amity, trailed between his toes the fatal spear. These facts are given to illustrate the cruelty of the natives; and it may be presumed that, from the slaughter of Risdon, not many could be added to the number. These were, however, the acts of individuals, and without concert or much premeditation. It is conjectured that the first European who perished was MangÉ, the surgeon of the GeographÉ, in 1802. The attack was unprovoked, and it is said unavenged.

The scarcity of food compelled the British to adopt a mode of life somewhat resembling that of the aborigines. Germain, a marine, was employed, from 1805 to 1810, in procuring kangaroo, which he hunted with dogs: he but rarely carried a gun, slept on the ground in the summer, and in the winter on the branches of trees. During his wanderings, he often encountered the natives, but they offered no violence; and he stated, as the result of his experience, that until bushrangers excited them by cruelties, "there was no harm in them." The daughter of a settler of 1804, was left sometimes in their care; their kindness was among the recollections of her childhood.

The prisoners were dispersed. The government, unable to supply the common necessaries of life, gave them license to forage: labor could not be exacted, nor discipline enforced; and when circumstances altered, it was difficult to recall the wanderers, or to recover authority so long relaxed. In their intercourse with the natives, licentious and cruel outlaws committed every species of atrocity which could be suffered by the weak in contact with the wicked.

Lord Hobart, under whose auspices the colony was planted, directed the Lieutenant-Governor to conciliate the natives: to preserve them from oppression, and to encourage them to resort for protection to his authority. Their natural rights were recognised, but unhappily no provision was made to define their interest in the soil of their country. Their migratory habits were unfavorable to official supervision, and the success of humane suggestions depended on the doubtful concurrence of ignorant cotters and wandering shepherds.

In 1810, an order was issued by Governor Collins, forcibly describing the wrongs of the natives, and the revenge to which they were prompted. They had pursued an officer, residing at Herdsman's Cove, and failing to capture him they fired his premises. Two persons, George Getley and William Russell, had disappeared: it was supposed, the victims of resentment, awakened by the "abominable cruelties and murders" (such is the language of Collins) perpetrated by the white people. This Russell was himself notorious for skill in their torture—the subject of his boast. The government declared that persons who wantonly fired on the natives, or murdered them "in cold blood," should suffer the last penalties of the law.[3]

The official treatment of the aborigines was not always judicious, or calculated to impress the whites with the notion of civil equality. A native, whom it was deemed desirable to detain, was fettered by Colonel Collins. Notwithstanding, he escaped, and was seen long after with the iron on his leg; nor can the punishments inflicted for crimes committed against the blacks, unusual as those punishments were, be given in proof that both races were valued alike. It is not, however, true, that cruelty was always unpunished. A man was severely flogged for exposing the ears of a boy he had mutilated; and another for cutting off the little finger of a native, and using it as a tobacco stopper.[4]

The natives continued to shun the settlement for many years, but their confidence was easily renewed by gentle treatment; it was, however, capricious, or more probably it was soon shaken by insult, unknown to all but themselves. It was desired by Colonel Davey to establish a friendly intercourse, and he instructed the men to invite the tribes they might encounter. A servant of this governor, employed at South Arm, suddenly came on a tribe of thirty-six persons. A native woman, living with a white, willingly went forth to communicate the wishes of the Governor. They consented to visit Hobart Town, to which they were transferred by water. Davey endeavoured to win their confidence, and they remained about town for weeks. Having received some offence from worthless Europeans, they retreated to their woods, and never returned. This party attempted to reach BrunÉ Island, and all were drowned, except one woman.

Mr. Knopwood remembered that, in 1813 and 1814, the natives were fed at his door. A number of children were forcibly taken from them, and they disappeared from the camp.

Colonel Davey bears witness to the continuance of cruelty, which he censured in the strongest language of indignation. Certain settlers established a species of juvenile slavery: they followed up the mother, retarded by the encumbrance of her children, until she was compelled in her terror to leave them. Well might the Governor declare, that crime so enormous had fixed a lasting stigma on the British name. These provocations produced their usual consequences: by spearing cattle, and other acts of hostility, a tribe at the Coal River revenged the robbery of their children; surely, a slight retaliation for such incredible wickedness.

An expedition to Macquarie Harbour, in 1817, discovered a tribe hitherto unknown. They received the first visit with the usual friendliness—a feeling which was, however, of short duration.

The Oyster Bay tribe are mentioned. They had begun to exhibit that spirit of hostility which made them a terror to the colony, and armed the entire community against them. They had speared one man, and killed another; but the origin of this feeling is distinctly stated: a native had been shot in an expedition to capture some aboriginal children.

Sorell prolongs the testimony that tells so mournfully in behalf of the natives. He speaks of firing on the blacks as a habit; that child-stealing was practised in the remoter districts; that settlers had adopted groundless prejudices against the unfortunate people, as alike incapable and unworthy of conciliation; that they offered no serious discountenance to the cruelty of their servants. Thus several whites had perished, and cattle had been speared, in revenge.[5] He reminded the colonists that, as their flocks increased and the shepherds extended their range, this obvious method of retaliation, then rarely adopted, would multiply the loss both of property and human life. The danger was proved by examples:—In 1819, a collision occurred; a man on each side killed, and cattle and sheep were speared; but, the account continues, the stock-keepers detained and maltreated the wife of a chief. Either on this, or some such occasion, they were pursued by a party of the 48th regiment, and seventeen were slain. He maintains very strenuously the opinion of his predecessors, that the aborigines were not often the aggressors, and that the injuries they inflicted were committed under the impulse of recent provocation.

Sorell provided for the native children, except those committed to private hands by their parents, or retained with the express sanction of himself. There is no reason to doubt, that several of these were orphans, and adopted and reared with the utmost humanity. Among the expenses of the times, it is gratifying to observe one item, in the rental of a house for the entertainment of the aborigines. The sentiments of Governor Sorell are honorable to his character, and cannot be doubted; but we are startled to find, that when charges, so solemnly imputed, must have been founded upon particular facts, no equal punishment seems to have overtaken the crimes proclaimed. The government disapproved of oppression, but it was either too weak, or too indolent, to visit the guilty.

Mr. Commissioner Bigge, who came to the colony 1820, in his voluminous reports, rarely alludes to the natives of these seas. Those of Van Diemen's Land engaged a very small share of his attention, and in two brief paragraphs he describes their character, and disposes of their claims. He remarks, that an act of unjustifiable hostility had awakened their resentment, passes over an interval of sixteen years, and expresses his conviction that no obstacle they could oppose to colonisation, need excite alarm. It is probable, that his instructions would but briefly touch on questions relating to these children of the soil; but considering that the notices and orders of government must have apprised him of their sufferings, he dismisses their case with astonishing indifference.[6]

Several Wesleyan missionaries visited this island during the years 1821 and 1822. The natives attracted their notice: they described, with brevity, their moral and social state; but they did not intimate the smallest apprehension of their malice.

For several years reference to the aborigines is of rare occurrence. The year preceding the first series of outrages, furnished no incident worth contemporary record. We are reminded, however, that they survived, by an act of equestrian audacity. Mr. Risely, looking down Allan Vale, saw a naked girl dashing off at full speed, on a valuable horse, which she bridled by the tether—the first of her race ever known to gallop. Horsemen pursued her for two days, without overtaking her.

In those numerous publications, which precede 1824, the aborigines are always represented as originally friendly, and only dangerous when excited by cruelty. It was the boast of the times, that the whole island could be crossed in safety by two persons armed with muskets; and Curr, who wrote latest, does not even mention their existence. It is difficult to imagine more decided proof, that at this time the depredations of the blacks were neither numerous nor sanguinary.

It is the general opinion, however, that the remonstrances of Sorell had been attended with some success, and that the settlers and stock-keepers were not unimpressed with his predictions of a more concerted and continuous revenge; nor can we doubt that many persons of humanity even exaggerated this peril, to restrain those brutal natures which are sensible only of personal risk.

[3] "The natives, who have been rendered desperate by the cruelties they have experienced from our people, have now begun to distress us by attacking our cattle. Two were lately wounded by them at Collins-vale; and three, it is reported, belonging to George Guest, have been killed at Blackman's Bay. As this tribe of natives have hitherto been considered friendly, the change in their conduct must be occasioned by some outrage on our part, No account having been received up to this time of William Russell and George Getley, there can be no doubt of the miserable death they have been put to. This unfortunate man, Russell, is a striking instance of divine agency, which has overtaken him at last, and punished him by the hands of those very people who have suffered so much from him; he being well known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murdering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach."—The Derwent Star, January 29th, 1810.

[4] Eye-witness.

[5] "Order.—From the conduct of the native people, when free from any feeling of injury towards those who have held intercourse with them, there is strong reason to hope, that they might be conciliated. On the north-eastern coast, where boats occasionally touch, and at Macquarie Harbour, where the natives have been lately seen, they have been found inoffensive and peaceable, and they are known to be equally inoffensive, where the stock-keepers treat them with mildness."—March 19, 1819.

[6] Dual, mentioned by Bigge, was transported from Sydney, for chopping off the right arm of his wife: he said she should "make no more dough-boy." The whites persuaded the natives, that the lighter hue of their half-caste children resulted from the too free use of flour.

SECTION III

It would be useful to mankind, to trace the causes which led to that long and disastrous conflict, in which so many lives were sacrificed, and a people, all but a fading fragment, became extinct. Among those mentioned by the government, was the admission into the colony of Sydney blacks, and the ascendancy which one of them acquired.

The emigrants of 1822 remember a number of natives, who roamed about the district, and were known as the "tame mob;" they were absconders from different tribes, and separated from their chiefs. They often entered the town and obtained bread, tobacco, and even rum from the inhabitants. Their importunity was troublesome, and their appearance offensive: the eruptive disease which covered their skin, especially on the legs, most exposed to the heat of their fires, added to their squalor and wretchedness. They are thus described by the Rev. Mr. Horton: he saw them at Pittwater, crouching round their fires, and entirely naked—a company of demoralised savages.

Musquito became their head. He was transported from Sydney to this colony for the murder of a woman. For some time he acted as a stock-keeper; he was then employed as a guide, in tracking the bushrangers, having the keenness of vision, and almost canine instinct, by which in the slightest traces he discovered a certain clue. For this service, it is said, he was promised restoration to his country—a promise, unhappily, forgotten. He was odious to the prisoners, who taunted him as a nose for the hangman; his resentful nature could not brook the insult, and he struck down a convict who thus reviled him. He was then taken into custody; in alarm, he escaped to the bush. The muscular strength and superior skill of this man were supposed to have recommended him to the natives as their chief. He was seen, by Robertson, to cut off the head of a pigeon with a stick, while flying. Musquito answered Mr. Horton with intelligence, when that gentleman represented the misery of a vagrant life; he said that he should prefer to live like the white man, tilling the ground, but that none of his companions would join him. Before he united with the natives, he was accustomed to pursue them with all the virulence of a savage. In company with a convict servant he would face the darkness, and go out "to storm the huts" he had seen in the day. On one such occasion, in spite of prohibitions, he set out at night; but the natives had observed him, and decamped, leaving behind them large fires to deceive their enemy. Returning at midnight, he was mistaken for a Tasmanian black; and, but for discovery at the moment, would have suffered the fate he deserved.

It was said by Mr. G. Robertson, that the first murders of Musquito were committed in self defence. He associated with the Oyster Bay tribe, and his power over them was great: he even prevailed on them to perform some rude agricultural labor. He had high notions of his own worth: he would stalk into the cottages of the settlers, seat himself with great dignity: his followers, to the number of one or two hundred, patiently awaiting his signal to approach.

As the influence of Musquito enlarged, it became more pernicious. He not only misled his immediate followers, but propagated his spirit. Deeds of great enormity were committed at his direction; several by his own hand. He drew a man from his house at Pittwater, by the cooey, and then speared him to death. A servant of Mr. Cassidy, and another of Mr. Evans, met a similar fate. In concert with Tom, a Tasmanian black, he became a terror to the colony. Their parties moved in large bodies, and acted under a common impulse. In carrying on their depredations, their tactics aimed at military unity and skill. A party of sixty appeared before the premises of Mr. Hobbs, at the Eastern Marshes (1824): they watched the servants deliver their fire, and before they could reload their muskets, they rushed upon them, and by weight of numbers drove them off the ground. A few days after, the natives again appeared: a small party came forward first, and reconnoitred; then returning to a hill, they made signals to a body of a hundred and fifty, in an opposite direction. Both divisions bore down on the establishment. The English were now well armed, and maintained the post for five hours; but escaped when they saw the natives prepare to surround the dwelling with fire. Overcome with terror, for several days they refused to return, and the property was left to its fate. Mr. Hobbs was specially unfortunate: his house lay in the track, both of the natives and bushrangers, and thrice in one season his premises were pillaged.

The arrest of Musquito became an object of importance, and Colonel Arthur, then Governor, offered a reward for his capture. Teague, an aboriginal boy, brought up by Dr. Luttrel, was dispatched with two constables. They overtook Musquito at Oyster Bay: he resisted, but was shot in the groin, and being unarmed was captured, with two women, and conveyed to Hobart town.

It was resolved to bring him to justice. By the care of Dr. Scott he was cured, and transferred from the hospital to gaol. Black Tom was subsequently taken, and both were tried for the murder of William Holyhoak and Patrick M'Arthur. Of the last of these offences the Tasmanian was found guilty, but Musquito was convicted of both.

Marmoa, an Otaheitian, was killed with Holyhoak: Musquito had lingered in their neighbourhood, and watched their movements for days; he had visited their hut, and received provisions from their hands; but on the morning of the murder he purloined the guns and removed the dogs. Mamoa fell instantly; but the Englishman endured the misery of long pursuit and several wounds, and dropped at last, pierced through and through with spears.

A murder, ascribed to black Tom, for which he was not put on trial, displayed extraordinary perfidy. This black went to the residence of Mr. Osborne, of Jericho, demanding bread. His appearance excited great alarm: Mrs. Osborne was there alone; he, however, left her uninjured. Next morning her husband ran into the house, exclaiming, "the hill is covered with savages." He stood at the door on guard, and endeavoured to soothe them. "What do you want—are you hungry?" "Yes, white man," said Tom. Mrs. Osborne requested them to put down their spears. Tom consented, if the gun were laid aside: this was done. On returning the second time with food, Osborne missed his musket, and then said, "I am a dead man." Two blacks came forward, and, as if in friendship, each took him by the hand. At that moment, a savage behind him thrust a spear through his back; he uttered a loud shriek, sprang convulsively forward, and fell dead!

Such were the men who, in February, 1825, suffered death with six European criminals. They were unassisted by counsel, and perhaps the evidence was not fully understood by them. It is useless, however, to extenuate their treachery: and their execution, whether politic or not, can scarcely be accounted unjust. But, unhappily, these deeds of barbarity were not left to the vengeance of the law. The colonists, of higher grades, preserved the distinction between the guilty and the innocent, which it is the object of public trials to establish; but the lower orders, and especially the dissolute and the worthless, justified hatred to the race, and finally, systematic massacre by the individual acts of such men as Musquito.

It is instructive, if not amusing, to observe how nicely the theory of some philosophers and the sentiments of the lowest European robbers, meet together; how, what one predicts, the other executes. The supposed eternal laws of nature are accomplished by the wild license of an English savage. It became the serious conviction of stockmen, that blacks are brutes, only of a more cunning and dangerous order—an impression which has long ceased in this colony, but which still flourishes in Australia Felix.

Bent, the proprietor of the only newspaper published at that time, referring to the outrages of the hostile blacks, seemed to dread these doctrines. With great consideration he detaches Musquito's guilt from the tribes in general: a distinction by no means trite or universally recognised. "Until corrupted by the Sydney natives they were," he asserts, "the most peaceable race in existence." These suggestions deserve more praise than the highest literary skill.

The disposition to conciliate the blacks eventually contributed to the same disastrous consequences. A tribe, of sixty, appeared in Hobart Town, November, 1824: they came in a peaceable manner, their visit was unexpected, and its cause unknown. On the first notice of their approach, the Governor went forth to meet them: he assigned three places for their fires, supplied them with food and blankets, and appointed constables to protect them. They departed suddenly, and on their journey attempted to spear a white man. Whether the abrupt retreat resulted from caprice or distrust, it did not prevent a similar visit to Launceston in the following December. There were 200 in this party. When crossing Patterson's Plains they were wantonly fired on by the whites, and in their return some of their women were treated with indescribable brutality.[7] When they reached the Lake River, two sawyers, who had never before suffered molestation, were wounded by their spears. The recent cruelty they had experienced fully accounted for their rage.

It was the anxious desire of the Governor to establish a native institution, deriving its funds partly from the public purse and partly from private benevolence. A code was prepared by the Rev. Messrs. Bedford and Mansfield; and a public meeting held in the church of St. David, the Governor presiding, approved the regulations; but at that time the colony was distracted by the ravages of robbers, and its financial resources were depressed: and the prevailing opinion that civilisation was impossible, still further embarrassed the project, and confined the hopes of the most sanguine to the rising generation. Mr. Mansfield rested his expectation rather on the power of God than upon human probabilities.

The civilisation of a barbarous people is, perhaps, impossible, in the presence of organised communities of white men. The contrast is too great, and the points of contact too numerous and irritating. Never have colonists civilised aborigines; but the failure is easily explained, without recourse to egotistical superstition, that the white man's shadow is, to men of every other hue, by law of Heaven, the shadow of death.

The children of aborigines, adopted by the whites, when they grew to maturity, were drawn to the woods, and resumed the habits of their kindred. A black girl, trained in Launceston, thus allured, laid aside her clothing, which she had worn nearly from infancy. It was thus with many: a sense of inferiority to the youth about them, united with the mysterious interest which every heart feels in kindred sympathies, is sufficient to account for these relapses. Examples will crowd upon the memory of the reader, in which the polish and caresses of the British capital did not disqualify the savage to re-enter with zest on the barbarous pursuits of his forefathers.

The desire for sugar, bread, and blankets, could only be regularly gratified by an abandonment of migratory habits.

When remote from the government stores, the natives still coveted what they could not obtain, but as spoil. They had learned to prefer articles of steel to the crystal, and they acquired an imperfect mastery of fire-arms. Some were, however, exceedingly expert; a chief, conciliated by Robinson, brought down an eagle hawk, with all the airs of a practised sportsman. Thus their untutored nature could not resist the temptation created by new wants: they watched the hut of the stock-keeper, which they stripped during his absence; till, growing more daring, they disregarded his presence; and even the populous districts, and establishments of considerable force, were not safe from their depredations.

At the time when they first became formidable, armed bushrangers scoured the colony; sometimes the allies of the natives, much oftener their oppressors.[8] Outlaws themselves, they inculcated the arts of violence. The improved caution and cunning of the natives, so often noticed by the government, were ascribed, in no small degree, to the treacherous lessons of degraded Europeans. But when the bushranger did not employ these people as the instrument of his designs, by fear or cruelty, often he destroyed them: thus Lemon and Brown set up the natives as marks to fire at. The irritated savage confounded the armed, though unoffending stock-keeper, with his marauding countrymen, and missing the object of his premeditated vengeance, speared the first substitute he encountered. This conclusion is amply supported by facts. The common principles which affect the minds of nations towards each other; the reprisals, which are vindicated in civilised war, only differ in circumstance. A thousand injuries, never recorded, if stated in a connexion with these results, would enable us to see how often the harmless settler was sacrificed to passions, provoked by his robber countrymen.

In 1826, a remarkable instance was brought under the notice of government. Dunne, who at length met the punishment he deserved, seized a woman, and forced her to the hut of Mr. Thompson, on the Shannon, where he detained her with violence; she, however, escaped to her people, and roused them to avenge her. Dunne, next morning, suddenly found himself in their midst: his musket protected him, and after hours of such torture as his conscience and fears might inflict, he managed to get off. On the following day, the woman led her tribe, vociferating threats, to the hut in which she had been maltreated, where they massacred James Scott, a man with whom they had lived in friendship for many years, and who, when warned a few days before to be on his guard, smiled at the notion of danger.

The treatment of some of these women was such, as no one can be expected to credit, until prepared by extensive acquaintance with human depravation. A monster boasted that, having captured a native woman, whose husband he had killed, he strung the bleeding head to her neck, and drove her before him as his prize. Had not this fact been guaranteed by formal enquiry, it could only have been admitted as a specimen of brutal gasconade, and in proof of how much a cruel fancy could exceed the actual guilt of mankind. It sometimes happened, that an unfortunate servant would receive the spear intended for his predecessor in the same employ, to whom it was justly due. Among the whites, there were men distinguished for the malicious vigour with which they tracked and murdered the native people. A lad, on his arrival from England, was sent into the interior, and warned never to wander from his dwelling; but he forgot the danger he did not see, and straying a short distance, he was murdered. He had never injured his destroyers; but then he lived on the lands just before in charge of a villain, and who, like a Roman warrior, took his name of "Abyssinian Tom," from the locality of his exploits.

The infliction of judicial punishments, interrupted the friendly intercourse of the tribe that visited Hobart Town, and who were encouraged to resort to Kangaroo Point, where huts were erected for their use. The arrest of two of their number filled them with apprehension. The aborigines, Jack and Dick, were executed on the 16th September, 1826, an event which terminated all present hope of amicable relations. The murder of a shepherd at Oyster Bay, Great Swan Port, was proved against them by the evidence of convict stock-keepers; a topic of contemporary complaint: but the courts regularly relied on the same class of witnesses, and in this case there is no special reason for suspicion. The fact was not questioned: the culprits had been treated with kindness by the government, and efforts had been made by Colonel Arthur to acquaint them with the obligations of British subjects. He asserts that, by personal interviews, he was fully convinced that they understood the benevolent views of the crown. One of these blacks was so far civilised, as to be admitted to the sacrament of the English church. His companion was a youth, and denied his guilt. The old black was carried to the scaffold, and resisted the execution: the younger, disentangled his arms, and struggled for his life. It was, indeed, a melancholy spectacle. Successive Governors had witnessed crimes against their race, atrocious and unpunished: hundreds had fallen unavenged by that public justice which treated them as murderers.

On the day of their execution, the Governor addressed the colony. He vindicated this act of severity, as requisite to intimidate the blacks; but he solemnly pledged his government to equal justice, and that the law should take its course on individuals of either race, who might violate "the common law of mankind."

The discussions which followed, proved the division of public opinion on the propriety of this measure. It was not clear, to many, that the natives were legally accountable, or that their punishment was just. Grotius and Vattel were quoted; writers, who have discoursed upon the relations of man, and distinguished the felon from the enemy. It was, however, simply a question between judicial and private vengeance: the interference of the court could alone prevent a general proscription. In the heat of anger, no provocation would be weighed—no palliative admitted; and the innocent would perish with the guilty.[9]

The impression on the aborigines was unfavorable: they saw only the death of an unfortunate countryman, and, perhaps, the last act of the white man's warfare. Its moral influence was not great on either race: it neither softened the resentment of the British, nor intimidated the blacks: it was a mere variety in the forms of destruction. The brother of one of these men led the Oyster Bay tribe, and prompted the murders which, in 1830, filled the colony with wailing.

The rapid colonisation of the island from 1821 to 1824, and the diffusion of settlers and servants through districts hitherto unlocated, added to the irritation of the natives, and multiplied the agents of destruction. Land unfenced, and flocks and herds moving on hill and dale, left the motions of the native hunters free; but hedges and homesteads were signals which even the least rationality could not fail to understand, and on every re-appearance the natives found some favorite spot surrounded by new enclosures, and no longer theirs.

The proclamations of the government assumed the fixed relations of the different tribes to particular districts. Oyster Bay and the Big River were deemed sufficiently precise definitions of those tribes, exposed to public jealousy and prosecution. It is true, they had no permanent villages, and accordingly no individual property in land; but the boundaries of each horde were known, and trespass was a declaration of war.

The English, of modern times, will not comprehend joint ownership, notwithstanding the once "common" property of the nation has been only lately distributed by law. The rights of the aborigines were never recognised by the crown; yet it is not less certain that they saw with intelligence the progress of occupation, and felt that the gradual alienation of their hunting grounds implied their expulsion and extinction.

Native topography is, indeed, limited; but it is exact. Every mountain, valley, and river, is distinguished and named. The English have often been indebted to these primitive surveyors, for guidance through the forests which they came to divide. The tribes took up their periodical stations, and moved with intervals so regular, that their migrations were anticipated, as well as the season of their return. The person employed in their pursuit, by the aid of his native allies, was able to predict at what period and place he should find a tribe, the object of his mission; and though months intervened, he found them in the valley, and at the time he had foretold. Expectations of this sort could only be justified by the regularity of their movements, and the exact knowledge of the guides.[10] Nor were they indifferent to the charms of a native land. A visitor enquired of a native woman at Flinders, whether she preferred that place to several others mentioned, where she had lived at times, and she answered with indifference; but when, to test her attachment to her early haunts, the querist said, "and not Ringarooma?" she exclaimed, with touching animation, "Oh yes! Ringarooma! Ringarooma!"

A chief accompanied the commandant to Launceston in 1847. At his own earnest request, he was taken to see the Cataract Basin of the South Esk, a river which foams and dashes through a narrow channel of precipitous rocks, until a wider space affords it tranquillity. It was a station of his people; precisely the kind of spot which gypsies, on the "business of Egypt," would choose for their tents. As he drew nigh, his excitement was intense: he leaped from rock to rock, with the gestures and exclamations of delight. So powerful were his emotions, that the lad with him became alarmed, lest the associations of the scene should destroy the discipline of twelve years exile: but the woods were silent: he heard no voice save his own, and he returned pensively with his young companion. These examples shew, that the native was not an indifferent spectator of that rapid occupation, which must have appeared prodigious to scattered tribes.

A further cause of exasperation, consequent on the preceding, was the destruction of game. The extent to which it was carried was enormous. The skin of the kangaroo sold for a few pence, was the perquisite of the stock-keepers, and long the chief object of their daily enterprise. Their rugs, their clothing, were composed often of these spoils, and the pursuit did not slacken until the persecuted animal retired. Jeffery, describing the field sports of his day (1810), tells us that flocks of emu and kangaroo were found at short intervals, and that a cart might be loaded with their flesh by the sport of a morning; but he remained long enough, to observe a sensible diminution, and proposed limitations by law to the havoc of the whites; an idea, subsequently entertained by the Aborigines' Committee, which sat in 1830. The dogs, trained to hunt the kangaroo, were at first serviceable to the natives, but they often increased the destruction by their spontaneous ravening. It is observed by a writer of 1827, that forty or fifty would be found within short distances, run down by the dogs, and left to rot.

Thus the food, on which the people depended for subsistence, was diminished, and the temptation to rob the settlers was regularly augmented at every return. Sir George Arthur, in his letter to the Secretary of State in 1828, notices this topic as a complaint of the natives against the intrusion of the whites, and seems to admit its truth; but three years after, he affirms that game was still abundant in the districts appointed for the tribes. It is, however, to be observed, that he wrote when the blacks, as a people, were dead; and when the high value of labor had withdrawn many from the chase; and that he implies a local, rather than a pervading abundance. As the natives passed through the settled districts to the sea shore, if numerous, their requirements would be great; but, by scattering themselves abroad, to obtain a sufficiency, their dangers would increase, and every evening they would muster fewer than in the morning.[11]

Among the causes of enmity, referred to by writers of every period, the abduction of the women by sealers and others, is noticed the earliest, and continued to the last. The sealers were, chiefly, either convicts whose sentences had expired, or such as contrived to escape. In the islands of the Straits, they indulged the boundless license of their passions, blending the professions of the petty pirate and the fisherman. A chain of rocks enabled them to rove to a considerable distance, picking up the refuse of the sea, and feeding on the aquatic birds which frequented the islets in great abundance. Many, however, perished, with the frail boats to which they committed their lives. Their first stage was known as "Clarke's Island;" from thence they made "Preservation Island:" a succession of rocks formed land marks in their course to New Holland, from which many found their way to Kangaroo Island, the Ultima Thule of their geography. In these places, they engaged in sealing; the produce of which they sold to the small craft trading among them, for guns, spirits, and tobacco. When the season was over, they retired to the interior, and passed their days in alternate slumber and intoxication.

So secure were some of these retreats, that they justified the apprehension, that formidable pirates would be trained up in their lawless and licentious communities. They were perpetually disturbed by violence. One old man spent thirteen years on an island, alone. He cultivated a plot of ground, and sold the produce to the boats which floated about. Several times robbed of his crops and clothing, by these contemptible spoilers, he, at last, was compelled to renounce his rude independence. In King's Island, families sat down; but Colonel Arthur, sensible of the great danger of these associations, sent the harbour master to the Straits, who arrested absconders, and released native women from slavery.

By these men, the black women and female children were captured in excursions to this island, and were liable to the ill-treatment, which might be expected from men who regarded them with passion and contempt. They were employed as slaves on some islands, to strip the mutton bird, and in whatever irksome labor was within their capacity. It is said that one man (Harrison), had fourteen women in his service, whom he flogged with military severity, and some of whom he put to death.

Boatswain, an aged woman, stolen in her youth, related the manner of her abduction. She was induced to enter a boat, without suspicion of the design, when her captors rowed away, and confined her on an island in the Straits. She told her treatment, in broken English and expressive pantomime; first spreading forth her hands, as if fastened to the wall; then, with loud cries, gradually becoming fainter, she fell down into a pretended swoon: thus describing the mode and severity of her torture.

These men acquired an extraordinary dominion over the fears of the women, sufficient to induce them to dissemble in the presence of strangers. Backhouse relates, that two girls, Jumbo and Jackey, pretended, while in the company of their masters, either by silence, or feigned anger, to resent the proposal to take them away; but when they were assured that their liberty would be protected, they embraced it with joy.

Jeffreys, whose narrative is tinged with romance, depicts the fondness and contentment of the women in lively colors. Glad to escape the tyranny of their countrymen, they displayed to these amiable white men, warm, though jealous, affection;—whose occasional absence they regretted, and for whose speedy return they invoked some imaginary deity in plaintive melodies! It is not improbable, that they were sensible of kindness, but it is very certain that this was not their ordinary lot. Unanimous testimony permits no doubt that they experienced the severity, which men of low intellect, and of fierce and capricious passions, inflict on women of an inferior race.

The sealers, when they came to the main land, rarely brought their captives: they were in danger of losing them. Their fickleness or revenge, was sometimes fatal: in 1824, a party, engaged in an expedition to entice the girls of a tribe, took with them one who had a half-caste infant, and sent her on shore as a decoy. She returned, bringing promises from her countrywomen to appear the following day; but at that time the blacks descended in great force, and all the adventurers, except one, were slain.

The sealers, by the names they gave the women, which were rarely feminine, and were sometimes ludicrously absurd, indicated the notions which prevailed. However slight their apparent importance, it has been justly observed, they betray the low civilisation of the persons who invented, and the degraded condition of those who bore them.

The intercourse of the stockmen was generally confined to the periods of migration: sometimes with the connivance, at others, the express consent of the men; but the detention was often compulsory. Dr. Ross found a stock-keeper seated on a fallen tree, exhausted with hunger. He had chained a woman to a log, "to tame her;" but she escaped, with his only shirt, which he had bestowed in his fondness. For five hours he had pursued her, catching glimpses of his shirt through the breaks of the forest: at last, this signal disappeared; and having lost his way for two days, he was in danger of starvation.

Such were the various causes, which combined first to alarm, and then to goad into madness, this unhappy people. They were troublesome, and were repelled. Wantonly wounded and shot down, they retaliated. Fresh wrongs produced their kind: at length, every white man was a guerilla, and every black an assassin. The original temper of both parties was changed. Dread detestation and treachery embittered every mind: even the humane yielded to the general sentiment. It became a question, which race should perish, and every man's verdict was in favor of his own.

From this, however, it is not to be inferred, that the natives were originally treacherous and cruel. It was stated by the Aborigines' Committee, in the middle of the conflict, that such dispositions were the substratum of their character, which, though disguised, only waited for time and opportunity. The colonists in general, at last, believed them to delight in blood, by an innate cruelty of temper—to find pleasure in the terrors they excited, and the convulsive agonies of the dying; but the records of mankind are full of such moral transformations. The Indians of America, we are informed by Dr. Dwight, became corrupt, to a degree "enormous and dreadful: full of malice, cruelty, and murders." But he himself, elsewhere remarks, that within his observation white men, commonly sober, moral, and orderly, on joining a mob, lost every one of these qualities; and, in a few hours of excitement, exhibited more vice than he had witnessed for years. The causes of degeneracy are not examined, when its mischief is suffered. Sir George Arthur, in his despatches, asserted that the natives were, and had been, "a most treacherous race,"—a view, which the Committee adopted: these opinions were afterwards greatly modified; nor would it be just to admit their truth, without stronger evidence than history affords. Among the aborigines, some were distinguished for ferocity: such was a woman who led on the Big River tribe, and who was called by Mr. Robinson, the "Amazon." A few were guilty of the crimes imputed to the race: and who were often their oppressors, rather than their avengers.

Though individuals, undoubtedly, displayed the vices imputed, who will condemn the natural disposition of a people for actions committed at lone intervals, by solitary assassins and marauders? The English alone could preserve a record of the past, and after a careful examination no other conclusion is possible, than that whoever continued acts of ferocity and cruelty, the impulse and the example were European.

Dr. Ross, arriving in 1822, passed into the interior, and settled on a farm. He was soon visited by the natives, whom he entertained with the consideration due to their ignorance and their rights. They had kindled their fires in perilous contiguity, and the flames threatened to destroy his crops. He pointed out his danger, and they instantly combined to extinguish the flame, and transferred their temporary resting place to a spot, from which no harm could be communicated. Dr. Ross stood by, and watched their cookery, and they offered him a part of their food: he suffered himself to be amused with their loud merriment, and their evolutions in the water. They often renewed their visits, and rather contributed to his safety, by assisting in the pursuit of white robbers: and even when they inflicted dreadful outrages on many others, provoked by extraordinary mal-treatment, they still preserved their kindness for this amiable man, until they were finally removed to Flinders' Island.

These incidents were not uncommon:—the cross lights, which seem to exhibit variously the character of a race, but in reality identify the family of man. To judge of a people, during a season of extraordinary excitement, must tend to erroneous conclusions: thus, when we turn to contemporary writings, we are amazed at the ferocity of expression—the sweeping and sanguinary appeals, by which they are disfigured; but this astonishment is corrected, when we examine the incidents they record, and recollect how little qualified men are to reason, when they are doomed to suffer. So with the native: the delirium of rage, and the taste for blood, had been produced by causes of long operation; and he appeared to be a fiend full of mischief and spite, marked out by his crimes for utter extinction.[12]

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The ruffians who maltreated them were, indeed, punished with 25 lashes!

[8] Whether from policy or humanity, Michael Howe formed an exception. He did not allow them to be molested, except "in battle;" and he flogged with the cat one of his comrades, who had broken "the articles," by wantonly wounding a native.—Stated by a companion.

[9] In sentencing Rodger, at Port Phillip, 1842, Judge Willis told him that he had been tried by an intelligent jury; that he could have challenged any of them; that to say he had never been in a court of justice before, was a common plea with white malefactors, and that he knew as much on the subject as many immigrants. When he was sentenced, the Rev. Mr. Hurst explained to him, that he would be hanged! This was requisite, as the judge's address was utterly unintelligible.

[10] "The natives are tenacious of their hunting grounds, as the settlers are of their farms, and are displeased when they find houses upon them. This caused the attack of live stock and huts."—R. O'Connor, Esq.

"When a chart of Tasmania is presented to them, it seems only to embody the form and dimensions, which their own fancy enabled them to sketch."—Tasmanian Journal—Rev. T. Dove.

"It was a great oversight, that a treaty was not made with the natives; that feeling of injustice, which I am persuaded they have always entertained, would have then had no existence."—Sir George Arthur's Despatch to Lord Glenelg, 1835.

[11] "The extension of the settled districts upon their usual hunting grounds, has either driven them entirely from them, or removed the kangaroo. They are quite disappointed of their usual supplies. We have never known them to eat the flesh of either sheep or cattle."—Courier, 1830.

The extent of their consumption, might be inferred from the increase after their exit. To preserve their crops, some settlers were obliged to employ hunters. In 1831, from Bothwell only, 100,000 skins were sent to Hobart Town, bearing a value of £2,000.

SECTION IV

The violence of the natives seemed to require some extraordinary means for its repression, and (in November, 1826) it was resolved to capture the leaders, by the usual methods of arrest. The magistrates were authorised, by the Governor, when danger was feared, to drive them to a safe distance by force: to repress their attempts at disturbance, by treating them as rioters; to seize those charged with felonies, whether known by marks or by names, or by the denomination of their tribe; and any person was authorised to raise the neighbourhood, on witnessing the commission of a crime. This notice was renewed the following year, and the military stationed in the interior, were instructed to render such assistance as might be necessary, for its practical application.

But these measures were not attended with much success, and in April, 1828, the natives were forbidden to enter the settled districts of the colony. They were permitted to pass through them, when on their passage to the shore, provided their chiefs guaranteed their quietness, and possessed a pass under the hand and seal of the Governor. A line, drawn from Piper's River to St. Patrick's Head, separated the regions allotted to them on that side; another, included Tasman's Peninsula; a third, southward of Mount Wellington to the ocean; and the fourth, from the Huon, by Western Bluff, south-west to the sea. Thus the proclamation cut out the centre of the island: a square at the north-west, belonged to the Van Diemen's Land Company, and others; southward, from Ben Lomond, including most of the rivers, plains, and lagoons. Into these, they were forbidden to intrude. There remained, the forests of the south-west; the western coasts, where the skies for ever weep; and the barren shores of the north-east. To drive them on these regions was the duty of the forces, and their employment for years. The natives returned regularly with the season, like birds of passage—avenging the losses of their last retreat: they retired at the usual time—diminished, but unsubdued.

In looking at these orders and proclamations, it is impossible to regard them in any other light than as plans of military operation. That the natives would surrender to a warrant or a challenge; that they would remain in remote regions, from which they had always been accustomed to come forth; that their chiefs had power to enforce the mandates of the Governor, or that they would preserve an official document, they could neither read nor understand—these were contingencies which, though desirable, were certainly not probable. The precise and legal language of the instruments, provoked much ridicule, and might justify a smile. They were chiefly dictated by a gentleman, whose mental aberration led to his removal from office. It is, however, difficult to suggest more explicit forms, and the announcement of the plans of government was a proper preliminary to their execution.

It was the desire of the Governor, earnestly expressed, to protect the settlers, and yet to mitigate their resentment. The use of arms was forbidden, while other means were untried, and rewards were offered to any person who might venture into communication with the natives, to explain the objects of the government. They were invited to seek redress of their grievances; and pictures were suspended in the wood, in which the white man was represented shooting the native, and the Governor hanging the white.

These remedies were, however, ineffectual; and in November, 1828, the settled districts were placed under the protection of martial law. Nine parties, under Messrs. G. Robertson, Batman, and Jorgenson, consisting of seven persons each, and assisted by the military when requisite, were employed to enforce the proclamation. Mr. Anstey, the magistrate, directed the operations in the centre of the island, and volunteers not unfrequently joined in the repulsion or pursuit of this unhappy people.

The celebrated chief, Eumarrah, was captured by Mr. Gilbert Robertson, in the Eastern Marshes, in 1828. This euphonius name, which so interests the ear, it is said, was a corruption or improvement of the name of a colonist, Hugh Murray, and adopted by the savage. A strong party, consisting of military and constables, surrounded the hut, in which this chief and others were sheltered. Five furious dogs rush towards Mr. Robertson, the foremost of the party: having fired off his piece, and seized a lad scrambling away, by him he was directed to a sheet of bark, under which Eumarrah was concealed. While prostrate, a shot was fired at him, which inflicted a flesh wound, and the musket of a soldier was broken by beating him. Such is Robertson's indignant account of his capture. With the chief, three others, Jack, Dolly, and Jemmy, were taken: the portrait of the last has rather an innocent expression, and has been honored with publication. This party, removed first to Richmond, and then to Hobart Town, soon appeared reconciled to their captivity: all, but Eumarrah. He was pensive and reserved, and, for a time, resented his bondage. It is said, the outrages he had committed, would have forfeited his life, had not his captor earnestly maintained that he was a prisoner of war; and that to put him to death, would be to equal his crimes.

The expeditions were attended with the same general incidents, and it would be tedious to multiply examples. The number of prisoners was lamentably disproportioned to the many that perished. To identify a particular offender was impossible, nor was it of much importance, since the natives now were animated by one spirit. The amazing agility with which they moved; their magical powers of self concealment; their destitution of dress, the greasing of their skin, and the vigilance of their watch-dogs, rendered it nearly impossible to seize them in open day.

An alarm would be given, that the blacks were approaching, and a party, commissioned to repress them, would immediately advance; often blundering and incautious, shouting, smoking, and straggling about; carelessly firing their pieces, and affording abundant information of their approach. Thus, after a fatiguing march, the natives, whom they were sent out to meet, would be observed in their rear, having already committed the premeditated depredation. Not that it was easy to elude their observation, if they were conscious of pursuit, and it was nearly impossible to overtake them.

Mr. Gilbert Robertson, after capturing Eumarrah, was twelve months without success. One tribe he followed with pertinacity, were not far off through the whole chase. Their fires were visible: they were, for several days, on the hills, not more than four miles from the British; but they "beat round and round, like a hare." A tribe, after a hot pursuit, concealed their tracks, and suddenly vanished. They regularly posted sentinels: passed over the most dangerous ground, and, on the margin of fearful precipices: they would lie down beside a log—stone dead, and could not be distinguished from the charred fragments of the forest. Those who imagined that their eyes had never been averted, would yet lose sight of the subtle enemy. They could not catch them, except by stratagem; or, when they were caught, they could not hold them.[13] The few captives that were obtained, when they thought proper, easily made their escape. They confined them in a room: next morning, they had passed through the flue into the open air, and freedom.

The extreme difficulty connected with their arrest by day, led to their rapid destruction. The pursuers would watch, as the evening gathered in, the thin smoke of the distant fires: they would cautiously advance, and conceal themselves till midnight. The superstitious terror of the black, prevented his wandering from the camp, lest the evil spirit that haunted the darkness should carry him away. Thus, stretched around the fire, the natives were easily seen, and musketry told with terrible effect. Their dogs, instead of promoting their safety, sometimes led to their sacrifice. A party, preparing to surround and capture them without bloodshed, would move with quiet steps, without giving notice to the aborigines; but just when all was prepared for the last movement, some cur of ill omen would start up, and rouse them. They would seize their spears and attempt to flee; and the whites, now disappointed of a bloodless capture, would commence the slaughter.

In 1828, a tribe of natives threw stones at the constables, from a hill. They returned a volley of shot; then charged with the bayonet: the whole were slain. The excuse for the massacre was, that having no more ammunition, the constables had no other means of defence, and that to retreat was dangerous. An exploit, claimed by a corporal and party of the 40th regiment, is disputed. They professed to have discovered a tribe lodged on the shelf of a rock, inclosed by wall-like heights. They poured in their fire, and dragged the women and children from their shelter: all perished. This was stated to be a mere tale of pretended success, and devised to satisfy the neighbourhood, that the men had done their duty. It proves, at least, that such achievements were in request. How fearful a condition for the government to tolerate, or for a colony to approve.

In these expeditions, natives were often the guides, and were enabled to follow up the track of their countrymen, when the English were confounded. In those troublesome times, individuals of the tribes were often left behind. It was the custom to fix small pieces of stick at short distances, to assist the stragglers in rejoining their main body. For a time, these signals being understood by the black guides, brought them quickly on the route of the fugitives; but the guides soon betrayed or exhausted this device, and though they continued to leave direction sticks, they reversed their meaning, and distracted their pursuers.

The Tasmanian allies themselves, were exceedingly uncertain, and prone to escape. They disclosed to their countrymen the plans adopted for their capture, related the expeditions they had witnessed, and added new excitements to rage. Sydney natives were obtained, to assist in the capture: Pigeon and John Crook, under the care of Mr. Batman, promoted the success of the undertaking. Pigeon narrowly escaped being shot: he wandered from his party, and was seen by a stockman in a tree, who fired, in spite of his endeavours to explain. Pigeon then slipped down, and reached his friends, only in time to avoid the second charge of his pertinacious antagonist. The story is worth relating, not on account of the actors, but because it displays how cheap, at that hour, was the life of a native, although peaceably living in the forests of his country.

Among those distinguished for the knowledge of the bush, compassion for the natives, and skill in pursuing them, Mr. Batman was the subject of frequent and approving mention. It is said by Backhouse, that his parties killed thirty, and captured five. Occasionally, natives were found in the neighbourhood of Ben Lomond. In one instance, it is recorded, that ten fell, and that two were taken; and in another, that forty received the fire, and left behind them trails of blood, but no captives. On another, fifteen or sixteen were said to fall, out of a party of seventy: three hundred buck shot were poured into an encampment, at twenty yards distance. It would be endless to recite conflicts of this kind: they probably were but a multiplication of a short bulletin, referring to an expedition—"five shot, and one taken." Looked at alone, even in the mildest form, these measures are revolting; but to Mr. Batman belongs the praise of mingling humanity with severity: of perceiving human affections in the creatures he was commissioned to resist. His mission cannot be compared with that of his successor, but he certainly began in the midst of conflict and bloodshed, to try the softer influences of conciliation and charity. He received a party into his house, endeavoured to win their regard; fed, clothed, and soothed them; and when some of them disappointed his hopes, by throwing off their garments and retiring into the bush, he still persevered in attempting their reclamation.

But if the authorised system was attended with a sad sacrifice of native life, no one will question the atrocities committed by commandoes, first formed by stock-keepers, and some settlers, under the influence of anger, and then continued from habit. The smoke of a fire was the signal for a black hunt. The sportsmen having taken up their positions, perhaps on a precipitous hill, would first discharge their guns, then rush towards the fires, and sweep away the whole party. The wounded were brained; the infant cast into the flames; the musket was driven into the quivering flesh; and the social fire, around which the natives gathered to slumber, became, before morning, their funeral pile.[14]

A detail of such facts, is in the hand of the writer, the recital of which would disgrace, without improving mankind; and it is rather in deference to a general principle than personal considerations, that the crimes of amateur assassins are left to oblivion.[15]

[12] "Unless the blacks are exterminated, or removed, conciliation is in vain. Shall the sons of a country give way before the aborigines, after having repulsed the arms of France? They are now shot, with as little remorse as so many crows!!"—Col. Advocate, 1828.

SECTION V

However just these representations of individual conduct, and with whatever severity the measures of government bore upon the aborigines, that unhappy people afforded ample reason for apprehension, and even abhorrence. Their crimes were fearful, and the effect of their outrage on the colonial mind can only be imagined. The fierce robbers, of European origin, who had infested the land, were not half so terrible: these were at least restrained by early associations and national sympathies; often by conscience, and even by each other. But the natives now united the antipathy of a national foe, and the rapacity of a banditti, with the spite of individual revenge: they were at once a people in arms, and a distributed band of assassins.

The correspondence between the local and imperial authorities exhibits the feelings of the Governor, and his full consciousness, that however necessary his proceedings might seem on the spot, surveyed from the distance, they would wear the aspect of cruelty. In 1828, he apprised Lord Goderich, that the proposal to remove the natives from the island, had not met his concurrence; and that the commissioners for lands had pointed out the north-east coast as adapted to their wants, well sheltered and warm, abounding with game, accessible by water, and easy to guard. It was stated by Colonel Arthur that harsh measures were demanded by the colonists; but that he could not dismiss from his recollection, that the whites were the aggressors, and that every plan should be tried before treating the natives as accredited enemies. Three months after, he forwarded another communication, which referred to the murders recently committed, and justified the proclamation which he had issued for their expulsion. So exasperated were the settlers, that the safety of the blacks themselves seemed to demand this precaution. He had, however, found it impossible to assign one district, owing to the animosities of the tribes against each other, and therefore he resolved to expel them to the remoter portions of their several territories. In two other communications of the same year, the Governor reported the temporary retirement of the natives, in search of marine subsistence, and their return from their winter quarters in the November following, when their animosity had not abated: a dark catalogue of murders, including every age, condition, and sex, attested their subtlety and sanguinary spirit. He still declared that no means were neglected to conciliate and reclaim them, consistent with the interests of the colony at large; but their indiscriminate attacks were equally directed against their benefactors and their enemies. Communication had become difficult, a risk of life, and almost impossible.

These statements are, unhappily, sustained by ample proof. It would be a waste of time even to condense, in the most succinct relation, all the incidents that occurred. Narrative is tedious by the monotony of detail, and the events themselves were recorded by those who witnessed them, with ominous brevity. Such crimes were of daily occurrence; perhaps sometimes multiplied by rumour, but often unheard of and unrecorded. The perils of the stockmen were constant: many of them were repeatedly wounded; and one, named Cubit, was nine times speared, and yet survived. Death assumed new forms daily: the poet of the Iliad did not describe more numerous varieties, in the slaughter of his heroes.

The shepherd went from home in the morning, attended by his dog, and armed with a gun, now unavailing for his defence: he never returned. Had he escaped to the bush? Such a step was improbable. His employers are soon informed that the blacks have been near; that the sheep have been wounded, or beaten to death. The search now becomes diligent: at length, the melancholy reality is clear; they find a mutilated form, which still preserves sufficient proof that the lost shepherd lies there. The sad catastrophe excites the compassion of the master; but it provokes the fellow servants to rage, and they devote themselves to the destruction of the murderous race.

The little child strays outside the cottage of her parent—fresh as the morning, and warmed with the hilarity of young life: a shriek is heard to succeed quickly the loud laugh of pleasure. The mother rushes forward; sees a black boy fleeing in the distance, and then beholds the victim of his malice: she draws forth the spear, and her child is dead.

The settler, now grown rich by his flocks and tillage, looks forward to the enjoyment of his opulence in domestic happiness. The companion of his early labors and privations forms the chief object in the picture; but while he was dreaming of future bliss, the envious eye of a savage, which had recognised in that prosperous homestead a station of his fathers, had glanced over and blighted all.

Those who were compelled to travel from home, left their families the prey to inexpressible anxiety. Every moment of delay awakened new forebodings. Often would the settler see his wife and children, on some prominent spot, the subjects of fears which required no interpreter, shading the eyes in the attitude of earnest attention; and when they caught the first glimpse of his approach, the rushing together, and marks of gratulation, indicated the gladness of watchers, whose painful task is done. To appear in safety, was a new though daily deliverance.

But if such were the fears at home, the traveller himself was not free from perturbation. He would neglect the common dangers of a rocky descent, and "sidling" way, to guard against perils far more dreaded: he would often pause, to listen; the moving of the leaf, would terrify him. He would hear a rush—it was but the cattle: he would gaze steadfastly at some black substance far off, until convinced that it was the stock of a tree; then reproaching his fears, he would gallop on rapidly—then moving round some overhanging rock, he would see savage faces and poised spears! Retreat is now impossible: he spurs his horse, which seems almost to be conscious of danger, and perhaps reaches his home exhausted with fatigue and dread; happy, however, to have been once more preserved.

Nor is it possible to describe the emotions which were wrought up, by the consciousness that a feeble woman and helpless children were exposed to the clubs and spears of the savage. Men know, when they pass their threshold, that the ties of life are uncertain, and that desolation may blast whatever they leave tranquil and beloved; but there was an intense realisation of this hazard, in those parts of the colony where protection was least accessible.

Death, by the hands of a savage, is indeed invested with the darkest terrors: it was rarely instantaneous—it was often the effect of protracted torment, and of repeated blows: often, after a long pursuit, in which hope might occasionally gleam for a moment, to render death to the exhausted fugitive more distinct and terrible; or, perhaps, at once wounded mortally and prostrate, when the rush of early affections and long forgotten truth and brief supplication would come with that swoon, by which nature sometimes ushers in the fatal moment; the dying man would be roused by infernal shouts, and there would swim before him brandished clubs, and horrid visages distorted with demoniac rage. Such were the recollections of some who recovered; and such, we may be assured, were the emotions of many that died.

Comparatively, the natives did not frequently injure women and children; partly, perhaps, that they were less exposed, and partly from natural compassion. Thus, when the house of Clarke was destroyed by the Big River tribe, and its owner perished in the flames, the woman with him escaped with her clothes ignited—ran to the savages, and fell down upon her knees, imploring their pity. One of their number extinguished the flames, and bade her be gone. It may be doubted, if this instance of compassion always found a parallel in the conduct of the white. About the same time, a wretch boasted to Mr. O'Connor, that he had thrown a native woman on the fire, and burnt her to death. The equity of Providence seems vindicated by the fact, that he perished by the spears of the race, who watched him continually, until he fell into their power.

Long after the pacific mission of Robinson, it was found necessary to restrain the wanderings of the women, to prevent their sacrifice to white vengeance. But, on the part of the natives, there were not wanting fearful examples of implacable and treacherous violence. Such was the murder of Mrs. Gough and her children. In 1828, about twenty men, unattended by their families, had re-appeared in the centre of the island, and approached the neighbourhood of Oatlands: they attacked the cottage of one Moor, as a feint, and thus drew off the husband of the unfortunate woman, to the assistance of his neighbour. On returning, he met his daughter, with the sad intelligence, that children and wife were murdered, and that she only had escaped. He found the mother leaning against a fence, covered with blood: "Dear Gough," she said, "it is all over with me; the blacks have killed me!" He endeavoured to staunch her wounds; then hastened to his children, and found them, not dead, but dying. The blacks had inflicted reiterated blows, and answered entreaties with threats of murder. Mrs. Gough was shortly afterwards laid beside her children. The attack was more fierce, and yet deliberate, than common: but not long before, some stockmen at the Lakes requested two women to ascend the trees: while there, they shot them. It is necessary to add, that the women sometimes approached the huts, as spies, or such actions would be incredible.

The government and the press complained repeatedly, that no regular resistance was offered to the depredators; that the settlers did not instantly pursue, and, by combined efforts, intimidate or destroy them. It was said, that they easily forgot the danger, so soon as the blacks had withdrawn, and abated even the ordinary vigilance, which such formidable enemies might inspire. Thus, the slaughter of a shepherd had become too frequent to produce much sensation, and was set down as a common risk of colonial life. When they heard that a servant was speared, they would exclaim, "Ah! is he killed? poor fellow!"—and having brought in a verdict of wilful murder, they left him to the forgetfulness of the grave.

It was said, that as the passenger approached the towns, he found the anxiety of the people diminished, and their feeling revolutionised. In the interior, the blacks were spoken of with intense fear, and detestation: in the capital, even their depredations were questioned, and the subjects of conversation, were rather their sufferings than their crimes.

Governor Arthur strongly censured the negligence of farmers; but this was rather to arouse them, than to decide finally the fact, or culpability of their inaction. In truth, the pursuit of a party of aborigines, was a very hopeless affair: it required a minute preparation; and to a well fleshed, and not perhaps youthful yeoman, was attended with vast fatigue, and almost certain failure. An organised enemy may be found: not so, naked and scattered blacks, undistinguishable from the trees of the wood; who could crouch in a gulley—creep almost as rapidly as a dog. The appearance of apathy, in reality resulted from the uselessness or danger of action; nor can it be a matter of surprise, that men expelled from their minds an evil merely possible, which they hoped to escape, and which no forethought would avoid. Whether these imputations were just, or not, they were revived in various forms, by the Governor's private and public addresses. They constitute a large portion of his correspondence with the Home Government; but they drew forth from the Secretary of State what, perhaps, was chiefly desired—an approbation of his measures of protection; for, however apathetic individuals, it was admitted, that the repression of outrage, from whatever cause, and at whatever cost, was an obligation on government. There were, nevertheless, several instances of courageous defence: large numbers were successfully resisted by a single musket; and it was stated by Governor Arthur, that two armed men would strike a whole mob with panic—a contempt of their valour, which was often provoked by the subtlety of their escape. Such is commonly the case: savages, even when courageous, are unwilling to face the deadly weapon of the white man. They, however, lost much of their alarm; and, at length, would pause for the report, and rush on with shouts of defiance, when the English had discharged their guns.

The most courageous instances of defence, were furnished by females: they were sometimes surprised by a visit, when escape was hopeless, and relief unattainable. Mrs. Maclanachan maintained a post, purely by her resolution. Mrs. Dalrymple Brigge, a half-caste woman, was rewarded with twenty acres of land, for her heroism. She drew inside her house her wounded child, barricaded her door, and fired through a crevice. The blacks attempted, first to pull down her cottage, and then to destroy it by fire. The conflict lasted more than an hour, when relief came. Another: Mrs. Connel defended her house with the musket; a little child, of four years, bringing one to her as she fired off another: she was within a few days of her confinement. The fortitude displayed, on these occasions, was very justly admired: we cannot, however, but be sensible, that few possessed either the physical strength, or the knowledge of arms, equal to a task so hard.

In this colony, 1830 will be ever memorable, as the year of the Black War—that campaign, which formed the first military lesson given to the colonists. In the ferment of the public mind, innumerable plans were propounded for their capture: some merit remembrance from their oddity, and some for their kindness. It was suggested, that those natives in custody should be driven forward, secured by a tether, and thus compelled to guide the pursuit. It was also proposed, that depÔts of flour, sugar, and other tempting articles of food should be placed in the tracks, and when natives were engaged in seizing the prize, the Philistines would be upon them. A third plan recommended, that four or five persons should be placed in the vicinity of huts, to be erected for the purpose: they were to stand outside, and allure the natives; and when seen by them, to feign alarm, and run. The natives, it was expected, would make for the seemingly abandoned dwellings, to be surprised by the English, lying in ambush. Their dogs often gave them notice of approach: a scheme was propounded, to turn this advantage against them. The English were to be furnished with two sets of dogs: one leash, swift and fierce, to pursue the dogs of the natives; but as both would soon vanish from the sight of the pursuers, the second species were to be retained, to scent their course. Thus, the native would run first,—his dogs after him; then would come the large dogs of the English—then their little dogs; and, finally, the captors! An old mariner, who had witnessed the effect of music in taming savage tribes, proposed to try the persuasion of sweet sounds. He was not aware, that the expedient had been in vain tested under happier auspices; even had it been possible for a military band to career along with the requisite speed. The musician of the Recherche carried his instrument on shore, and played his sweetest melodies: the natives took no notice. Unwilling to doubt the efficacy of his art, on his next visit he used sharper tones and quicker measures: the aborigines put their fingers to their ears, and the Frenchman dropped his fiddle in despair.

It will be proper briefly to notice the state of the public mind at the moment. The natives were now a mere handful: an irregular contest of several years duration, now and then slackened, was ever adding some new victim to the slain. The constables occasionally fell in with the temporary huts, which told the mournful tale of rapid depopulation. In tracks, where thirty or forty huts had, in former years, indicated a considerable clan, four or five only were reared; but while the natives diminished, they seemed to increase their activity, moving to various places with almost incredible swiftness. It is said, that they would travel fifty miles in a day. Their superior knowledge of the country enabled them to reach stations more remote in appearance than reality. A colonist, of the present time, by better acquaintance with the road, can pass in a few hours to places, once several days journey distant. Such rapid progress may perhaps be doubted, but it was sufficient to give them the appearance of ubiquity; and since they now were no longer casual but habitual robbers, the havoc and alarm they created had rather augmented, as their numbers declined. The colony, then prosperous in its general affairs, was deeply depressed by their continued outrages: shepherds would no longer tend their flocks, unless accompanied by armed companions. On the slightest signal of the approaching foe, they would flee with precipitation: ten times a day the quiet of domestic life would be broken by the fears, feigned or real, of the workmen. If they idled on the road, it was the blacks that retarded them: if they lost provisions, the hut had been robbed by the blacks. Often, too, these vexations were tinged with the ludicrous: the rumour would reach the township that an unfortunate had been speared, who, when more closely examined, was found dead drunk. Some imaginative settler would return, with the sure information that the blacks were lurking in the woods: the cautious whites, well armed and skilfully disposed, would march round the hiding place, and stealthily approach a stump of more than usual likeness to animated nature.

An officer, newly arrived, when the depredations were most alarming and frequent, looked from the window of his cottage, in the twilight, and discerned many blacks crouching among the stubble of a corn field lately reaped. He hastened and ordered out his men: they cautiously crept round the inclosure, and were gratified as they drew nigh to discover that the enemy had not moved. Another small party of soldiers observed a body of fifty or sixty, on the borders of a creek, flowing into Oyster Bay: as they were approached by the British, they made for a point of land. It was, apparently, a certain capture: the soldiers and constables rushed on, when the foe took the water. In these adversaries the colonist will recognise the black stumps, left by imperfect farming, and the black swans which adorn our waters. Notice was brought, that some one in the far interior was killed: the coroner's jury was summoned; the verdict was, of necessity, "not yet dead."[16]

The disquietude occasioned by an enemy, so insignificant; the constant vigilance imposed, and the not infrequent heavy calamities inflicted, are events justly exhibited by the Aborigines' Committee, as a lesson to mankind. The long oppression of a race, not prone to violence, was now productive of its fruit, and exacted from the colonists a fearful retribution.

The most alarming movement of the natives was, the systematic destruction of premises by fire. This was revenge within their reach, at any hour; and its previous infrequency is a matter of astonishment. In three months, the huts of Messrs. Howel, Sherwin, and Clarke, had been destroyed. The property of Mr. Sherwin, lying between hills, was easily watched, and spies were posted on the heights. The mode of firing the premises was deliberate: they kindled the flames at twenty yards apart, so that the whole was simultaneously burned; this done, they went off, shouting and crying out to the English to go away. The extent of the mischief was not so alarming as its forebodings. That element, which nature has placed at man's disposal, and can be turned, by a moment's effort to the destruction of a fortune, might long have proved an effectual scourge, and made colonisation hopeless. The retention of properties, as well as the security of dependents, required decided and unanimous measures.

No part of Governor Arthur's character conciliates greater esteem, than his promptitude to encourage humanity in the whites, and to win the confidence of the natives. At the commencement of this year, he offered a liberal reward to any one who should open a pacific communication, or if a convict free pardon. He promised five pounds for every adult, and two pounds for every child, taken alive. He entreated the colonists to enjoin the utmost tenderness on their servants, and invariably to spare the women and children. These merciful intentions were but little successful: the rewards were rarely claimed. But no effort, in a right direction, is ever lost: the conduct of John Benfield, a convict, was distinguished for intrepidity and coolness in a capture, and Colonel Arthur bestowed warm praise. Observing a fire, at a short distance, he approached three aborigines, to whom he offered bread: one of them promised to accompany him, if he would put aside his gun; this risk he incurred. He led the black to his hut, and gave him food and blankets for his companions; and soon succeeded in completely conciliating them all. They joined him in hunting the opossum: thus he drew them on to the military party stationed at Captain Moriarty's. This man certainly deserved the reward he obtained, and the government notice of an action so courageous and humane, must have mitigated the fierce spirit of his class.

The orders and notices issued by the Governor during this year, represent the powerful agitation of the public mind, and from which he himself was by no means free. Sometimes, the hope of reconciliation seemed strong; thus, August 19th, he states that Captain Welch and Mr. G. A. Robinson had obtained a friendly parley with a hostile tribe. It was ordered, that no attempt should be made to capture or restrain such aborigines as might approach the settlement; but that, after supplying them with food, they should be suffered to depart.

He found it necessary to explain the conditions on which rewards were offered for capture, which had been abused, by the violent detention of inoffensive natives: those who, in attempting to arrest them, were guilty of wanton mischief, were threatened with the penalties of the law. These orders were followed by outrages, which threw doubt on the propriety of distinctions: the ally of to-day, was the robber of yesterday, and the assassin of the morrow. The natives of the south-west districts of the colony, and of the islands, were still exempted from proscription; but an explanatory notice, authorised the settlers, by whatever necessary means, to anticipate, or repel, the barbarous attacks, now renewed with terrible frequency and atrocity.

These public instructions indicate the alternate feelings which prevailed: they were natural to men who, reflecting on the origin of the warfare, felt that measures, now indispensable, were not wholly guiltless.

SECTION VI

Efforts of conciliation, were made through the medium of three women, captured by the police; and who, after being treated with kindness, were permitted to return to their tribe, and to invite their submission. One of these was seen in the journey, and slain, in error! After the absence of a few weeks, the survivors prevailed on the chief, and nine other men of the tribe, to accompany them to the residence of Mr. Batman: this gentleman, and his family, assiduously cultivated their good will, being one of the few who entertained a strong confidence in the power of kindness; notwithstanding, after remaining nine days, they eloped, it is said laden with plunder—displaying, in their progress, unmitigated hostility. Two natives, who delivered themselves up to a shepherd, and were lodged in the penitentiary at Launceston, after being supplied with abundance of food and clothing, within a month effected their escape, and were traced by their outrages. The celebrated chief, Eumarrah, captured by Robertson, after two years detention, when his artless manner and apparent reconciliation to his lot, threw his keepers off their guard, contrived to abscond. Justice is, however, due to the reputation of a savage. Eumarrah, afterwards complained, that when employed on the LINE, he was beaten by a constable: Jemmy, who escaped at the same time, had been chained to a bench all night, by a similar functionary. The newspapers of the day complain, that in gaol food sufficient for their appetites had not been always supplied them. The women were declining in health, when allowed their liberty. This last, was the great cause of their restlessness; they felt the oppression of civilisation; they were weary of clothing; the skin was irritated. The instinct which prompts a bird to seek some way of exit, also moves a savage: it was not so much indifference to kindness, as the passion for roaming—the habit of the race. Nor were they managed always with prudence: they were left to the mischievous influence of low white men, who delighted to terrify, even when they did not positively injure them. It was not until thirty had escaped, nearly equal to the whole number taken, that it was discovered, that to retain them, even their prejudices required tenderness, and that they were deeply sensible of contempt.

These retreats tended to extinguish the hopes cherished by the friends of the natives, and rooted the conviction more firmly in the colonial mind, that all efforts to tame them were unavailing. All the plans laid down for their expulsion, had been tried, and had proved to be impracticable. They still recurred to their usual haunts, and made up for their diminished numbers by their improved method, cunning, and audacity. Having committed depredations, they retired, with their plunder, to the districts reserved for their occupation, and whither it was unlawful to follow them, except for sworn offences. The Governor determined to try a movement, en masse, and by the united force of the entire population, to drive the Austral tribes within Tasman's Peninsula—a territory, joined to the main land by a neck, about one quarter of a mile in breadth. The success of this plan could never have been considered very promising. The Governor expressed his doubt respecting the result, while it was in progress; and there is no reason to question that, in putting it to the test, he was moved by the earnest entreaties of the colonists, and a conviction that nothing should be left untried, to preserve the people committed to his charge.

On the 7th September, 1830, the intention of the Governor was officially announced. Referring to the outrages of the natives, he asserted that their expulsion was impossible, but by a simultaneous effort. He called on every settler, whether residing in the town or country, to place himself under the direction of a magistrate, whoever he might prefer; that the whole military and police strength, combined with such assistance, might capture the hostile tribes, or permanently expel them. The solemnity of the engagement, no less than the preservation of the lives and property of the whole community, would require a serious and resolute co-operation. On former occasions, he observed such campaigns had been greatly perverted, and transformed into amusement and recreation. The Governor gave no promise of recompense, and insisted that the effort, however meritorious, was simply the duty of all; but with his accustomed tact, he chose this moment to reward, with large grants of land, those persons already distinguished for enterprise and success, and to distribute indulgences to prisoners who had been actively employed in the service. Mr. Batman, who had devoted twelve months to the pursuit of the blacks, obtained 2,000 acres of land. Mr. Howel, of the Clyde, whose losses had been great, but who was represented as displaying an untiring spirit of humanity, was consoled with 1,000 acres. The aboriginal Sydney guides, and Black Bill, a Tasmanian, received each 100 acres.

The volunteer parties from Hobart Town, were to join the force at New Norfolk, the Clyde, or Richmond: those from Launceston, were to patrol the westward and Norfolk Plains, the west bank of the Tamar, or the country extending from Ben Lomond to George Town. Enterprising young men, inured to the bush, were requested to attach themselves to the small military parties at the out stations, and, under military officers, to scour the northern country.

Men, holding tickets-of-leave, were required to enrol under the magistrate of their district, and settlers were enjoined to equip and detach whatever servants they could spare, reserving only sufficient strength for the protection of their families. The inhabitants of Hobart Town, in public meeting assembled, tendered their service to the government, for the furtherance of the object. The peace-loving Joseph Hone, Esq., was chairman of this warlike meeting: most of the leading speakers belonged to the profession of the gown. Mr. Kemp, one of the elder colonists, once an officer of the 102nd regiment, who had seen the process of extermination throughout, declared that the English were chiefly the agressors. Dr. Turnbull contrasted the effects of a vigorous resistance by government and the conflict of individuals: united effort might be followed by bloodshed, but would tend to repress the habits of violence, and, at least, save a remnant from destruction. A tribe, one hundred and sixty strong four years before, that frequented the Elizabeth River, was reduced to sixty by daily skirmishes with the stock-keepers. A question, however, arose, whether it were lawful to shoot aborigines refusing to surrender on challenge. Against this construction of law, Mr. Gellibrand earnestly protested; and maintained, in warm terms, their claims to sympathy and compassion—himself, alas! destined to die by the hands of the race. It seemed, however, generally understood, that capture should be attempted by the most merciful methods, but accomplished at all events. Colonisation by the French, was exhibited by Mr. Hackett, the distiller, in contrast with English; but Dr. Ross rose in reply, and stated that there was a rock which bore the name of The Leap, from which the last sixty natives of Grenada were precipitated. Mr. R. L. Murray treated the prevailing notion of danger with derision: three women, he said, would put a whole tribe to flight; but Mr. Home reminded the meeting, that the grass had not yet covered the graves of a mother and her children, recently slain. Thus, like the warriors of the heroic age, they debated before they armed; but it is difficult to reconcile the civic temper with military subordination: the committee nominated by the meeting to enrol the town guard, suggested that volunteers should be allowed to choose each their own company, as well as their own officers. One party of twenty-four, required the choice of their post, and the right to act as an independent division.

On the 22nd September, the plan of the campaign was minutely described in a government order, and operations were fixed for the 7th of October. Its main features may be briefly stated:—The Oyster Bay and Big River tribes, as the most sanguinary, were first marked out for pursuit. They were to be driven within the county of Buckingham; the utmost care being employed to prevent escape through the lines, while chasing them to Tasman's Peninsula.

A chain of posts was occupied, under Captain Welman, from St. Patrick's Head on the east coast; including the source of St. Paul's River, and stretching to Campbell Town. A second chain, under Major Douglas, extending from Campbell Town, passed south of the Macquarie, to its junction with the Lake River. Both divisions, marching in a southerly direction, formed a line from Oyster Bay tier to Lackey's Mills. During these manoeuvres, a party were sent to examine the tier, extending from Swan River to Spring Bay; carefully, however, concealing the movement from the natives, lest they should be deterred from passing the subjacent isthmus. Other parties were employed, under Captain Wentworth, to force the aborigines from the neighbourhood of the lakes in the west, towards the same centre, advancing due east to the Jordan. The lines being compressed and thickened, and joined by the settlers on their march, were then moved forward, followed by scouring parties, to guard against their escape, should the natives cross the line. Fires were kept burning to direct the troops, who were expected to march in unbroken order.

Captain Donaldson, who directed the operations in the north of the island, swept over the vast extent of country from Norfolk Plains to the Ouse—from Sorell Lake to Lake Echo. There he remained, closing the avenues of escape, while Douglass and Wentworth advanced to their last position: he then joined the main body. Twenty-two parties, under Major Douglas, and fifteen under Captain Wentworth, were then sent within the lines, to catch the natives, or drive them toward Tasman's Peninsula.

The distribution of provisions to this force, was entrusted to Messrs. Scott, Wedge, and Sharland, surveyors. The rations were delivered to the leader of each party weekly, and consisted of sugar, tea, flour, and meat, in considerable proportions. The principle depÔt was at Oatlands: where 1,000 muskets were provided, 30,000 rounds blank cartridges, 300 pairs of handcuffs, and whatever might contribute to the success of the assailants. Many thousands of rations were stored, and the settlers saw, with pleasure, their produce rise in the neighbourhood of this formidable band, to twice its recent value. £2,000 was paid to one merchant for the tobacco. The officers, to avoid its destruction, inevitable on so long a march, mostly threw off their military clothing, and assumed an uniform of Maria Island cloth, thus reserving their full dress to celebrate the coming triumph. The enthusiasm was universal: a blacksmith, at Sorell, unable to follow the army, offered to repair all the guns belonging to the volunteers of his district. His example was followed by another, who, having but one leg, contributed the same service to the common cause. Nor was supplication forgotten: a form of prayer was composed for those who used formulas, and extempore petitions were offered by other denominations. The colony, at large, cheerfully responded to the call of government: the military character of the plan excited the young, without much alarming the mature. The inhabitants of the towns readily enrolled, and the discussions every where exhibited a curious mixture of martial ardour and civil pertinacity.

There were many old soldiers in the colony, who were amused, without being repelled by this mimicry of war. More busy civilians, were anxious for the formality of incorporation, and the gradations of command. The townspeople were allowed their choice, between more active service and garrison duties. "Gentlemen," said an old soldier, "you may call yourselves marshals, generals, and colonels, but the duties assigned you are usually performed by a corporal's guard." It is gratifying to observe, that the last injunction of the Governor, and the last lesson of the press, suggested humanity. Under the excitement of losses and bereavement, the destruction of the natives had been invoked; but now, softened by the belief that the whites were about to complete a work which had been twenty-six years in progress, and to expatriate the race, with one voice all said, "spare them!"

The forces, including the military and constabulary, amounted to nearly five thousand; of these, 1,500 were contributed by Hobart Town, and 500 by Launceston. No army ever departed from their homes less agitated by the uncertainties of the future; and notwithstanding the dreary picture of the service, drawn by the colonel commanding, there was no danger that a bridge of Lodi, or a plain of Waterloo, would be found in the campaign. Some went out with the keenness of sportsmen who might at least catch a kangaroo: others were contented to live moderately well at government charge. The clerks, released from their offices, gladly embraced a holiday: the poor prisoner acted and felt as a free man, and rejoiced in the interval of his servitude; and keen and canny volunteers embraced the opportunity to range the unknown territory, for the discovery of some neglected spot, which might offer a future home.

On the 1st of October, the whole country was declared under martial law; excepting, however, from its operation, not only the British, but such of the aborigines as were pacific. This measure was of no great moment, except that it authorised the pursuit of all natives in every quarter.

The journals not favorable to the scheme, predicted its failure. There were vast probabilities against it: the nature of the force—the seat of war—the foe—the discipline—even the orders not to kill, were all peculiar and discouraging. Townsmen, little accustomed to fatigue, and sportsmen not disposed to be silent, were to move sometimes in a regular and quiet line. A shot carelessly fired, the momentary slumber of an undisciplined sentinel, or the lazy evasion of a scout, might disconcert the whole campaign. No Englishman could follow up the native: the array, the number and the glancing of muskets, gave warning from afar. An European, encumbered with his dress, could only move slowly, and when passing the bush must pause every moment, or be tortured at every step; but the native could swing from bough to bough, mount to the the topmast branch like an opossum, move past the people seeking him diligently, or lie down until they were gone. To many of the colonists, the campaign was no child's play. The pursuit of solitary white or black rangers of the wood, was exhilarating to men of great animal courage, and who could enjoy long intervals of rest; but a regular march, through such a country, soon wore out the patience of many, and they were glad to resign the glorious undertaking to more ardent warriors.

As the campaign advanced, the weather was unpropitious: crossing the rivers became dangerous; trees had to be cut down to form temporary bridges. These obstacles cooled the spirit of volunteers, who passed rapidly from discontent to criticism, and from criticism to despair. "Many crawled home:" such was the indignant description of their retreat, given by their comrades; and whilst the drenched, but decreasing forces lay along the line, young men, it was said, crowded the streets of the capital, ignobly forgetful of the common cause.

Parties were divided into threes, each forming a night watch: fires were lighted for the night, and illumined the whole distance of thirty miles, from Prosser's River to Sorell; and sentinels paced within hail of each other. The police magistrates visited the several posts on horseback, and the Governor rode rapidly along the line, from the Clyde to Spring Bay. Dr. Ross recording his Excellency's exertions, states, that to allow them a full description, would leave no room for any other topic! His labours and perils were the theme of admiration and sympathy: it was reported, that he was lost three days in Paradise—a place renowned for its miserable vegetation, and the dreariness of its scenery. The warlike tone of the day may excite a smile, but the fatigue was indisputable; and although the slipperiness of the foe gave the air of mock heroism to the service, the watchers of the line were reminded, by frequent tidings from homeward, that their enemy was strong enough to deal death to the aged and the innocent. Four blacks, who crossed the line, and hung upon its rear, inflicted terrible vengeance. One attacked a settler, who returned a mortal wound with a pitchfork. The survivors hovered about the place to avenge his death: they at length found a victim in an amiable young lady, Miss Peters; who was speared in the breast. She felt, from the first, that the wound was mortal, and calmly resigned herself to her destiny. Others, left by their friends and dependants, were liable to the same perils: of this, Mr. Gildas, a settler on the Tamar, was a remarkable instance: he had sent his men to the line, and was thus alone. He left his house to seek for fire-wood, and was speared. The savages plundered his house, and defaced the pictures on the walls. A pilot, calling at his dwelling, found it pillaged and desolate. This man was at the battle of Trafalgar, and present when Nelson fell—himself reserved to perish in Tasmania, by savage hands.

The division under Captain Donaldson, which followed up the main body of the forces, arrived on the 31st of October. Colonel Arthur issued from the camp (Sorell Rivulet), a statement that the final decisive movement was at hand, and that those who had been exposed to great privations, would soon be released to their homes. Having been compelled to await reinforcements, the campaign had been unavoidably prolonged: to have moved without them, would have risked the success of the enterprise; the two dangerous tribes would attempt to escape, and the forces in charge were exhorted to redouble their vigilance, to prevent their breaking through the position.

These notices indicate a confidence of success, doomed to disappointment. To the precipitation of Mr. Walpole's party, Colonel Arthur attributed the failure of the expedition. They were instructed not to attempt a capture, unless a considerable number could be taken; but the sight of the slumbering enemy probably suspended the recollection of this order, and was one of those casualties which could hardly be avoided, in such a wide distribution of command. It was on the 22nd of October this misfortune happened: the natives were discovered hunting, and were watched, until their evening fires were formed for the night. No noise being heard, Mr. Walpole supposed they had taken an alarm, and advanced at twilight towards the first hut, where he saw five blacks, with their dogs, fast asleep. He seized one man by the feet, and after a severe struggle detained him: a boy, ornamented with figures on his body, about fifteen years of age, shared the same lot; but two others were shot: the remainder fled. The quantity of spears and baskets left behind, proved that their flight was sudden, and their numbers considerable.

An attempt was made by the natives to cross the line on the 27th October. The sentry had set down his piece, and was putting some wood on the fire, when a spear was thrown at him: he threw the billet in his hand, and was reaching his musket when he received another spear; an alarm being given to an adjoining party, the blacks were driven back, of whom, however, six only were seen.

A circumstance occurred, which strongly confirmed the impression, that some treacherous whites had directed the natives. In pursuing them as far as the isthmus, they discovered in their tracks the impression of shoe-nails, and other evidence of the presence of white men. The reports were soon spread, that the Oyster Bay and Big River tribes were in the rear. The hopes of the colony rapidly gave way, and the Governor, writing to the Secretary of State, on the 21st of November, intimated his suspicion that the movement would be in vain.

These reports were, indeed, constantly circulated, and tended to damp the ardour and diminish the vigilance of the line. Some scouring parties from Norfolk Plains fell in with a tribe of forty, whom they pursued beyond the Shannon. They followed them for three days, but were compelled to return: the blacks, in their progress, had surprised a settler, and murdered him. The rumours of escape were aggravated by imagination: a party of the whites were seen by some sawyers, who ran away and reported them as natives; and it was several days before they could be persuaded of their error.

The settlers, worn out with fatigue and longing for their homes, were impatient to advance, and afforded ample opportunities for concealment and escape. Among the rest a place is noticed, which enabled the natives to defy intrusion or discovery, near the "Three Thumbs' Mountain,"—an almost impenetrable forest, of seven miles extent: the spreading branches obscure the sky, and lofty plants grow entwined, and conceal an object at the distance of a few feet. The attempt of the blacks to cross the line discovered their retreat. It was resolved to assemble forces sufficient to surround, break through, and storm this thicket: it was penetrated by about 300 men, who kept up a constant fire of musketry. A party, hearing the rustling of leaves like the noise of cattle, followed the sound: they came up to an encampment, where the fires were unextinguished, and where half-formed weapons indicated a hasty dispersion. Here they found the impression of nails, and what were deemed sure proofs of a superior directing intelligence. The presumption, that some convicts were incorporated with the blacks, was certainly strong, but it was probably but a temporary or casual intercourse, of not much utility to the natives. The Governor had, however, a full conviction that to this circumstance the failure might be partly ascribed. In the middle of the march, he ordered the publication of a report, which appeared decisive of the fact. Savage, a servant of Mr. Bisdee, was met half naked by the Governor, near Mills' Lagoon, to whom he stated he had been surrounded by a tribe, and rescued from violence by a man named Brown, who was with them. This person he had known in gaol. Savage advised Brown to bring in the natives, but he refused: he said that he had been frequently at Hobart Town, where he had bought clothes for the women: he had a double-barrelled gun, and seemed to have complete control over them. They carried Savage with them as far as Mills' Lagoon, when he was told he might go. The Governor and his party instantly set off in the pursuit, but they discovered no traces of the natives. The truth of this narrative has been questioned, yet from the number of points in which a correct memory, or extraordinary powers of invention would be requisite, the Governor might have easily detected imposition. The man stated that fright cured him of rheumatism; his rags were consistent with his story. It is, however, the only clear testimony to the presence of white men with the blacks at that period.

On the 26th of November, it was announced by the Governor, that the first series of operations was brought to a close; and except a few, requisite to protect the country, the colonists and their servants were released, and the town guards replaced.[17]

Those who had condemned the plan, now censured its precipitate abandonment: they said that hundreds of blacks were enclosed when the troops were withdrawn. It is not likely, however, that the Governor was deceived on this point. It is certain that many blacks were in the rear, and the dispersion of the force was equal to a confession, that the object was impracticable—that it had failed.

Thus closed the Black War. This campaign of a month, supplied many adventures, and many an amusing tale; and, notwithstanding the gravity of his Excellency, much fun and folly. The settler soldiers returned to their homes, their shoes worn out, their garments tattered, their hair long and shaggy, with beards unshaven, their arms tarnished; but neither blood-stained nor disgraced. They had seen much and dreaded more; but, in general, they met no other enemies than scrub and thorns, and they sat down on their own hearths, happy in having escaped the ramrods of their friends. The odd tactics, awkward movements—the skulking and the foraging, and all the various small accomplishments of a bivouac, were long topics of conversation and laughter. The accidents were few, though of these some were fatal: two aborigines only were captured, and one soldier was wounded. Yet though not very glorious, perhaps no evening in the year passes, but some settler's fireside is enlivened by a story of the fatigues and frolics of the Black War.

When the last movement was completing, the Science sailed for England with despatches from Colonel Arthur: they indicate his expectation of a failure, and scarcely conceal his mortification. Either the original impossibility of the plan, or the indolence or incaution of those who carried it out, had exposed the government to more than ridicule. Five thousand men had taken the field, beside the town guard. Nearly £30,000 had been expended, and probably not much less value in time and outlay by the settlers, and two persons only were captured! Those who prophecied the result, of course exulted in their sagacity: for the rest, they either praised the motive or the details. An impartial retrospect will not permit a commendation of the plan. The arrangements were ably made, and the parties, though they encountered difficulties unusual, reached the appointed places with considerable precision.

A public meeting was called to thank the Governor for his exertions in the field. This assembly was summoned, says the chronicler of the times, by the largest placard ever published in the colony! The resolutions and addresses were nearly unanimous; Mr. Gregson being almost singly opposed to this tribute of gratitude. It was objected by this gentleman, that while the activity of the Governor was not to be disputed, exertions wisely directed were alone worthy of praise; and he compared the project for netting the aborigines, with an attempt to harpoon a whale from the heights of Mount Wellington. The ardour of the people would not, however, admit a comparison which it required at that moment some political resentment to perceive. Nor is it precisely just to estimate the merits of a plan, by the success of its application. A colonist at a glance sees, in the names which were attached to the addresses, that the war was popular: all parties, of every shade, contributed something to that warmth of commendation, which had been hitherto paid by one alone. In every district of the colony, the applauses of Hobart Town were re-echoed, and the Governor's replies gave back an exchange of praise.

To suppose that Colonel Arthur expected military renown from such an enterprise, is certainly to under-estimate his ambition: to imagine that he valued a military spectacle, is not consistent with a mind much too practical for chivalry. His avowed and real object was to stop the murder of his countrymen, and to arrest the extinction of the natives; and it was not unworthy the public gratitude.[18] The Governor was delighted, however, by those proofs of the discipline of the prisoners, which were afforded through the campaign: many hundreds were in arms: they performed their duty with exemplary diligence and sobriety, and thus afforded the only spectacle which Colonel Arthur valued. It was certainly unprecedented. Slaves have been armed by their masters—their wives and children were hostages—but convicts, never. Robberies were less frequent than usual, and the journals singularly free from the details of crime. The animating influence of confidence reposed, elevates the least romantic natures: since they were trusted, they were faithful: all returned home to their servitude.

[17] The sheriff, Mr. Dudley Fereday, had before dismissed that portion which guarded the gaol: he affected to believe that the prisoners were not safe. There was small chance of escaping, so observed the newspapers, while the civilians were on guard—the prisoners themselves had given up all hope! But the sheriff thought otherwise, or more probably availed himself of his office, to cast into the dirt the honors of the civic guard; who had observed the forms of military discipline, and who merited a more distinguished termination to their service.

SECTION VII

While the hostile proceeding was in progress, the future preserver of the natives, Mr. Robinson, had already given his thoughts to their conciliation. In 1829, he was appointed to take charge of BrunÉ Island, where twelve natives, captured, were located, and mixed with others who had attained a partial civilisation. Mr. Robinson attempted to acquire their language, and was soon able to understand them. The pecuniary advantages of his office were not very alluring: £50 a-year, and rations, were thought equal to obtain a person of good character to manage the infant establishment, and to effect the proposed intercourse with this unfortunate race. Mr. Robinson described his plan, as the employment of persuasion only, and requiring the withdrawment of intimidation. He first laboured to acquire the language—a task of some difficulty: the English were scarcely less ignorant on this subject, than when they first landed, and the dialects of the tribes differed considerably. The aborigines were supposed to understand the English tongue much more extensively; but the words with which they were most familiar, were the imprecations so often addressed to them—they were able to retort common terms of menace. Their intercourse with bushrangers and stock-keepers on remote stations, was the chief source of their knowledge. To learn the language as an instrument of civilisation, would be the first idea of a Christian missionary; but it was a conception, too lofty for the colonial mind. It was forgotten that by no other means can savages be softened, or permanently conciliated. The effect, when adopted, was electric: they learned to address Mr. Robinson as their marmanake, or father, and thus to distinguish him from other white men. The stupidity attributed to barbarians, and the vacant laughter, with which they receive the announcement of new ideas in a foreign tongue, would be ascribed, by experienced teachers, to the absurdity of such a medium of communication.[19]

The plan adopted by Mr. Robinson, was not only humane—it was reasonable. The natives were proud of freedom: their restraint was disguised, and by unvarying kindness he taught them to regard him as their friend; and thus they were prepared, not only to submit to his authority, but to rely upon his promises. White men had thought it a merit to deceive, and it required some skill to convince them. Having explained the proposals of the government, he took with him several of their number, and went on his errand of mercy. The aborigines were evidently prepared for his mission. Most of the tribes had occasionally direct intercourse with Europeans—true, the more frequent, the more hostile; but while they regarded the whites with hatred, this commerce enabled them to appreciate the presents provided to entice them, and facilitated friendly communication. All on the east side of the island were confederated; and when any were gained, they became agents in each other's pacification. The late pursuit, though it had not subdued their enmity, or even their courage, had convinced many that there was no security but by peace. Others, however, long resolved to confide in their own strength, and to take refuge in the fastnesses of the island. Such was the answer they gave to the messages of Robinson; but the late events had separated them from each other—it had scattered their tribes: members of the same family were part in captivity, and the knowledge of their condition moved the sympathies of relations still at large. Of this, an affecting instance transpired in 1831. Some, who gave themselves up, stated that they had been very unhappy: they had gone over the country, searching for their lost friends, of whom they could gain no tidings. We realise a softening scene, in contemplating these fragmentary tribes, traversing their ancient haunts, and uttering the unanswered, and then melancholy call which distinguishes their race. When this party were told that their relations were living under the protection of Robinson, they expressed an anxious wish to join them, and met them with exclamations of joy.

The numerous islands that surround the coast, greatly facilitated the detention of captives: few of the male natives could swim; few understood the structure of a catamaran. The means of escape were not easily obtained, and for a time the novelty and repose of their bondage mitigated their dislike to its restrictions: these natural fortresses kept them in safety, without the aspect of a prison; and one or other island was accessible from most points of the Tasmanian shore.

Colonel Arthur implied, by his closing proclamation, when he dismissed the forces, that their labors formed the first series of a connected plan, only partially developed. The war was, in the estimation of the Governor and his friends, a preparation for a mission of peace. It was fortunate that Robinson's early progress imparted to the warlike expedition the eclÂt of reflected success. It is not necessary to scrutinise the notion, or to teach what this history will not warrant—that measures of conciliation are more successful, when pursued under the forms of hostility. Had the milder method been tested at an earlier period, the expenses of the campaign might have been spared. Colonel Arthur, however, warmly approved, and strenuously supported the pacific mission: not only was he convinced that nothing further could be expected from arms, but he felt a real compassion for the unfortunate race. In this course, he found considerable opposition. "We strongly raise our voice," one editor remarks, "against their civilisation. The natives are not to be trusted; and the lives of all engaged in the mistaken policy of conciliation, are never safe for one moment."

The conduct of this mission, the Governor entrusted to the Aborigines' Committee, originally consisting of Archdeacon Broughton, Rev. Messrs. Bedford and Norman; P. A. Mulgrave, J. Thomas, S. Hill, and Charles Arthur, Esquires. Their authenticated statements are embodied in these pages: their sentiments accorded with their character, but were slightly tinged by the feelings of the day.

To devise the means of capture, and superintend their application, was their most important function. It was proposed by one gentleman, exasperated by injuries, or perhaps unconscious of the details of his plan, to pursue the natives with bloodhounds. Another suggested the employment of a man, "who would soon put an end to the eastern mob; and who had already killed half that tribe, by creeping upon them and firing among them." He thought that "the worst men were the best to engage" in this work. Another proposed to employ the sealers—men who had waged a war of extermination with great success. It is but just to observe, that proposals like these, though received, were not favored by the Governor. They are in the records of Office, connected with the names of their authors, and they admit no other excuse than a reference to recent acts of aboriginal violence, which had shaken the common principles of British humanity.

The Governor had already announced the re-capture of the natives who escaped from Mr. Batman's, while he was absent at the war. They re-commenced depredations: he finally re-took them without bloodshed. But the most pleasing intelligence, and that which chiefly inspired hope, came from the south-east extremity of the island: Mr. Robinson went round the coast; touched at Macquarie Harbour, visited Circular Head, and Portland: there he took Lemina Beginna, a chief, and twenty-two others, including thirteen conciliated at George's River. These were brought round to Gun Carriage Island; a temporary abode, ill-suited for their entertainment, and where several soon concluded their troubled career.

Lemina complained that, many years ago, his wife had been taken away by sealers, and entreated the Governor to procure her restoration; another petitioned, that his sister and his mother might be recovered from the same vile oppressors. The sister was known as Black Jock, and seems to have been greatly in request: she was in alliance with the leader of one of the parties—less modest than familiar. A sealer, from whom she had eloped, when she came back to the coast demanded her, with some vehemence, as his wife! So much beloved was this Tasmanian belle. The arbitration of these disputes was no easy task: though sufficiently ridiculous, they often seriously endangered the mission. The Governor issued an order against the interference of the sealers, and declared Mr. Robinson under the special protection of government.

In reference to these captures, the Governor publicly expressed his great gratification, and requested the colonists to promote pacific intercourse, by all available means. The discretion displayed by Robinson, not less than his courage, excited much admiration, and hopes were entertained that the true means of safety were at last discovered. Mr. Robinson now requested that the armed parties should be recalled, depÔts established to afford an asylum to the captives, and additional agents employed. Mr. Cotterell, and others were engaged to act in subordination to the movements of Robinson. The Sydney blacks, ten of whom had been brought down by Mr. Batman, for the mission, had been found less useful: they were rewarded, and sent home. The aborigines of New Holland despised the Tasmanian blacks—a race, ignorant of the womera![20]

In the following September, 1831, Mr. Robinson obtained another considerable accession, assisted by Lemina Beginna: they travelled, backwards and forwards, for four hundred miles, and found old acquaintances. Eumarrah, the chief of the Stony Creek tribe, when he saw Mr. Robinson, ran to him and shook hands, and with five men and one woman, gave himself up: three only of his tribe remained! The captives were described as remarkably athletic: they talked incessantly, and complained bitterly that their women had been stolen. The inequality of numbers confirmed this charge. While Robinson was with them, a boat's crew came in sight; and it required all his influence to prevent the natives from retreating with precipitation. Thus the evil they suffered in their first intercourse, pursued them to the last moment of their freedom.

M'Kay, who had been employed under Mr. Robinson, added to these captures. Two friendly native women accompanied him, and they followed the track for a week. At last, they found the natives encamped in a plain: in the dead of night the party dashed in among them, and took two men, one woman, and a boy. Surrage, also assisted by two native females, captured eight men and two women. Their method was curious: the tame women were sent up the hill, where the fires were seen: they returned; four men followed them down to the boat, and six others, men and women, were speedily seen in the footsteps of their companions.

While these captures were proceeding, Mr. Robinson started for the Surrey Hills and Circular Head. He left the party lately conciliated in Launceston: they were cheerful, and expected their proposed voyage to the islands with great glee. They spoke of their past outrages without reluctance, which they justified by relating the cruelties they had suffered.

The Governor was anxious to notice every instance of intrepidity and kindness: it is the coward that is ferocious. The indulgences of the crown were freely given to persons, of whatever class, who exemplified courage and humanity. Mr. Anstey, a young gentleman of the interior, was rewarded with five hundred acres. He had surprised and taken several, and the skill of his arrangements prevented the effusion of blood. In a few instances, the natives voluntarily surrendered. Mr. Charles Headlam saw two approaching, holding up their hands—thus indicating the absence of their spears: he was standing on the threshold when he remarked the signal, and immediately lowered his gun. These unfortunate beings were admitted into the house, and supplied with food; and finally conducted to a place of safety.

These feelings were occasionally damped by acts of atrocity, committed by the blacks. It is not to be supposed, however, that provocation ceased, or that the impulse given by four years conflict, could be simultaneously paralysed. The tribes frequenting the Tamar and the Forth, were represented as becoming increasingly mischievous. The fate of Mrs. M'Alister was deeply affecting: when wounded, she ran bleeding from her dwelling: her servants carried off the children to a place of safety. The unhappy mother concealed herself, for a time, in a field of corn: unable longer to suppress her anxiety, she rushed from her hiding place, crying out for her children. She was seen by the blacks, and slain! The relater of this catastrophe concludes—"Let the sentence of extermination in their hearts, be firmly sent forth on our parts." If we shudder at such sentiments, they scarcely awaken surprise, when closing a narrative like this.

The murder of Captain Thomas and Mr. Parker, by the Big River tribe, renewed the exasperation. His servants, who had landed some provisions, gave a small portion to the natives. He was told by three of the blacks, that many were in the woods, and he resolved to follow them. Parker, who accompanied him, advised him to take his gun. As they were walking, a native snatched it away: they became alarmed and ran, and were pierced with spears. This case seemed to indicate a hopeless spirit of innate malice: Captain Thomas was known to be humane, and his object was to conciliate. The natives had, however, experienced great cruelties from the servants and others. A coroner's jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder: those charged were arrested, and committed to gaol; afterwards, they were removed to Flinders. As the vessel rounded the coast, the scene of the murder was visible, and they became extremely agitated; but the opinion of the colony was no longer favorable to executions, and the government had discovered a more excellent way.

Mr. Robinson now landed at Circular Head, and assisted by his native companions, he followed up the Big River tribe: he fell in with the party at Lake Echo; they had moved with haste, and left behind several stand of arms, a looking glass, and the gun of Captain Thomas. Other encampments were passed, but when Robinson approached them, they invariably fled. They had been to a spot twenty miles south-east of the Van Diemen's Land Company's establishment, whither they were accustomed to resort for a mineral, which is found in a decomposed bed of felspar. From this place they were followed by Robinson, who overtook them thirty miles north-west of the Peak of Teneriffe. He saw them first to the east of the Barn Bluff Mountain, and was not more than two miles distant. He hailed his people, and selected a few of his friendly natives, who, together with the woman present at the murder of Captain Thomas, were sent to meet them. The party of Robinson were concealed by a scrub. In less than half an hour he heard the war-whoop, and perceived that they were advancing, by the rattling of their spears. This was an awful moment to their pacificator. On their approach, the chief, Manalanga, leaped on his feet in great alarm, saying that the natives were coming to spear them: he urged Mr. Robinson to run, and finding he would not, took up his rug and spears and went away. The rest of the allies prepared to follow him; but were prevailed on by Robinson to remain. They inferred, that the natives sent on the embassy of peace, were either killed, or that they had joined the hostile tribe. As these advanced, the friendly emissaries were unseen, being hidden by the larger number of the strangers, who still raised their cry, and approached in warlike array. At length Robinson saw his own people: he then went up to the chiefs and shook hands with them. He explained the object of his visit; distributed trinkets among them, and sat down and partook refreshment with them. From that time they placed themselves under his control, and as they advanced towards Hobart Town, he encouraged them to make excursions, which left their own actions free, and prevented suspicion and distrust. With their wives and children, this party consisted of thirty-six, and at length they were safely lodged on Swan Island. They were fine muscular men, and excited great interest and sympathy.

This incident suggested to the venerable artist, Mr. Duterreau, the idea of a national picture: he depicts the interview, and delineates the various countenances, drawn from the life, with great energy and effect. Robinson is seen in expostulation with a listening chief; a woman, behind him, is endeavouring to pour distrust into his ear. Others are looking on in expectation or in doubt. The grouping is skilful and expressive; and this picture, which has the great merit of minutely representing the attitudes and customs of the natives, will be an interesting memorial, in another age, of the most honorable passage in Tasmanian history.

The results of his enterprise produced a strong impression in favor of Mr. Robinson: he had been thought rash, and even fanatical; his death had been predicted a hundred times—his success was attributed, half in jest and half in earnest, to some species of animal enchantment. The government, at the suggestion of the Committee, acknowledged his exertions, not only with warm eulogy but substantial rewards. He received a maximum grant, in the title of which his service to the public was recorded, and was paid a salary more suited to the office he filled. Others were also liberally recompensed for their contributions to his success, of which the merit was more in its conception than in its detail.

Having shewn the possibility of conciliation, Mr. Robinson declined the further risk of his life, except on terms which would place his family beyond the reach of want. The Governor fully met his just claims, providing pensions for his wife and children, in case of his death, and promising £1,000,—£300 in hand, and the rest when all should be brought in. It was understood, that the future government of the aborigines should be entrusted to his charge, when the mission had realised its intention. The Governor granted all his requests, and spared no expense to ensure his success. The task was not accomplished for several years, but from this time the natives at large rarely appeared, and the colonists enjoyed that repose to which they so long had been strangers. His labours were attended with various and unusual perils. It was the custom of the men belonging to the Circular Head establishment, to approach the native fires, and destroy all they could not capture. One night, Robinson, with his black attendants, were on a point of land six miles from the establishment: the people were attracted by the smoke, when turning accidentally, he saw seven men cautiously creeping round: they had levelled their muskets: but for an instant recognition of his voice, his labours and his life would probably have ended.

Mr. Robinson had learned, that a large party were approaching Arthur River, on their way to their own country, and returning from a warlike expedition against those recently captured. He resolved to send four friendly blacks, and three recent converts, to open a communication with this tribe: they were to make signals, if successful. Two days after, the sign was given. On reaching the farther bank, he saw the wild natives coming towards him with their waddies and spears. He proposed that they should re-cross with him: they, however, desired him to remain, promising to hunt for his entertainment. He consented, and made them presents; but he left his son, and a small party, in the rear. He was alarmed at night by a friendly native, who being acquainted with one of the hostile tribe, had learned that it was intended to murder him and his people. Robinson concealed his knowledge from his companions, lest their fears should be too powerful to suffer their remaining with him. The assassins extinguished their own fires, but did not lie down to sleep: Robinson kept his burning brightly, that he might watch their movement. They were earnestly chattering, and were trimming their weapons, while one of their number insisted upon the cruelty of killing the white man! On Robinson's rising, the whole seized their spears—one grasped in their right hand, and a bundle in their left. The dogs of Robinson's party had been secured, and their spears removed; they, however, escaped, and he was left alone. In a moment, he darted into the scrub: at this retreat, they seemed struck with astonishment; and quickly covered by the thicket, their spears did not reach him. On clearing the scrub, he hastened to Arthur River, and crossed on a floating tree. At this instant, the natives reached the bank: he was soon joined by his own friends, and confronted the hostile party, who stood on the opposite bank flourishing their spears. Robinson cried out, that he forgave their conduct, and offered them his protection. This induced a girl and two men to join him; but his situation was perilous, and having made fires, as if for signals, he hastened away, to deposit the proselytes in safety.

This tribe continued at large until 1834. They had determined never to be taken—to subsist upon the quoib (badger), and to perish rather than yield. Finding Mr. Robinson in pursuit, they endeavoured to elude his search by false direction sticks. The blacks in his company dreaded an ambush, and declared that they should all be slain, if they proceeded further, now that their pursuit was known to the hostile tribe. Mr. Robinson, however, resolved to persevere, and soothed their fears. The march was long and harassing, the natives having divided into three parties, the better to escape. They were captured: eight in February, three in March, and in April, nine; and were embarked at Circular Head for Launceston, and thence to Flinders' Island.

The Governor warmly congratulated the colony on its deliverance, but the numbers that remained were greater than he imagined. The abolition of martial law was deemed by some to be premature. Twenty were captured in 1834, and seventeen in 1835. Mr. Robinson, after nine months pursuit, came up with the small relics which were known to be still at large, in Middlesex Plains, and found one man, four women, and two children: they had travelled as far as the head of the Derwent. Two men, sent by Robinson with despatches from the place of their capture, were lost in the bush, and perished. It was now announced, that no more aborigines were at large: in this, both Mr. Robinson and the government were mistaken. Rumours, for several years, were continually stirring, of blacks fleeing in the distance; of the thin smoke, the native cry, and other indications of their presence. At length it was proved, that these were not the ghosts of the departed tribes. In December, 1842, at Circular Head, seven persons were captured, and rejoined their long banished countrymen. This remnant consisted of a single family: the parents about fifty years; the rest of ages from childhood to thirty years. They were taken by a sealer, whose boat they had pilfered, and conveyed to Flinders'. They were more than usually intelligent in their appearance: they did not understand one word of English, and they had probably retained to the last the primitive manners of their race.

Mr. Robinson was a builder at Hobart Town, his family was large, and depended on his trade. It detracts nothing from his merit, while it is honorable to the government, that he was a gainer by successful humanity. The munificence of the crown, alone prevented a larger subscription by the people; he had, however, the warm and unanimous expression of public gratitude.

The character of his mission was supported by his conduct. He went unarmed, and if the natives approached him at all, they were devoid of fear and therefore of ferocity. He plunged into the heart of the forest, assumed the habits of a wanderer, and continued his absence for months together. He shared the danger of his allies, and confided in their affection: he encouraged their sports, and so far as could a white man, without debasement, he became one among them. Hitherto the English had dealt treacherously, and rarely approached their camps, but to oppress, to mock, or to destroy them. They now discovered, that all were not enemies, and kindness was felt more powerfully by contrast. It is said by Backhouse, that Robinson acted under a sense of religious duty; by Mann, that he was a fatalist or predestinarian: he was calumniated by the base and the envious: the ascendancy he acquired over the natives, the Christian philosopher can easily comprehend. The effect of "good will to men," is peace on earth. Moral courage, united with generosity, often overpowers the suspicion and hostility, of even the most barbarous. The coward dies, while the man of bold spirit dissipates the clouds of distrust, and wakens in others the confidence he himself cherishes. Nor is it necessary for the writer to observe, that Divine Providence gives back often, the "hazard of their lives," to the resolute in right, or that an omnipotent protector attends the footsteps of the merciful.

Thus, in their harassing life, parents and children had been divided, and families had been broken up in melancholy confusion: indeed, they had ceased to be tribes, and became what they were called—mobs of natives, composed often of hereditary enemies. Infanticide and distress, rapid flight, and all the casualties of a protracted conflict, threatened them with speedy destruction. Had not Robinson appeared, the last savage, hopeless of peace or safety, would have perished with his weapon in his hand. It was a great deliverance to this colony, as well as to the native. From the Windmill-hill at Launceston, whence a wide and beautiful country is visible, the spectator could discern the site of twenty aboriginal murders—settlers, servants, and infants; the aged and the kind had fallen, as well as the base hearted and cruel. It was something to know, that the fatal hand, which no precaution could resist, would be raised no more.

It was, indeed, a mournful spectacle: the last Tasmanian quitting the shores of his ancestors: forty years before, the first settler had erected his encampment! A change so rapid in the relations of a people to the soil, will scarcely find a parallel in this world's history; but that banishment which, if originally contrived, had been an atrocious crime, was at last an act of mercy—the tardy humanity of Englishmen, which rescued a remnant, extenuated the dishonor of their cruelty to the race. As for Mr. Robinson, he enjoyed, not only the bounty of the government, but the affection of the natives—and the applause of all good men. His name will be had in everlasting remembrance: happier still, if numbered by the judge of all among his followers, who came "not to destroy men's lives, but to save them."[21]

SECTION VIII

During the progress of these captures, the question of future disposal was slowly determined. Those lodged on Gun Carriage Island, through injudicious restraint or want of pure water, or melancholy, rapidly decreased. The government was bound to seek for them a more salubrious prison, or to restore them to the main land: an event, which would have ensured their immediate destruction. Maria Island, recommended both by Mr. Robinson and Mr. Bedford, was desirable, as contiguous; but nothing could prevent an escape to the colony. Kent's Group, on the coast of New Holland, was next proposed; but the passage is difficult, and between the islands, said the sailor witness, "the sea pours like a sluice, and the winds drive through like a funnel." Then came King's Island, situated 140 miles north of Van Diemen's Land; but it was said to be infested with badgers and bandicoots, and that the natives would retire into the woods, and be no more found. Such was the extent of official knowledge, in reference to these dependencies, that to select a spot it was necessary to appoint a special survey; but although the natives were fast dying, the vessel destined to this service was first sent for a cargo of timber!

Captain Jackson having visited the Straits, recommended Flinders', sometimes called Great Island. The aborigines who joined in this visit, were delighted with the country: they returned to their companions with the spoils of hunting, and celebrated their good fortune in songs. A soldier, who accompanied the party, wholly differed from this report: he said the climate was bleak, the soil sterile, and destitute of springs; and his objections, though attributed to malice, have been confirmed by experience. After much deliberation, Flinders' Island was preferred.

The Chief Justice, Sir John Pedder, opposed the removal altogether: too truly he judged, it would be followed by rapid extinction. In denying to the aboriginal remnant an asylum within the country of their forefathers, we inflicted the last penalty which can fall on a race, whose lives the victors condescend to spare. It was too late, however, to repent; and pioneers were forwarded to the place of exile. The usual fatality attended the first choice of a township, but in 1832 Mr. Backhouse, at Colonel Arthur's request, proceeded to Flinders', where the station was finally chosen; it was called, Wybalenna,—the "Black Man's Village." The natives were under disguised military control, but were exceedingly docile and submissive. Cottages were erected for their use. The women found some amusement in sweeping their houses, and depositing or replacing the articles of their furniture—their beds, bedsteads, tables, and stools: they washed the garments of their husbands; who, when they had occasion to complain, threatened to work for themselves. They had seen the wives of the soldiers washing, and inferred that this exercise was the special privilege of women.

The acting commandant, in 1832, reported them as in the highest health and spirits, full of intelligence, advancing step by step towards civilisation: so they were described, and such was their aspect. They were furnished with every article of domestic use, far more numerous than usually fall to the lot of the English cottager, and which, to an Irish peasant, would suggest the idea of shopkeeping: the men, dressed in duck clothing and Scotch caps, voluntarily appeared with the soldiers, and presented their necessaries for inspection.

A large group watched the landing of Mr. Backhouse in silence; but when invited, they rose up and shook hands; and when told that provisions had arrived, they set up shouts of joy: they wore clothing, except in their dances, which they held thrice a-week, after sun set; they exhibited much cheerfulness, affability, and mutual kindness, and no great deficiency of either physical or intellectual power.

The system pursued by Mr. Robinson at Flinders', is minutely described in papers published by the House of Commons. The establishment of—

1. An aboriginal fund. 2. A circulating medium. 3. An aboriginal police. 4. A weekly market: and 5. A weekly periodical.

The first four of these measures succeeded: the periodical was not successful! but Mr. Robinson established a respectable currency: he made the natives purchase all articles except food; and once, when the supply of tobacco was scanty, it rose to the price of 32s. per lb.! They were too prone to dilapidate and destroy their dwellings; they were therefore required to pay for the locks, cupboards, and doors. They were instructed in the Christian religion, and displayed considerable aptitude; but of some, it is remarked, that they were inattentive to learning, and fond of the chase!

The civil and religious administration of Flinders' Island has been often changed, and subject to factions and disputes. The stories which float in the colony, respecting the little empire of Wybalenna, are grotesque and humorous. No modern author will venture to look into the abyss of despatches, which develop its policy. To arrive at the truth would require an amount of labour, perhaps not beyond its intrinsic worth, but involving large discussions and questions not without peril. Mr. Backhouse, before leaving the colony, renewed his visit as the envoy of the government, to heal divisions which had broken out with virulence between the ecclesiastical and civil powers. He observes, that they principally resulted from misunderstandings, and with this caution we resign them to the curious of some other age. It may, however, be satisfactory to know, that in the order of succession, Messrs. Darling, Robinson, Drs. Jeannerett and Milligan, have been commandants, and that Mr. Wilkinson, Rev. Mr. Dove, and Mr. Clark, have filled the office of chaplain.

The religious manifestations of the aborigines are differently estimated by different minds: by some, considered purely mechanical and imitative; by others, as the simple expressions of a genuine piety. The evidence of their worth, would depend greatly on accompanying moral developments. The piety of a proselyted heathen is like that of a child, more in sensibility than concatenated dogmata: they repeated a creed, only partially understood; but they also became conscious of a Superior Power, and a nobler destiny. The highly intelligent appreciation of religious knowledge, attributed by their guardians, did not appear to the casual visitor; and was probably, unconsciously, coloured. It does not pertain to this work to examine the evidence of their personal religion, which, however, sometimes had a conservative influence in life, and to several yielded consolation in their last hours.

In 1835, Mr. Robinson entered on his office as commandant: believing that his mission was accomplished, he gathered the people together, and made a feast, in which they were to forget the animosities of their tribes, and join as one family. Scarcely was this union effected, when the occupation of Port Phillip drew attention to the aborigines of New Holland. Mr. Wedge, who visited that country, made known to the government the barbarity of the monstrous whites; who, so soon as they touched those shores, wantonly stained their hands with native blood. To that gentleman we owe our ability to trace to its origin, an extermination which has kept pace with the colonisation of that region.

Mr. Robinson proposed to remove the natives of Tasmania, then eighty-two persons, to Port Phillip. It was expected that their presence would excite the curiosity, and stimulate the civilisation of the New Hollanders; that possession of a flock, then 1,300 in number, would give useful ideas of the bounty of their benefactors. It had been thought desirable to reward the aboriginal guides, and one hundred ewes and three rams were forwarded to the establishment, to be distributed among them: a large addition was made by private benevolence. The increase of their flock, became a source of temporary profit to the natives: the wool was brought to Launceston, and exchanged for haberdashery, and other articles of domestic use.

The British government, after much hesitation, fearful of its consequences to the Tasmanians, consented to their removal. In 1838, Mr. Robinson received the appointment of Chief Protector to the Aborigines of New Holland: the nature or the utility of that office, does not belong to this work to discuss. By treaty with Sir George Gipps, the government of Van Diemen's Land agreed to pay a sum annually for each ten who might survive. The deportation was sanctioned by the blacks themselves: the certificate, which bears their signatures, might be supposed to represent a congress of heroes, or the pack of a huntsman—names, which are chiefly borne by dogs and princes.[22] They were anxious for the change, but quite incapable of estimating its results. A party of twenty-two therefore accompanied Mr. Robinson, but the issue was disastrous: called away by the duties of his office, he could not extend to them a proper supervision: they were again exposed, in another land, to their old adversaries and seducers, the stock-keepers: they were too few to form a village, and death thinned their numbers: two returned to Van Diemen's Land, and afterwards to Flinders'. Of the rest, two were executed for murder. Mr. Batman had in his house at Port Phillip, a native woman and two boys; but the New Hollanders were rather the objects of aversion than sympathy: and, fearful of their violence, the Tasmanians avoided their company, and showed no disposition to forsake their protector.

During the whole period of their residence at Flinders' Island, it does not appear that any white man on the station, or even of their own colour, had preferred a criminal charge against one of them. The commandant, as magistrate, possessed a summary jurisdiction; and the restrictions in his court he could supplement with the forms and ensignia of power. A late commandant, when he sentenced to small penalties for petty offences, sat at night; and to impress their imaginations, the hall of justice was guarded with drawn swords.

SECTION IX

The advances towards the final extinction of the natives, have been more rapid than was expected; but the certainty of that event was never the subject of doubt. Sir George Murray, on the 5th November, 1830, anticipated, and wrote down their fate; and inferred, from their decrease, that at no distant period the whole race would become extinct: but he declared that the adoption of any course of conduct, with this design, either avowed or secret, would leave an indelible stain upon the government of Great Britain! It will be seen, however, that the progress of decay was never arrested for a moment. The mortality at BrunÉ and Swan Islands was not less than at Flinders'; but from 1832, a regular account has been preserved.[23]

Of the forty-five landed at Oyster Cove, in 1847, thirteen were men, twenty-two women, and ten children. Such has been the progress of their decline, and with numbers so inconsiderable, the problem of their fate is solved.

The original amount of the natives has been a question much debated: like a procession in a circle, a population in motion, when not personally distinguished, will appear more numerous than the actual census. Mr. Kelly, who often had passed the coasts, calculated them at, originally, 7,000, but he guessed their number to be 5,000 in 1830: the obvious error of the last estimate, would naturally suggest a doubt with reference to the former. Several hundreds were, however, seen in one assembly, within the last thirty years. At Hobart Town and Launceston, from one to two hundred have appeared together. It was their custom to distribute themselves in parties, of from forty to fifty each. Their fires, kindled on the sea shore, were often left burning, when they had moved on to the next stage; and those who saw the flames from ship-board, concluded that aborigines were lying around them, and thus telling their numbers by the fires, they were often greatly deceived. The rapidity of their movements led to the same mistake: they appeared at places sufficient to establish an alibi, according to the current measures of distance. They had innumerable paths which shorten a journey, then unknown to the English: it was thus, that they were twice reckoned, even when carefully counted. No reliance, however, will be placed by persons of experience on the rumour of numbers. Nearly all who report an assembly, judge by imagination rather than minute inspection; thus, mobs are spoken of as tens or hundreds of thousands, without any intention to mislead. It will be the hope of the humane, that the lowest estimate is the true one: it can hardly be doubted, however, that they were originally from 4,000 to 5,000: they were estimated by Mr. Robinson at 700, when he commenced his mission; 203 were captured—many, in the mean time, fell by unknown violence and perpetual persecution: a thousand muskets were charged for their destruction.

The causes of their diminution in Tasmania have been already stated; but some of these continued their operation even after the capture: their natural consequences followed. Towards the last days of their savage life, the sexes were disproportionate, although the balance was partly restored by associating the women who had been longer in captivity, with the men whose wives had died; but many of these women had become licentious, and by an extraordinary oversight the government permitted unmarried convicts and others to have them in charge, or to assist in the preliminary labor of their establishment: the result need not be told. The infant children had perished, by the misery or contrivance of their parents: thus in 1838, of eighty-two there were only fourteen children, and of the remainder, eight had attained the usual term of human life: many who surrendered, were exhausted by sickness, fatigue, and decripitude. They were the worn out relics of their nation, and they came in to lie down and die.

The assumption of clothing occasioned many deaths: they were sometimes drenched with rain—perspiration was repressed, and inflammatory diseases followed: the licentiousness, and occasional want of the few last years, generated disorders, which a cold brought to a crisis. Among savages, the blanket has sometimes slain more than the sword: it destroyed the Indian of North America, and even threatened the New Zealander with a similar fate.[24] The abundant supply of food, and which followed destitution, tended to the same result: it was a different diet. The habits of the chase were superseded, and perhaps discouraged: the violent action to which they had been accustomed; the dancing, shouting, hurling the waddy and the spear—climbing for the opossum—diving, and leaping from rock to rock—assisted the animal functions, and developed muscular power. To continue them required the occasion, as well as the permission; but the stimulus was gone.

It is said, by writers not favorable to the establishment at Flinders', that attempts to force the customs and habits of a civilised people were unreasonably, and even ridiculously severe. However docile the blacks, and generous the intention of their teachers, the physical effects of a total change in the habits of a race are not to be disputed, or that what may be harmless when the result of choice, and founded on new mental and physical stimulants, is dangerous when the mind is vacant, and the objects of civilised exertion unappreciated. Perhaps, no one is blameable. In their social circumstances, we may indeed trace the occasion of decay, but they were no longer produced by cruelty.

There were, other causes. The site of the settlement was unhealthy: they were often destitute of good water; the tanks preserved an insufficient supply. It is admitted that they frequently suffered this lack; but it is stated, that they had sufficient allowed them when sick!

It is, however, clear, that many perished by that strange disease, so often fatal to the soldiers and peasants of Switzerland, who die in foreign lands from regret of their native country. They were within sight of Tasmania, and as they beheld its not distant but forbidden shore, they were often deeply melancholy: to this point the testimony of Mr. Robinson is decisive, though not solitary.[25] They suffered much from mental irritation: when taken with disease, they often refused sustenance, and died in delirium. The wife, or the husband in perfect health, when bereaved, would immediately sicken, and rapidly pine away.[26]

Count Strzelecki has propounded a curious notion of the laws of extinction, in reference to this race. He states that the mother of a half-caste can never produce a black child, and thus the race dies. His statement would need the most positive and uniform testimony; but it may be added to the curiosities of literature. The decrease of population among the inferior race, when harassed or licentious, is certain; but surely there is nothing occult in this, or requiring further explanation than is afforded by human cruelty and vice.

Among those who survive, is the wife of the native Walter George Arthur, the half-caste daughter of Sarah an aboriginal woman. [Looking lately at a picture of Don Quixote, she pointed him out as the man who fought with the windmill.] Her mother has a younger son, now or lately at the Queen's School, and of pure aboriginal blood. A natural law, by which the extinction of a race is predicted, will not admit of such serious deviations.

In 1844, a Finance Committee of the Legislative Council proposed the restoration of the natives to this colony. The frequent reference to head-quarters by the officers in charge, perplexed the government; who alleged that the distance permitted the oppression of the natives, and exposed them to the caprice of their guardians. The measure was delayed for four years; but in 1847, the dismissal of the commandant revived the project, and in October of that year they were landed in Van Diemen's Land, and located at Oyster Bay, once a great station of their people. The removal was unacceptable to the colonists; the outrages of former years were remembered by many, as scenes of domestic mourning. No murmur had ever been heard at the cost of their safety: it was deemed a small atonement for a national wrong: nor will it be possible to state an expenditure which the colonial public would be unwilling to sustain—to smooth the last hours of this unfortunate race. The transfer of a part to Port Phillip, had been attended with fatal consequences to several, and had ended in murder and executions: it was feared that the vicinity of their former haunts might revive their habits of wandering, and once more expose them to those gangs of felons who set no value on aboriginal life. These sentiments led to a spirited remonstrance, in which many respectable settlers concurred: the government had not anticipated opposition, or it may be presumed that a statement of the actual condition of the natives, and the provision intended for their safety, would have preceded this change in their abode. The dark shadows of former years threw doubt on their present character: happily, however, these impressions were erroneous.

The few who remain, are not likely to forsake the comforts of their home: belonging to various tribes and different dialects, particular districts do not present equal attractions to all. They have learned also to rear vegetables, and the greater number are said to be familiar with English customs. By the census, they are assigned to the Church of England; but the distinctions of theology are beyond their comprehension, and therefore their choice; and it is perhaps to be lamented, that from the period of their capture, they have not been placed entirely under the parental care of some religious communion. Those who think lightly of missionary institutions, will find here no ground for exultation in the disastrous surveillance of the civil government.

Englishmen, of whatever rank, cannot fail to survey the aboriginal youth, less in number than many a colonial household, with deep solicitude; or when estimating their claims, to remember the fortunes of their fathers. Or should their helplessness and dependence ever tempt a ruler to expose them to the corrupting influence of the lowest examples, and to assign them the meanest education, he may be recovered to some sense of justice by the following confession of a distinguished predecessor:—

"Undoubtedly, the being reduced to the necessity of driving a simple but warlike, and, as IT NOW APPEARS, NOBLE MINDED RACE, from their native hunting grounds, is a measure in itself so distressing, that I am willing to make almost any prudent sacrifice that may tend to compensate for the injuries that government is unwillingly and unavoidably the instrument of inflicting."—George Arthur.[27]

[23]

SECTION X

Origin.—The traditions of the natives afford no clue to their origin. They are, perhaps, a branch of the Australasian family settled in New Holland(?). Mocha, is the name for water among the western tribe of this island: it is known by the same sound at Cape Leeuwin, on the continent. Though boats were not employed, they constructed a catamaran of bark, or decayed wood, of the specific gravity of cork: these materials, tied together, enabled them to pass to the islands of the Straits.

Lieutenant Gunn found at Maria Island, and preserved for several months, a catamaran, sufficiently tight and strong to drift for sixteen or twenty miles: each would convey from four to seven persons. The catamaran described by the French naturalist, found in Adventure Bay, was made of pieces of bark, and held together by cords made of grass, and assumed the appearance of meshes worked in the form of a pentagon. Mr. Taw, the pilot of Macquarie Harbour, saw the natives cross the river: on this occasion, a man swam on either side of the raft—formed of the bark of the "swamp tree." The distance between the islets is not sufficient to shut us up to the notion of a local creation.[28] A New Holland woman, taken to Flinders', remembered a tradition, that her ancestors had driven out the original inhabitants—the fathers, it is conjectured, of the Tasmanian race. History carries us back to the year 1642, and it is in vain to seek authentic information from a people destitute of records, and perpetually wandering. The time between the first visit and colonisation, was quite sufficient to obliterate the traces of earlier migrations.

Consanguinity.—A comparison of the Tasmanian with the European, would discredit a common root; but the wide spread family of man exhibits all the shades and varieties, by which the extremes are connected. Strzelecki observes, that to account for this connection, is not less vainly attempted than an explanation of the existence of marsupials: but the cases are not comparable. The difficulty, in reference to the human race, is resolved by its intermixture: nature mingles none but kindred blood.

Stature.—The man of Tasmania, is from four and a-half to five and a-half feet high. The skin is blueish black; less glossy than the native of the continent. The facial angle is from 73° to 85°. The features of the women are masculine: the mammÆ become pyriform, and elongate in nursing. The hair is black, and woolly; sometimes luxuriant, occasionally long and glossy. The eyes are full: the eyelid dropping: the iris dark brown: the pupil large, and jet black. The forehead is high, narrow, and running to a peak: the malar bones are prominent, the cheeks hollow, the breast arched and full: the limbs round, lean, and muscular: the hands small; the feet flat, and turned inwards. The frame does not differ from the common structure of man, and by science is not pronounced inferior, according to the rules of phrenologists.[29]

General Appearance.—The impression made upon spectators by the Tasmanian race, has been curiously various. By some, they are said to be the lowest in their physical organisation, their mental capacity, and their social condition. Those who saw them at the same period, and compared them with the inhabitants of Port Jackson, differed entirely in their estimate. In the aged women, there was little to admire: of them, even Mr. Backhouse speaks with unwonted emotion: they reminded him of the ourang outang; they were hideous! but he thought the younger women more agreeable. Another visitor in 1830 describes them as having small hollow eyes, broad noses, nostrils widely distended; jaws like the ourang outang; thin limbs; shapeless bodies; and a hideous expression of countenance! Cook described them as having lips not remarkably thick; their noses moderately flat. LabillardiÈre noticed a peculiar projection in the upper jaw of children, which recedes in adult age. They certainly do not correspond with our notions of beauty, but they are not inferior to millions of the human race. Among the captives, were some whose stature and port strongly impressed the spectator. Backhouse observed one especially, whose features had a Jewish cast, and reminded him of the popular pictures of Abraham! Their thin and wretched appearance, occasioned by their diet, and diseases, cannot be properly attributed to their constitution. Half starved human beings, unclothed, are ever unpleasing. Those acquainted with populous cities in Europe, have often been compelled to recognise, in the squalor and emaciation of classes, the germs of a new race. The captive blacks, when partially clothed, relieved from anxiety, and supplied with food, soon presented a new aspect; and their countenances were lighted up with cheerfulness and intelligence.

Families.—Polygamy was tolerated: women were, latterly, bigamists. LabillardiÈre observed that one man had two wives: this philosopher was held in suspense, on the comparative happiness of their condition; true, the affections of the husband were divided—but they jointly catered for one man instead of two! It is said that they courted with flowers: an authenticated fact, proves that the female occasionally possessed a negative. Roomata (Bet) rejected the addresses of Trigoonipoonata (Jack); but she learned the worth of his affection. She was crossing a river, and became ill: he sprung to her relief, and carried her safely to land; and she became his wife.[30] They daily brought game to the residence of the superintendent, during his temporary absence—lest, said they, he should want on his return. The woman having been left behind, on recovery followed the tribe with the new born infant. The toil of the journey, and of the encampment, chiefly fell to her lot: she carried utensils of all kinds, except the spears. The infant was slung on the back, and suckled over the shoulder: a draftsman, in the company of Cook, drew the portrait of a young female, so burdened. The position of the child has been pronounced, without much reason, a proof of low maternal sensibility. Those who have carried children through a journey, can only imagine the amount of affection requisite to convey, often more than one, after a tribe in its rapid migrations.

Infanticide.—Infanticide was not common; although, in the latter days, when harassed by daily conflict, the practice, was not unknown. It is stated by Leigh, that they were careful not to increase in number, and that they sold their female children. At a later period, it is said, that to suckle puppies they abandoned their offspring. Such facts are not incredible, when they relate to individuals, but are scarcely characteristic of a race: all nations have perpetrated infanticide, from necessity, or pride, or barbarism. Infant life is little valued among savages, and female children least: they run the gauntlet of a thousand perils. Fewer were born than among settled people, and more died in infancy.

Uncivilised man is ever harsh in his treatment of woman. The natives of this country were less imperious than those of Port Jackson, where the blows of the waddy solemnised matrimony. Beside the burden of travel, they chiefly hunted the opossum, and mounted the lofty trees of the Tasmanian forest. When the man condescended to give part of his spoil, he handed over his shoulder the least delectable pieces to his wife, who sat at his back. Often, however, this indulgence was refused. Mr. Horton records an instance of unkindness, perhaps not general, nor very uncommon: it was noon; the mother, her infant, and little boy, had been without food all day: the father refused any part of that he had provided. Another of the tribe, however, was more generous: when he handed the woman a portion, at Mr. Horton's request, before she tasted any herself, she fed her child.

They were often misunderstood; but they were sensible of domestic affections: the tribes were scattered by the last war—some were captives, others fugitives: eleven were already lodged at Richmond, when Mr. Gilbert Robertson brought up two others, a man and woman: they were recognised from afar by the party first taken; these raised the cry of welcome; it was a family meeting, and deeply moved the spectators. The parents embraced their children with rapture, and many tears.

Under an engraving of a Van Diemen's Land woman and child, from a painting by J. Webber, the Journal of Civilisation ventures the following:—"Contemplate the appalling picture! see her, in fact, without maternal affection! To such a mother, it would matter little to see her babe fall from her back and perish!" The woman of Van Diemen's Land, by the French artist, is most lively and maternal: her child is leaning over her head, its feet resting on her shoulders: she looks up towards it, with a strong expression of affection. LabillardiÈre repeatedly remarks the tenderness of the women to their children, as "very engaging." He also had a theory: but why suppose a black woman below a tigress, in the scale of maternity. The law of nature, deadened by circumstances, but which is even strong in the brute, was not inactive in their hearts. In every country, it is individually variable.

There is a grave in a garden at Ben Lomond: Mr. Batman, the morning after its little tenant was deposited, walked up to the spot; but although he went at sunrise, one person was earlier: a Tasmanian woman; who sat by the grave, and wept. It was the mother.

Half-caste.—The half-caste children were oftener destroyed. A woman, who had immolated an infant of mixed origin, excused herself by saying it was not a pretty baby; this was, however, far from universal, and more commonly the act of the tribe than of the mother. A native woman, who had an infant of this class, fell accidentally into the hands of her tribe: they tore the child from her arms, and threw it into the flames. The mother instantly snatched it from death, and quick as lightning dashed into the bush; where she concealed herself, until she made her escape. The injuries she received were, however, fatal. An elder daughter, called Miss Dalrymple, was the first half-caste child born in the colony: she was remarkably prepossessing: her eyes black, her skin copper-colored, her cheeks rosy, and her limbs admirably modelled: she was adopted by a settler.

A considerable number of such children grew up in the island; but they were neglected by their parents, and often inherited the vices or barbarism of both. The females were early debased, and presented spectacles of nakedness and misery. When the Orphan School was formed, a few children were admitted at the government charge; of these, a fragment survive.

A half-caste couple were married recently at Launceston: the expression of their countenances was extremely pleasing. They had been sent up from the Straits to obtain a legal sanction to their union, and they went through the ceremony with much sensibility. There is a register in St. John's Church, Launceston, of the marriage of an aboriginal pair in 1829; the first ever celebrated in the face of the church.

Tribes.—Their tribes were distinct: they were known as the Oyster Bay, the Big River, the Stony Creek, and the Western. There were smaller sub-divisions; but those enumerated were divided by dialects, and well-established boundaries. Their chiefs were merely heads of families, and distinguished by their strength or cunning: they were thought to possess very trifling and uncertain control. It is said, that a notorious bushranger (Howe) fell in with a tribe: he assisted his companions in lifting a boat, but as he appeared in command, the chief checked him for lowering his dignity—a sovereign instinct, which shews the heart of a true prince. When the chiefs accompanied white men in their sports, and were requested to carry their spoil, they often manifested disdain and reluctance. Little is known of their policy, and probably there was but little to be known. The natives lived in harmony with each other, or when they quarrelled they decided by the weight of their waddies, and the thickness of their skulls. The aggressions of other tribes were punished by reprisals, but they rarely pursued a foe. Offences among themselves were treated according to their supposed enormity: the culprit had to stand while a certain number of spears were thrown at him. By this ordeal he was cleared, and the keenness of his eye and the agility of his motions, usually enabled him to escape a fatal wound. Faults, of slighter consequence, were punished without damage: the transgressor was set on the branch of a tree, and had to endure the mockery of the by-standers. It may be gratifying to discover such an example, in favor of the pillory!

Huts.—Their locomotion was predetermined, and their encampments regularly chosen; generally on the banks of a river or a lagoon. Each family had its fire; hunted separately, and erected a hut for its own accommodation. On the mountains, and beside the sea shore, they lodged in caverns; or where these were not found, as in the open country, they reared huts, or rather screens: these were of bark, half-circular, gathered at the top, and supported by stakes: in the front they kindled a fire. These huts formed rude villages, and were seen from seventeen to forty together. The former number being raised by a tribe of seventy, from four to five must have lodged under one shelter. Some, found at the westward, were permanent: they were like bee-hives, and thatched: several such were seen by Jorgenson, on the western shore—strong, and apparently erected for long use. They drew water for the sick in shells: the robust threw themselves on the bank, and drank as they lay. Boiled water was not used in their primitive state; it is said to have been unknown. This is scarcely credible: a heated shell or stone, filled by rain water, might have discovered the secret. They preserved their fire, usually by carrying a brand; if this was extinguished, they replaced it by going back to their last encampment, where the fuel still smouldered. It is said, that they were not ignorant of producing fire by friction.

Food.—Their appetite was voracious: a woman was watched one day, during which, beside a double ration of bread, she devoured more than fifty eggs, as large as those of a duck. Mr. O'Connor saw a child, eight years old, eat a kangaroo rat, and attack a cray-fish. The game they cast into the fire, and when singed drew it out and extracted the entrails; it was then returned to the embers, and when thoroughly warmed, the process was completed. They were acquainted with the common expedient of savage nations, who pass from repletion to hunger: they tightened a girdle of kangaroo skin, which they wore when otherwise naked. Fat they detested; some tribes also rejected the male, and others the female wallaby, as food: the cause is unknown. A few vegetable productions, as the native potato, and a fungus, which forces up the ground, called native bread, and which tastes like cold boiled rice; the fern and grass-tree, also yielded them food. White caterpillars and ant eggs, and several other productions, supplemented their ordinary diet. The animals on which they subsisted chiefly, were the emu, kangaroo, wallaby, and the opossum: the latter living in trees. They obtained a liquor from the cyder tree (eucalyptus), which grows on the Shannon, and elsewhere: it is tapped like the maple; its juice, of the taste of molasses, trickled down into a hole at the foot of the tree, and was covered with a stone. By a natural fermentation, it became slightly intoxicating; and in early days was liked by the stockmen.

During the winter, the natives visited the sea shore: they disappeared from the settled districts about June, and returned in October. The women were accustomed to dive for shell fish, which they placed in a rude basket, tied round the waist. On these marine stations (as at Pieman's River on the west coast), their huts were constructed with more care. Heaps of oyster shells, which seem to be the accumulation of ages, still attest their dependence on the abundance of the sea.

Dress and Ornaments.—In summer, they were entirely naked: in the winter, they protected the shoulders and the waist by a dried skin of kangaroo. The women wore the same, with the addition of ruffles. The dress of Europeans greatly distressed them: they endured it no longer than their visit; yet they were sensible of cold, and could bear less exposure to the weather than Englishmen. They sat close to their fires; and, during days of rain, continued under shelter. The men wore, on the head, grease mixed with ochre—a sort of plumbago, found at the Hampshire Hills: it was used partly for ornament, and partly as a substitute for cleanliness. Bits of wood, feathers, flowers, and kangaroo teeth, were inserted in the hair, which was separated into tufts, rolled and matted together. This decoration was denied the women: their hair was cropped close, with sharp crystal; some on the one side of the head only, in others like the tonsure of the priest. They were accustomed to ornament the body by several methods, differing perhaps with different tribes. Patches of ochre and grease formed a considerable portion of their adornment. With a shining mineral they drew symmetrical lines on the neck, shoulders and face, and various parts of the body; in some cases they resembled epaulettes, in others they imitated the eye: they also made incisions, which they kept open by grease, till the skin was raised, and the process complete: the torment they endured with great fortitude, and affected indifference. Penderome, the brother of a western chief, underwent this operation, which was performed by a woman with broken glass. The flesh of his shoulder opened like crimped fish; but he interrupted the process by antics and laughter. They wore a necklace called merrina; it was principally composed of pearly blue shells, bored by the eye tooth, and strung on the sinews of kangaroo. These shells were cleansed by the acid of wood steam, and received a high polish.

Arms and Implements.—Their utensils and weapons were simple: the baskets, formed of grass, described by Furneaux, were not afterwards improved, but they answered the end. The waddy was a short piece of wood, reduced and notched towards the grasp, and slightly rounded at the point. The spear, nine or ten feet long, was pointed at the larger end, straightened by the teeth, and balanced with great nicety. The spearman, while poising the weapon, held others in his left hand, prepared for instant use: the spear, thus poised, seemed for a few seconds to spin, and it would strike at sixty yards, with an unerring aim. LabillardiÈre describes it well: the warrior grasped it in the middle; raised it as high as his head; drew it towards himself with a jerk, that gave a tremulous motion at the extremities, which accelerated its progress, and tended to support it longer on the column of air; it was darted at 100 paces, and remained in a horizontal position for three-fourths of the distance. The children were early trained to the exercise: Lieutenant Breton saw a child, five years old, throw a stick through the ring affixed to the wall of the gaol, with great precision.

A chief, confined in Hobart Town gaol, taken on the Shannon, exhibited these feats of quickness and strength. He would spring up into the air five feet, and reel round and round, with uncommon rapidity. He threw a broomstick, at twelve yards distance, through a hole in the sentry box, of but little larger diameter; and a lath, cast at thirty yards, pierced a hat through and through. They used no throwing stick, or sling.

In the estimation of Europeans, their practice in war was savage and cowardly: "they do not, like an Englishman," complained a colonial writer, "give notice before they strike." The perfection of war, in their esteem, was ambush and surprise; but an intelligent observer sometimes saw considerable cleverness in their tactics. Mr. Franks was on horseback, driving cattle homeward: he saw eight blacks forming a line behind him, to prevent his retreat; each with an uplifted spear, besides a bundle in the left hand. They then dropped on one knee, still holding the weapon in menace; then they rose and ran towards him in exact order: while they distracted his attention by their evolutions, other blacks gathered from all quarters, and within thirty yards a savage stood with his spear quivering in the air. This weapon, ten feet long, penetrated the flap of the saddle, and the flesh of the horse four inches, which dropped on his hind quarters. The rider was in despair; but the spear fell, and the animal recovered his feet and fled. The servant, less fortunate than his master, was found some days after, slain. The attack was well planned, and exhibited all the elements of military science!

A tribe, who attacked the premises of Mr. Jones, in 1819, at the Macquarie, were led by a chief six feet high: he carried one spear, of a peculiar form, and no other kind of weapon: this he did not use, but stood aloof from the rest, and issued his orders with great calmness, which were implicitly obeyed. They formed themselves in a "half moon ring," and attacked the English with great vigour. The chief was shot: they were struck with dismay, and endeavoured to make him stand; "they made a frightful noise, looked up to heaven, and smote their breasts!"[31]

The wars among them latterly, provoked by driving one tribe on the boundaries of another, were not infrequent; as everywhere, women were the cause and object of strife. The tribes to the westward were the finer race: those from South Cape to Cape Grim, had better huts, and they wore mocassins on travel. Those on the east of the Launceston road were confederate: towards the last, the Oyster Bay tribe committed their children to the care of the Big River tribe, many of whom had been slain by the western tribes, as well as by the English. It was this which increased the difficulties of their conciliation: they had not only to be reconciled to the English, but to each other. They were bold and warlike in their carriage, and when exhibiting spear exercise, commanded the admiration of the spectator.

Agility and Dexterity.—Their skill was chiefly exerted in obtaining their food: they were agile and dextrous. The opossum was hunted by the women, who by a glance discovered if the animal were to be found in the tree. They ascended trees of a tremendous height: they first threw round the trunk a rope, twice its girth, which they held in the centre, and by the left end, in one hand: having cut the first notch for the toe, they raised themselves up by the rope, in an attitude sufficiently perpendicular to carry the hatchet or stone on the head. They then cut a second, and by a jerk of the bight of the rope, raised it up: thus, step by step, they reached the branch, over which the loose end of the rope being cast, they were enabled to draw themselves round. It is stated by Backhouse, that they only required these notches at the bottom of the tree; and they dispensed with them as the bark became smooth, and the diameter diminished. They ascended almost as rapidly as with a ladder, and came down more quickly. When the ropes were of skin, or more perishable materials, the accidents must have been many and terrible. This feat required considerable muscular strength, and in the weak produced great physical exhaustion. They were swift of foot: when they possessed dogs, they ran nearly abreast of them; stimulated them by imitating the cry of the kangaroo, and were generally in at the death. Their former practice was to fire the brush-wood, in which the game had sought shelter, and which they speared when driven out by the flames. This practice was wasteful; besides exposing them to the charge of arson, when they were only following the customs of the chase.

Their ability to conceal themselves, assisted by their color, proved the quickness of their eye, and the agility of their limbs. A shooting party approached a native camp near the Clyde, and found they had just abandoned their half-cooked opossums and their spears: excepting a small group of wattle bushes, at the distance of ten yards, the ground was free of all but the lofty trees: the travellers immediately scoured this thicket, but on turning round they, in great astonishment, discovered that opossums and spears were all gone. It was the work of a moment, but traces of aborigines were unseen.[32]

Corrobories and Dances.—Their general assemblies were attended by great numbers: at these meetings they raised large fires, and continued dancing till midnight. They first began their movement round the pyre, with slow steps and soft tunes: as they advanced more quickly, their voices became more sharp and loud: they closed in upon the fire, and leaping close to the flame appeared in considerable peril. These movements they continued; shrieking and whooping until thoroughly exhausted. It is hardly possible for the imagination to picture a scene more infernal.

A gentleman, on guard during the black war, watched a small group in the gaol yard round their night fires. One of them raised his hands, and moved them slowly in a horizontal direction; and spreading, as if forming an imaginary fan or quarter-circle: he turned his head from side to side, raising one eye to the sky, where an eagle hawk was soaring. The action was accompanied by words, repeated with unusual emotion: at length they all rose up together, and uttered loud cries. The whole action had the appearance of an incantation.

The dances were various. The emu dance, was intended to represent the motions of that bird: the horse dance, necessarily modern, was performed by their trotting after each other, in a stooping posture, and holding the foremost by the loins: the thunder-and-lightning dance was merely stamping the ground. Their amusements were childish, and boisterous; but they applauded themselves with the invariable phrase, "narracoopa"—very good.

They felt the incumbrance of clothing, when exhibiting their feats: the permission to strip was embraced with great gladness. They gradually wrought themselves into the most extravagant excitement: their pleasure was in activity.

Language.—Their language varied: the four principal tribes had different dialects. When they met at Flinders', communication was difficult, yet their songs were the same. The language has never been reduced to rules, though vocabularies have been collected by Jorgenson, and others. The Rev. Mr. Dove furnished some additional information; but though the specimens establish an affinity in these dialects, the results are otherwise unimportant. The vowels greatly predominate: the r is sounded rough, and lingering. The words are frequently liquid and melodious. At Flinders' Island, the language was a mixture of several; broken English, New Holland, and Tasmanian words formed the currency of the island. In English, they dropped the d and s; thus sugar is tugar, and doctor is togata. As with other barbarians, who have enjoyed the benefit of our instructions, the epithets of licentiousness and insult were most current, and most aptly applied. Strangers to abstract ideas, their words expressed the most common objects, sensations, and wants. Their songs, which reminded LabillardiÈre of the music of the Arabs of Asia Minor, were exceedingly soft and plaintive; their voices not wanting in melody. They repeated the same note in soft and liquid syllables; descended to the second bar, and finished with a third above the key note. They sometimes varied, by suddenly running into the octave. Their strains were considered, by a Scotchman, a close resemblance to the Highland bagpipe. The stanzas they repeated again and again: none have been translated, for which, it is said, they are unfit.[33]

Intellect.—Their intellectual character is low; yet not so inferior as often described. They appeared stupid, when addressed on subjects which had no relation to their mode of life; but they were quick and cunning within their own sphere. A country not producing any animal capable of service; where nothing is sharper than stone; destitute of grain, and of fruits of any value, could be inhabited only by a wandering race. Their locomotion sharpened their powers of observation, without much increasing their ideas. In such circumstances, mind may degenerate, but it cannot advance. Some colonists were recently startled, by the appearance of a white family from the remote interior: they were found by a surveyor, who at first took them for savages; they had the animal expression of the eye, which is so common to uncivilised people.

The inferiority of the aboriginal mind is not to be denied. Intellectual power is both hereditary and improvable: the exaltation of a generation of men gives the infancy of the next a more forward starting point—what was individual is diffused, until it becomes characteristic of the race.

They were fond of imitation, and humour: they had their drolls and mountebanks: they were able to seize the peculiarities of individuals, and exhibit them with considerable force.[34]In several parts of the colony rude drawings have been discovered. Cattle, kangaroo, and dogs, were traced in charcoal. These attempts were exceedingly rude, and sometimes the artist was wholly unintelligible. At Belvoir Vale, the natives saw the Company's two carts, drawn by six oxen: they drew on bark the wheels, and the drivers with their whips. They were the first that ever passed that region.

Disposition.—They were cruel in their resentment; but not prone to violence: that they did not shorten the sufferings of animals taken for food, will hardly be considered by sportsmen decisive evidence against them. They were not ungrateful; especially for medical relief, which appeared a favor more unequivocal than presents of food.

A little boy, captured by a surveyor in 1828, when seen, sprang into the water, where he remained for a long time: at first, he was greatly alarmed, but soon became contented. He pointed to the lady of the house as a lubra. Entering a room, where a young lady was seated, he was told to kiss her: after long hesitation, he went up to her; laid his fingers gently on her cheek, then kissed them, and ran out!

Some captives, taken by Mr. Batman, were lodged in the gaol: they became strongly attached to the javelin man: they were treated by the gaoler with studious compassion, and they left the prison with tears!

The English were seen by some friendly natives to draught the toad fish, which is poison, and by which several have perished: the natives perceiving its preparation for food, endeavoured to shew, by gestures, that it was not to be eaten, and exhibited its effects by the semblance of death. Not very long after, a native was shewn a pistol, which a white man snapped at his own ear; and who, giving the unfortunate black one shotted, encouraged him to perform the same manoeuvre; he was thus murdered by his own hands. The natives were variable, from ignorance and distrust; probably from mental puerility: thus, their war whoop and defiance were soon succeeded by shouts of laughter.

Religious Ideas.—Their religious ideas were exceedingly meagre and uncertain. To Mr. Horton's enquiries, in 1821, they answered, "don't know," with broad grins: he was probably not understood. They appear to have had no religious rites, and few congenial ideas: they dreaded darkness, and feared to wander from their fires: they recognised a malignant spirit, and attributed strong emotions to the devil. The feats imputed to his agency, do not much differ from the sensations of night-mare: they believed him to be white—a notion supported by very substantial reasons, and suggested by their national experience: this idea must have been modern. They ascribed extraordinary convulsions to this malignant power, and to his influence they traced madness. Lord Monboddo might have contrived their account of the creation: they were formed with tails, and without knee-joints, by a benevolent being: another descended from heaven, and compassionating the sufferers, cut off the tail; and with grease softened the knees.

As to a future state, they expected to re-appear on an island in the Straits, and "to jump up white men." They anticipated in another life the full enjoyment of what they coveted in this. These scraps of theology, when not clearly European, are of doubtful origin: nothing seems certain, except that they dreaded mischief, from demons of darkness. Though they had no idols, they possessed some notions of statuary: it was sufficiently rude. They selected stones, about ten inches high, to represent absent friends; one of greater dimensions than common, Backhouse observed that they called Mother Brown.

Persons of sanguine minds are apt to attribute to them religious ideas, which they never possessed in their original state. The notion of a spirit, however, exists on the continent: in this, the Tasmanian black participated. Their ideas were extremely indefinite, and will not refute, or much support the belief, that the recognition of a Divinity is an universal tradition.

The Sick.—They suffered from several diseases, which were often fatal. Rheumatism and inflammations were cured by incisions: the loathsome eruption, called the native leprosy, they relieved by wallowing in ashes: the catarrh was very destructive, in certain seasons; a whole tribe on the Huon perished, except one woman. The native doctor said, that it was the devil that killed them: the woman described the process by feigned coughing. Their surgery was simple: they cut gashes with crystal. They treated a snake bite by boring the wound with a charred peg; stuffed it with fur, and then singed off the surplus to the level of the skin. They had faith in charms: thigh bones were especially useful, and were fastened on the head in a triangle: these relics were found very effectual. There were some who practised more than others, and therefore called doctors by the English: one of these feigned inspiration, and brandished his club. The sick were often deserted: their tribes could neither convey them, nor wait for their recovery. Food and a lenitive were left within their reach, and when able they followed their kinsmen; the alternative is the terrible risk of a wandering life. This custom was modified by circumstances, and sometimes by the relatives of the sufferer.

Like the natives of New South Wales, they called to each other, from a great distance, by the cooey; a word meaning "come to me." The Sydney blacks modulated this cry, with successive inflexions; the Tasmanian uttered it with less art. It is a sound of great compass. The English, in the bush, adopt it: the first syllable is prolonged; the second is raised to a higher key, and is sharp and abrupt.[35]

Funereal.—When they felt the approach of death, they were anxious to expire in the open air, and requested to be carried forth, even from the houses erected for their use. They believed that the spirit lingers in the body until sun-down. The French naturalist, LabillardiÈre, first noticed the burning of the dead. His account was ridiculed by the Quarterly Reviewers, who suspected cannibalism; but there are proofs innumerable, that this was a practice of affection. A group of blacks was watched, in 1829, while engaged in a funeral. A fire was made at the foot of a tree: a naked infant was carried in procession, with loud cries and lamentations; when the body was decomposed in the flames, the skull was taken up by a female,—probably the mother. The skull was long worn wrapt in kangaroo skin: Backhouse observed a couple who carried, alternately, this ghastly memento of their child: it is said, that they deposited several together, in final resting places.

They were jealous of spectators, and took offence if they approached their dead. Bodies not consumed, were placed in hollow trees, and closed in by underwood: decomposition being completed in these natural tombs, the survivors carried away the bones. Backhouse saw a striking funeral: a woman died; they built a pile of logs; laid the body thereon, and watched all night. At daybreak they applied the brand; then covering their faces with the ashes, which became furrowed with their tears, they sat down and lamented!

Just after the capture, an aborigine told his tribe that his death was at hand. He requested them to prepare the wood for his obsequies, while he leaned against a tree, directing their sad labors: he died that night! This is touching. A savage preparing for his funeral, with a calm consciousness of his fate—midst the ruins of his fading race!

In closing this mournful record, the reader is conscious that the history of the Tasmanian is but the experience of myriads. As an exhibition of Providence, it fills us with astonishment;—of human passions, with humiliation and sadness. The current of immigration will not be diverted by abstract questions of human rights, nor will states model their policy to preserve the barbarian; but the path of history is clear, and even self love, which may carefully sift evidence, must not turn from the lessons it offers.

The original occupation of this country necessarily involved most of the consequences which followed: was that occupation, then, just? The right of wandering hordes to engross vast regions—for ever to retain exclusive property in the soil, and which would feed millions where hundreds are scattered—can never be maintained. The laws of increase seem to suggest the right of migration: neither nations nor individuals are bound to tarry on one spot, and die. The assumption of sovereignty over a savage people is justified by necessity—that law, which gives to strength the control of weakness. It prevails everywhere: it may be either malignant or benevolent, but it is irresistible. The barbarian that cannot comprehend laws or treaties, must be governed by bribes, or by force. Thus, that the royal standard was planted, need occasion no remorse; but though the native had not exclusive natural rights, he possessed the attributes of man, and the government was bound to ascertain his wants, and protect his interest in the country. England, however, forgot the aborigina: she secured him no refuge—provided no interpreter to his feelings; his language was unknown, and his testimony inadmissable.

The legal recognition of rights in the soil, pertaining to the native inhabitants of colonised regions, is attended with some difficulty, and nowhere greater than among hunting tribes: their actual possession is only definable, by admitting the wide boundaries of the chase. The Parliamentary Committee, in a review of the whole question, did not recommend treaties with savages: the terms would be liable to disputes, and a difference of interpretation would occasion distrust and animosity. A middle course might, however, be open. The natives have an equitable lien on the land, for which rulers who transfer its occupation are bound to provide effectively and for ever. Instead of making the death of the native the release of private incumbrance; instead of making it the constant interest, and daily effort of the settler, to drive him away, it ought to have been the object of the crown to identify the life of the native with the welfare of the intruder. In granting possession of lands, the terms might have given the settler a claim for remission of price—or a pecuniary reward, payable out of the proceeds of land—for every native child he might rear, and every family he might induce to choose him as their protector. Thus the shepherd princes would have felt that their interests harmonised with the existence of a race, now regarded with dislike and jealousy. The native police at Port Phillip, suggested originally by Captain Maconochie, is an adoption of this principle: they are useful, and therefore pains have been taken to attach them. It is in vain to make laws, and to issue proclamations to shield the aborigines, unless they are identified with some local interest; and for this, no sacrifice of the land revenue could be considered too great.

A youth, called Van Diemen, was nine years old when found in the wood, and adopted by Col. Davey; he was subsequently taken to England by Mr. Kermode. He had been taught to read, and could repeat several chapters of the Bible. He was remarkably keen and intelligent. [On his return to this colony, he was cut off by consumption: at the post mortem it was found that his lungs were nearly gone.] Mr. Kermode endeavoured to prevail with Lord Bathurst, to authorise a grant of land; but Mr. Wilmot Horton, then Under Secretary, objected that there were millions of British subjects, whose claims were of the same kind, and that the precedent would be inconvenient. At the same time, men in chains were receiving grants of land, and emancipists as a matter of course; but the minister was opposed to admit a claim founded on birth, orphanage, and civilisation, lest it should multiply applicants. As if anything could have been more desirable to the philanthropist and politician: who can wonder that convicts despised that which the ministers of the crown repudiated? Excepting the often pernicious donatives, occasionally conferred, the aborigine was treated only as a foreigner, a slave, and an enemy. Thus the order of Lord Hobart stood alone: it was a record of intention, not a development of government. The ministry washed their hands, and averted their eyes; and threw upon the colony the responsibility of inevitable crime.[36]

But the government of England, not only left undefined the obligations it seemed to confess: it did more; it let loose on the shores of Tasmania its outcasts, its robbers, and its homicides; it released their bonds, and sent them forth to contest with the native for the animals of chase—to cross his path unwatched—to destroy him unpunished. Crimes of every kind were visited, save this. For a word, or a look, the felon was brought to the triangle; but when he shot down the native, and acquired distinction by his butcheries, justice became scrupulous: the laws were silent—religion and humanity were silent; and the fallen black, like the uprooted forest, was thought of as an encumbrance removed!

The state of the census was equally reprehensible: England not only forgot the prescriptions of nature, and formed communities of men, but the inevitable consequence to the natives was utterly neglected. It would be impossible even to hint the series of facts, which are authenticated to the writer, and which strangely blended ferocity and lust. The sealer, or stockman, who periled his life to accomplish the abduction of a native female, thought that danger but fairly avenged by the destruction of her relatives! Thus far the government was remiss and culpable. The crimes of individuals, without diminishing their guilt, must be traced to those general causes, which are subject to the disposal of statesmen and legislators.

But when the colony was planted, and the people spread abroad, it was the duty of the crown to protect its subjects of every class: it was the duty of its officers to arrest the arm of the black man, however great the provocation that raised it. They could not stand by to investigate causes; to divide between the two races the proportions of crime, while the innocent family was exposed to violence. It was better that the blacks should die, than that they should stain the settler's hearth with the blood of his children. In this view Colonel Arthur was right: his estimate of the native character was not impartial, for he beheld it when it only appeared detestable. He had no choice; he resolved to protect his countrymen.

It is common to speak of the guilt of this community; sometimes in variance with reason and truth. That guilt belongs only to the guilty; it cannot contaminate those who were helpless spectators, or involuntary agents. The doctrine of common responsibility, can only be applicable where all are actors, or one is the representative of all. The colonist may say, "I owe no reparation, for I have done the native no wrong; I never contemplated aiding in his destruction: I have seen it with horror." May the lesson of his sufferings become the shield of his race! Those who impute guilt to this colony, forget that its worst members are not stationary, and that many have borne away their guilt with their persons. That Being, who makes requisition for blood, will find it in the skirts of the murderer, and not on the land he disdained.

No man can witness the triumph of colonisation, when cities rise in the desert, and the wilderness blossoms as the rose, without being gladdened by the change; but the question which includes the fate of the aborigines,—What will become of them?—must check exultation. The black will invade rights he does not comprehend; seize on stragglers from those flocks, which have driven off his game; and wound the heel which yet ultimately treads him to the dust. Such is the process—it is carelessly remarked, that the native is seen less often; that it is long since he ventured to cross the last line, where death set up landmarks in the slain. At length the secret comes out: the tribe which welcomed the first settler with shouts and dancing, or at worst looked on with indifference, has ceased to live.

If the accounts of discoverers have been too flattering to the native character, they are explained rather than contradicted by the early colonists. These describe, with exultation, their new acquaintance, when writing to their friends: how peaceful, light-hearted, and obliging. They are charmed by their simplicity; they sleep among them without fear: but these notes soon change; and passing from censure to hatred, they speak of them as improvident, importunate, and instrusive; as rapacious and mischievous; then as treacherous and blood-thirsty—finally, as devils, and beasts of prey. Their appearance is offensive, their proximity obstructive: their presence renders everything insecure. Thus the muskets of the soldier, and of the bandit, are equally useful; they clear the land of a detested incubus.

It is not in the nature of civilisation to exalt the savage. Chilled by the immensity of the distance, he cannot be an equal: his relation to the white can only be that of an alien, or a slave. By the time astonishment subsides, the power of civilised men is understood, and their encroachment is felt. Fine houses garrison his country, enclosures restrict his chase, and alternately fill him with rage and sadness. He steals across the land he once held in sovereignty, and sighs for the freedom and fearlessness of his ancestors: he flies the track of his invaders, or surprises them with his vengeance;—a savage he was found, and a savage he perishes!

REMARKS ON THE CAUSES OF THE BURNING OF THE DEAD BY THE VAN DIEMENESE

[From Peron's Voyage, 1802.]

"On a wide swarth of verdure (at Maria Island), beneath some antique casuarinÆ, rose a cone, formed coarsely of the bark of trees inserted at bottom in the ground, and terminated at top by a large band of similar materials. Four long poles stuck in the earth, sustained and served for all the pieces of bark to lean against; these four poles seemed also calculated to ornament the building; for, instead of uniting all their upper extremity like the bark, and so forming a simple cone, they crossed each other about the middle, and then extended without the roof of the ornament. From this disposition resulted a sort of inverted tetracdic pyramid in the upper part opposed to the cone below. This contrast of form in the two parts of the building had a somewhat graceful effect, which was increased by the following additions:—With each of the four sides of the pyramid corresponded a wide strip of bark, the two bent extremities of which were at the bottom bound together by the large band, which, as I before noticed, united all the pieces of bark at the top of the cone: it follows that each of these four strips formed a sort of oval, least rounded at its inferior extremity, and widest and most rounded above; and as each of these ovals corresponded with one of the sides of the inverted pyramid, it is not difficult to conceive the elegance and picturesque effect of the plan.

"After looking some time at this monument, the use of which I vainly strove to fathom, I soon resolved to push my examination to a greater length: I removed several thick pieces of bark, and readily penetrated to the interior of the building. The whole of the upper part was vacant: at the bottom was a large flattened cone formed of a fine light grass, laid with much care in conuntric and very deep strata. With my doubt respecting the purpose of this, my curiosity increased. Eight small bent sticks crossing each other at the summit of this cone of verdure, served to preserve its form; each of these sticks had its two extremities fastened in the earth, and kept firm in their position by a large piece of flattened granite. So much care led me to expect some important discovery; nor was I mistaken. Scarcely had I raised the upper layers of turf, ere I perceived a large heap of white ashes, apparently collected together with nicety: thrusting my hand into the midst of these, I felt something hard, withdrawing which, I found it to be the jaw-bone of a man, and shreds of flesh still adhering to it. I shuddered with horror. Still, reflecting a little on all I had observed in the composition of the monument, I soon experienced sensations widely different from those I felt at first: the verdure, the flowers, the protecting trees, the deep bed of herbage which covered the ashes, all united to convince me that I had here discovered a tomb.... Succeeding ideas caused new reflections: I asked myself, 'What can have originated this custom of burning the dead? Separated from the rest of the world, and at its farthest extremity, these people cannot have adopted it from communication with others; it must irrefutably therefore be an idea of their own. But, in that case, wherefore prefer this mode of disposing of the dead? Can the preference be the effect of chance? Or does there exist some physical reason for it, dependent on the nature of things, or the particular social organization of these men?' ...

"This last measure is to burn it. Every thing concurs to facilitate this expedient; every thing in this is accordant with the mode of life of the inhabitant of these shores, as well as the circumstances in which he is placed. Fire, that powerful and terrible agent, their recourse on so many and such valuable occasions, cannot fail of exciting among these people some of those sentiments of veneration, consecrated with the majority of ancient nations by such numerous institutions and religious monuments. Without being deified, perhaps, as formerly it was, fire in these countries is regarded as something superior to the other works of nature; and these first ideas will probably have contributed not in a trivial degree to the determination of burning their dead. The requisite materials for the purpose were at hand: neither calculation nor labor were required for putting the plan in execution; no instrument was necessary; and it prevented taint and the consequent infection. But a few remains of bones would be here after the operation, to cover which the ashes of the fire would be sufficient. The whole ceremony required only a few hours; and prejudices tended to render it reputable and sacred. Thus then this practice of burning the dead does not appear to be the effect of mere chance: accordant with physical and local circumstances, these evidently were the origin of the custom."

[27] Despatch to Lord Goderich, 6th April, 1833.