ANTHROPOLOGY LIBRAJIY 
 
'tiii»,-u^i fOw;.-!^:^ 
 
S O ]\I E A C C O T N T 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WARS, EXTIRPATION, 
 HABITS, &c. 
 
 OP THE 
 
 N A T I V E TRIBES 
 
 OF 
 
 TASMANIA: 
 
 r 
 
 BY J. S. C ALDER, 
 
 HENN AND CO., PRINTERS, 12 &: 75 ELIZABETH STREET, 
 HOBART TOWN. 
 
 1875. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGY UBRAKY 
 
 :^W/7/ 
 
 ,' ,-> 
 
^ 
 
 TZ C 3 
 
 TO GEORGE WHITCOMB, ESQUIRE, 
 
 THE INTIMATE FBIENl. OF TASMANIA'S GREATEST BENEFACTOB 
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS ROBIXSON, ' 
 
 This volume, embodying an account of his services and 
 exploits, is inscribed bj 
 
 J. E. Calder. 
 
 Juiu\ 1S7'J. 
 
 308405 
 
I HAVE siiitl elsewliere that in prepariug the foreguiug narrn 
 tive I have had the great advautage of consulting the inimens 
 correspondence on the subject of the aborigines of Tasmania 
 which is deposited in the office of the Colonial Secretary ; and 
 take this opportunity to express my acknowledgements to suc^ 
 of the gentlemen of that department who kindly facilitated tii 
 tedious work of reference thereto, namely the chief of the offic 
 staff B. T. Solly Esquike, and his assistants Messieurs H. E 
 Smith and R. Newman. 
 
 J. E. C. 
 
Note. — This accotmt of th« Aboriginal Ishabitftnts of Tasmania, 
 B compounded of three papers Trritten by me, — one published in the 
 Augtraiamaih in 1872, a second in the Mtrcury, 1874, and the other iu 
 the Tatmanian Tribute, 1875. 
 
 J. E. Caldkr, 
 
 August, 1875. 
 

S O ]M E ACCOUNT 
 
 or THE 
 
 WAJXS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &c., 
 
 OF THE • 
 
 NATIVE TEIBES OF TASMANIA. 
 By J. E. Calder. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The most iuterestiug event in the history of Tasmania, after 
 its discovery, seems to me to be the extinction of its ancient 
 inhabitants ; and as the catises that have led thereto have been 
 only imjjerfectly told, I purpose throwing a little more light on 
 the subject than has, as yet, been made public, which I derive 
 from authentic official dociiments — not generally perused by 
 writers on the colonies — that I have had the rare advantage of 
 studying, and which contain, also, copious accounts of their wars 
 on the whites, and some information about their habits. 
 
 It is believed they were never a numerous people, and at no 
 period since the colonisation of the country, in 1803, do they seem 
 to have exceeded 7,000 — which may be safely taken as an outside 
 estimate of their numbers. 
 
 One individual of the race is now its only living representa- 
 tive, a very old woman, known amongst the colonists by the name 
 of Lalla, but whose native name is Truganini. 
 
 The tirst settlers after landing on these shores, lived 
 peaceably in their new possession for several months before the 
 two races came to blows ; and the hostility thus begun continued, 
 with n(j great intermission, until, and only ended with, the 
 removal of the last of the blacks to Wyba Luma, which was the 
 name they gave to their asylum on Flinders Island. 
 
 The first landing of the white pioneers of the cohmy took 
 place on the 1.3th of June, 1803 (Evans, Bent.). The party 
 located themselves on the shores of a little bay, which they called 
 Risdon, about three or four miles north-easterly of Hobar't Town, 
 and on the opposite side of the Derwent. It consisted of a faw 
 
t; WAHS, VXTHU'ATICN, IIAUITS, kc, 
 
 soldiers, civil ollicors, aiul convicts, all niulcr the command of 
 Capt. BoAvcii, of the Koyal Navy. They hutted thembelves at 
 Eisdoii, and remained in undisturbed possession of their encamp- 
 ment till the :5rd of May, 180-i, when it was that the first nncontrc 
 took place between the soldiers and tlie blacks. 
 
 A few months l)efore this last-named date, the first Governor 
 of Tasmania (Colonel Collins) arrived here from Port Phillip, 
 and fixed himself at HobartTown, but without removing Boweu's 
 little party from Risdon, wliich remained there under the 
 independent command of that oflicer, who was superseded by the 
 Governor five days after the skirmish, but not in consequence of 
 it, as he had nothing to do with it. 
 
 At 11 o'clock of the morning of the 3rd of May the shouts of 
 the natives were heard on the Risdon hills, as they drove a herd 
 of kangaroos before them. They were armed with waddies only 
 (short thick hunting clubs), and were accompanied by their 
 women and children — a certain proof that they had no hostile 
 intentions against anyone at the time, as it was their constant 
 riile to leave them behind when they went out to fight. An eye- 
 Avitness of the events of this deplorable day, of the name of 
 Wliite, who gave evidence on the 16th March, 1830, to a number 
 of gentlemen, styled the Aboriginal Committee, thus describes 
 the aijproach of the natives. He says ; — " I was hoeing new 
 ground near the creek. Saw 800 of the natives come down in a 
 cii-cular form, and a flock of kangaroos hemmed in between them. 
 There were men, women, and children. They looked at me with 
 all then- eyes. I went down to the creek and reported them to 
 some soldiers." It would seem that these savages were at this 
 time unacquainted of the occupation of their country by Euro- 
 peans, this witness sajdng, "Is sure tUey did not know there 
 was a Avhite man in the country wlien they came down to Risdon." 
 A quarrel soon took place but it is not (juite certain who began 
 it ; though, in balancing the evidence, the blacks seem to have 
 been the aggressors. Captain Bowen was just then absent, on a 
 visit to Slopen Island, and the troops were, at the moment, under 
 the command of Lieutenant jMoore. 
 
 The testimony of several Avitnesses was taken by the committee 
 touching this unhai^ijy event, which was generally confirmatory 
 of Wliite's, except that he — who was the only one actually present 
 at the moment — declared, in opposition to all the rest, that the 
 soldiers began the figlit that took place, and not the blacks. 
 
 The following extract from the committee's report of the 19th 
 March, 1830, thus sums up tlie evidence they took on tliis 
 head :— " Tin; coiuniittee have s(mie dilliculty in deciding whether 
 it is to be considered us originating iu au aggression by the 
 
• OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA. 7 
 
 natives, calling forth measures of self-defence, or in an attack 
 upon tiiem commenced by the settlers and military, under an 
 impression that an attempt was about to be made on their positum, 
 by the unusually augmented numbers of the natives. It appears 
 unquestionable that' a person named Burke, whose habitation 
 was considerably advanced beyond the rest, was driven from it 
 by the natives, whose number was estimated at upwards of 500 
 (that is, by some of the witnesses), and much violence was 
 threatened "by them towards this man, his wife, and dwelling. . 
 But whatever may have been the actual course of previous 
 events, it is indisputable that a most lamentable encounter did at 
 this time take place, in which the numbers of slain, men, womeh, 
 and children have been estimated as high as 50 ; although the 
 committee, from the experience they have had in the coiirse of 
 this enquiry of the facility with which numbers are magnified, as 
 well as from other statements contradictory of the above, are 
 induced to hope that the estimate is greatly overrated." One of 
 the witnesses, the Eev. Mr. Knopwood, Avho was in the colony at 
 the time, said he " does not know how many natives were killed, 
 but supposes five or six." 
 
 Another battle is said to have been fought some time alter on 
 the ground where the Hobart Town Hospital now stands, in 
 which artillery is supposed to have been used against the blacks. 
 But this oft-told tale seems to rest on no better proof than that a 
 little grape-shot was afterwards found, and some skeletons disin- 
 terred, at this place. Mr. Knopwood disposes of this fable in 
 his evidence thus :— " There were no natives killed upon the hos- 
 pital hill at Hobart Town. Some shot and skeletons were found 
 there some years after the settlement was formed— the shot were 
 the remains of stores lu-ought from Port Phillip, and the bones 
 those of persons who arrived from India, died, and were buried 
 
 there." 
 
 Numerous fictitious fights are recorded as having taken place 
 in the early times of the colony, and Avhich, though still repeated 
 by lovers of the marvellous and horrible, were found to be utterly 
 false on investigation. Thus, some time in 1828, a party of 
 military and police, who were sent in pursuit of the blacks, 
 instead of acting against them, lay idly by in the bush, and on 
 returning to their station reported a success over the enemy, 
 having killed seven of them, they said ; which rumour soon mag- 
 nified into, fii-st, 17, then 40, 50, 70. and finally 100 (as stated in 
 Mr. Gilbert Eobertson's evidence, 3rd March, 1830). They sur- 
 prised them, they said, in a ravine, a perfect eid de mc, from 
 which there was no escaping. Another gentleman, also a Mr. 
 Robertson— who, like his namesake, discredited the story, pro- 
 
S WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, A'C, 
 
 cccded next day to the field of slanglitor, aloug with oue of the 
 heroes of the fight, a ccjrpond of the 40th lieginieut ; but, ou 
 rcacliing the ravine, tlie only vietims of their fury were found to 
 be three dead dog.s. The 'soldier then said— "' To tell you tlie 
 truth, we did not kill any of them ; we had been out a long time, 
 and had done nothing, and said it in bravado."— (Evidence, 4tli 
 Mareli, IHMO. ) Tliese two examjdes of a hundred sueh battles 
 will in-obably l)e enough. 
 
 That many hostile collisions occurred between the two races 
 during the 80 years that succeeded the first colonisation of the 
 country is true enough ; luit I know of no trustworthy record of 
 more than one, two, three, or at most four persons being killed 
 m any one encounter. The warfare, though pretty continuous, 
 was rather a petty affair, with grossly exaggerated details— some- 
 thuig like the story of the hundred dead men, reduced, on 
 inquiry, to three dead dogs. 
 
 The gradual decrease and final extinction of the ancient inha- 
 bitants of Tasmania, which is now so very nearly accomplished, 
 is assignable to very diflerent causes tlian the hostility of the 
 whites, to which it has Ijeeu so much the fashion to ascribe it ; 
 for, up to the time of their- voluntary surrender to the local 
 Government, they not only maintained 'their ground everywhere 
 (the towns excepted), but liad by tar the best of the fight. 'Tribal 
 dissensions, causing mutual destruction (tor such were their 
 jealousies and hatreds, that they fought one another all the time 
 they were thrashing the whites), contributed to their decrease in 
 some degree, and the justly provoked hostility of the settlers 
 aided the progress of their decay, but only in minor manner ; 
 for, beyond all doul)t, they were no match for the blacks in bush 
 fighting, either in defensive or offensive operations. The settler 
 and his homestead were generally, l)ut not always successfullv, 
 surprised by his subtle enemy ;" and in pursuit (if the savages 
 were beaten ofi), the less active Em-opeau, stood about the same 
 chance of coming up witli him, as the slow hound would have in 
 a deer chase ; and as far as I can learn from a pretty attentive 
 perusal of the massive correspondence ou the subject 'of the long 
 quarrel between the tw(^ races, that is d(^posited in the office of 
 tlie Colonial Secretary, filling nineteen awful volumes of manu- 
 script papers, aggressiveness was almost always on the side of 
 the l)lack8 ; and in this uneciual contest tlie miisket of the. Eng- 
 lishman was far less deadly tluin the spear of the savage, at least 
 five of the former dying for oue of the latter. Thus, in the firsl 
 and largest volume of the series above spoken of, which treats 
 solely of these encounters, we learn that in the five years preced- 
 ing the close of 1831, !)9 inquests were held ou sucirof tlie whit(> 
 
OP THE nAiVE tribes OP TASMANIA. 9 
 
 people, wliose bodies could be foiiud after death, against 19 
 blacks, killed in tliese farm fights ; and it is further recorded, 
 that in the same period 69 Europeans were wounded against one, 
 or at most two, of the other race ; some of the latter were also 
 taken. That many others on 1)oth sides were killed in the same 
 jjeriod whose deaths are unreported, is very certain ; and equally 
 certain is it, or at least highly probable, that in these unre- 
 corded encounters our countrymen got the worst of it, as they 
 generally did. I have here to remark that the number of inquests 
 actually held must have been much greater than what I have 
 stated, as the coroners of thi'ee principal districts were unable to 
 furnisli the returns required by the Government, doubtless from 
 the defective state of their office records. I say nothing of the 
 ojierations of certain bauds of whites, called "roving parties," 
 one of which, at least, did kill several of them. 
 
 If it had been jDossible to bring the savage into fair and open 
 fight, with something like equal numbers, all this woiild have 
 been reversed, of course. But the black assailant was far too 
 acute and crafty an enemy to be betrayed into this style of con- 
 test, and never fought till he knew he had his opponents at a 
 disadvantage to themselves. He waited and watched for his 
 opijortunity for hours, and often for days, for he knew nothing 
 of the value of time, and when the proper moment arrived he 
 attacked the solitary hut of the stock-keeper with irresistible 
 numbers, or the hapless traveller whom he met in the bush, 
 taking life generally singly, but often ; the largest number that 
 I read of his destroying on any one occasion being four persons. 
 
 In the assaults on the dwellings of his enemy he contrived 
 his attacks so cleverly as to insure success at least five times in 
 six, and if forced to abandon his enterprise, Ms retreat, with few 
 exceptions, was a bloodless one. 
 
 The natives so managed their advance on the point of attack 
 as not to be seen until they were almost close to the dwelling of 
 their victim. They distinguished between a house and a hut, and 
 seldom approached the former, for they quite understood that 
 there was some difference between the most imprudent stock- 
 keeper, and his more thoughtful employer. They had several 
 instances of this, and profited by their experience. There was 
 no want of iDluck in the former, but a great absence of vigilance ; 
 and iintil these barbarians were reduced to a mere remnant by 
 disease and strife, they never attacked except in parties of 20, 50, 
 or 100, or even greater numbers. Their mode of assaulting a 
 dwelling Avhen there were several inmates at home, which they 
 knew by previous watching, was to divide into small gangs of 
 five, ten, or more, each concealing itself as effectually as the 
 
10 WARS, EXTIUPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 clansmen of Roderick Dhu, their approach being so quiet, as to 
 create no suspicion of their presence, to whicli tlie woody and 
 uneven nature of the country is eminently favourable. Then one 
 of these parties, whicli was prepared for instant retreat, made its 
 presence known, either by setting tire to some shed or bush fence, 
 or by sending a rtiglit of spears in at the window, sliouting their 
 well known war-whoop at the same time. This newer failed of 
 bringing out the occupants, who, seeing the authors of the out- 
 rage, now at a safe distance, but in an attitude of defiance, 
 incautiously pursued them ; and no exi^erience of the artifices of 
 the savage, ever taught the assailed a lesson not to continue this 
 insane practice. The blacks then retreated just as quickly as the 
 others advanced, keeping out of gunshot and defying them, 
 generally in good English, to come on ; for it was always found 
 that some of nearly every tribe spoke our language well, as will 
 be presently explained. Having decoyed their pursuers to a safe 
 distance into the woods, and generally with rising ground 
 between them and the hut, the others sprang from their cover, 
 and rushing the jDlace, i^luudered it of its contents, often finishing 
 their work by burning it to its foundations ; first, however, 
 killing, or leaving for dead, any unfortunate persons — mostly a 
 mother and her childi-en — who chanced to be left behind. They 
 then lied with theii- booty, reuniting with the decoy j)arty at some 
 distant point. 
 
 In their first systematised assaults, which seem to have com- 
 menced about 1824, or a little earlier, their jirincipal object was 
 murder ; but in later times, i^lunder was the chief motive of the 
 savage in attacking the white ; and murder, which was often 
 suijeradded, only a secondary idea. They took everything that 
 was useful, and often what was no use at all to them ; and more 
 than once afterwards when their encampments were surprised, 
 perhaps 50 miles from any settlement, when instant flight was 
 necessary, they left articles behind that they could not even have 
 known the nature of, such, for example, as clocks, work-boxes, 
 «S:c., of which there are still extant some curious inventories. 
 
 But provisions of all sorts, and, above all, blankets, fii-earms 
 and ammunition, were the articles they prized most ; of which 
 latter they eventually suri-endered many stand to tlie Goverment 
 — pistols, muskets, fowling-jjieces, powder and ball, all perfectly 
 clean and di-y, and in excellent order. Of these latter it was 
 found that they knew not only the use, but were practised in 
 using them ; but there is no instance of their bringing them into 
 the field, th')ngh they afterwards assured their principal captor 
 and future "protector," Mi-, George Augustus Rubinson, they 
 meant to have done so, but to the last they seem to have preferred 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA. 11 
 
 their own arms iu both fight and chase — namely, the spear and 
 waddy. 
 
 Of firearms they had learned the use from both men and 
 women of their own race, who, having been taken in early 
 infancy by the settlers, were bronght np in their own families, 
 mostly as their own childi-en ; but they invariably left them when 
 they grew up, and rejoined their own people, just like wood- 
 pigeons, whose natural instincts can never be repressed. To 
 these flights the youths were generally induced by the girls 
 of their own race, with whom alone they could intermarry, 
 and Avho had, therefore, no difficulty in enticing them into the 
 woods. The natural propensity of the domesticated black females 
 to be with their own people, operated similarly on them, and 
 they became the instructors, in mischief at least, of the wild 
 natives, and strangely enough, were foremost in every aggression 
 on the whites, by whom, with hardly an exception, they had been 
 treated with unvarying kindness, but they were probably thrust 
 to the front by the others ; and, possessed, as the whole race was, 
 of most excellent memories, they never lost the language of our 
 country. 
 
 Women, too, who had been either forcibly removed from 
 their tribes, or purchased of their husbands cr fathers, by a 
 lawless handful of ruffians called sealers, sometimes escaped from 
 their merciless masters, and after years of separation, rejoined 
 their tribes, and became the most hostile of the enemies of all 
 who belonged to the race of their persecutors ; and notwith- 
 standing the ancient custom of the blacks, not to permit the 
 women to take any part in active war, these individuals could not 
 be restrained from joining in, and sometimes leading the attack. 
 One of these persons, called the Amazon by her captor Robinson, 
 (a woman of one of the East Coast tribes whose real name was 
 Walyer or Taierenore) planned and executed nearly every out- 
 rage that was committed in the districts bordering on the North 
 and North-western coast. In the days of their decay, she col- 
 lected the poor remnants of several tribes into one hostile band, 
 of whom she was the leader and chieftainess ; and true to the 
 natural instincts of the savage, avenged the many indignities she 
 had suffered at the hands of a sealer, on every one she fell 
 in with who bore his complexion, telling Robinson that she 
 would kill the whole race " as soon as she would crush a black 
 snake." 
 
 But in their attacks on the widely separated dwellings of the 
 stock-keepers, they were not always successful ; and several 
 instances are recorded of their defeat, and once by the intrepidity 
 of a woman, who held her little fortress for six hours against 
 
12 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITB, SiC, 
 
 eiglit of tliem (part of a baud of 20). The accouut of tliis most 
 gallnnt act is coutaiutul in an official report of Captain Moriarty, 
 of the R.N., of the 25th of August, 1831. 
 
 Knowing by previous ■\Viitching that this woman — a Mrs. 
 Dalryrmple Briggs — and two female childi-en, were the only 
 occupants of her hut, they abandoned their usual stratagem in 
 approaching it, and advanced undisguisedly to the door. Hear- 
 ing " some little noise outside," says the report, -'she sent the 
 eldest child to see what was the matter, and hearing her shriek, 
 went out herself with a musket. On reaching the door, she found 
 the poor child had been speared. The spear entered close uj) 
 in the inner part of the thigh, and had b"en driven in so far as to 
 create a momentary difficulty in securing the child." The 
 savages came on oi masse, and so quickly, that she had scarcely 
 time to close and barricade the doors and windows before they 
 closed around her dwelling. 
 
 Her only means of defence was her musket and a few charges 
 of duck-shot ; and their only means of entry, the chimney, which 
 in all bush huts are low, and so large, that two or three persons 
 could jumi) down them at once. This being the Aveak point, our 
 heroine took post here, and defied all their eftbrts to enter, firing 
 her duck-shot at them, whenever they gave her a chance. They 
 next tried to pull the chimney down ; but she managed to give 
 one of them such a dose of small lead that they desisted from the 
 attempt. Baffled and repulsed they retired for aboitt an hoiu% 
 which time they employed in making a number of faggots, and 
 then returned to the attack, to burn her ov.t, as they could not 
 force an entrance. They threw these blazing brands on the roof, 
 to windward, says the report, but she contrived to shake them 
 all off before ignition took jilace — how, is not stated. Her 
 maternal affections and duties, qiiite mastering her natural fears, 
 she actually maintained her jjost against them, for the time I 
 have stated, when an armed and mounted party suddenly gallop- 
 ing up, the siege was raised. 
 
 The child that was speared was enticed outside by the],blacks, 
 (many of whom were famous mimics), imitating the cries of 
 poultry when alarmed by hawks, &c. Moriarty's report also 
 mentions, that these men had on the same day, attacked the 
 hut of a person named Ciibitt, and speared him ; and further that 
 the natives had assailed and badly wounded him eight times 
 before ; but another report from a difi'erent quarter state's that 
 he had always been very active against them ; and as forgiveness 
 is not amongst the attributes of the savage, nor forgetfulness 
 one of his defects, they never appeared in his neighbourhood 
 without letting him know that they still hold hiui in remembrance. 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBEB OV TASMANIA, 13 
 
 Tlie craft of the savage aud his uniform disposition to 
 treachery, in his early intercourse with the settlers, are very 
 faithfully described in the report of the Aboriginal Committee, 
 19th March, 1830. This committee consisted of some of the best 
 informed and most intelligent men of the colonies of New Soxith 
 Wales aud Tasmania, of whom Archdeacon Broughton, the im- 
 mediate superior of the church of both colonies, was chairman. 
 From this report I will here make an extract : — 
 
 " It is manifestly shown that an intercourse -with them on 
 part of the insulated and unprotected individuals or families has 
 never been perfectly secure. Although they might receive with 
 apparent favour and confidence such jjersons as landed from time 
 to time on various parts of the coast, or fell in with them in 
 remote situations, yet no sooner was the store of presents ex- 
 hausted, or the interview from other causes concluded, than there 
 was a risk of the natives making an attack upon the very persons 
 from whom they had the instant before been receiving kindness, 
 and against whom they had, up to that moment, suftered no 
 indication of hostility to betray itself. . . . It is within the 
 knowledge of many members of the committee, and has been 
 confirmed by other statements, that even at this period " (they 
 are speaking of the early times of the colony) " there was, beyond 
 all doubt, in the disposition of the aborigines a lurking spirit of 
 cruelty and mischievous craft, as upon very many occasions, and 
 even on their retirement from hoTises, where they had been kindly 
 received and entertained, they have been known to put to death 
 with the utmost wantonness and inhumanity stock and hut 
 keepers whom they fell in with in retired stations, at a distance 
 from population, and whom there is every reason to believe had 
 never given them the slightest provocation." 
 
 This general friendly disposition of the colonists towards 
 them was almost invariably repaid by acts of savage violence ; 
 and they robbed and murdered whenever it was safe to do so. 
 But notwithstanding all this, a kindly intercourse was still main- 
 tained with them, and they came to the settlers' houses and 
 departed at will, withotit molestation of any kind ; until Colonel 
 Arthiir, in 1825, wishing to terrify them by such an example as 
 would show them they should not continue their murderous 
 practices with impunity, caused some of the ringleaders and 
 actual perpetrators of a shocking murder at Grindstone Bay, of 
 a person named William Hollyoak, to be apprehended and brought 
 to justice. The offence was proved by some men who escaped from 
 the assault of the blacks, and the murderers were hanged for it ; 
 " after this," says the committee's report, " they came no more 
 to the usual places of resort," and it may be added that they were 
 
lA WAHS, EXTIUrATION, UABITS, Arc, 
 
 never more known to visit the house of the settler, or the hut of 
 the stock-keeper except as enemies. 
 
 Many of the tribes were united by relationship or other ties, 
 and Colonel Arthur was soon made to understand that the example 
 of these executions had quite the opposite effect to what he 
 expected, for the aggressiveness of the enemy increased ten-fold 
 from the time when they took jjlace. 
 
 I have spoken before of the conduct of a fcAv persons called 
 sealers, as ministering to the bad feeling that so long prevailed 
 amongst the natives towards the other race, and I will here say 
 something about them. 
 
 These men dwelt on some of the islands in Bass's Straits, 
 and the very worst accounts are given of them by the official 
 protector of the blacks, Mr. G. A. Eobinson ; and though his 
 statements are very generally confirmed by the prior evidence of 
 some of the witnesses of the Aboriginal Committee, they are not 
 quite so in every particular. Two of these gentlemen, who 
 knew the sealers quite as well as he did, though they loudly 
 denounced the brutality of some of them, accompany their testi- 
 mony, as to their original possession of the native women, with 
 some slightly palliative circumstances, which he, in his hatred 
 of these men, either overlooked, or was ignorant of. 
 
 From the earliest times of the occupation of the country, a 
 horde of reprobates lived on these islands, quite beyond'the 
 range of human observation, and equally beyond the controlling 
 power of the Government. They consisted mostly of a mixed 
 class of runaway convicts, of bail character and ilisposition, and 
 of runaway sailors as profligate as themselves. They lived by 
 collecting the beautiful skins of the seal, which formerly fre- 
 quented the off-l.^-ing rocks of these islands in vast numbers, and 
 are still to be found there, but so gi-eatly thinned are they, and 
 so shy that they are no longer sought after, or not much. These 
 persons often resorted to the coasts of the main land to obtain 
 kangaroo skins, in which they also traded ; and if all that Robin- 
 son says of them is quite true, they never failed alitacking the 
 native tribes who frequented these parts, whenever and wherever 
 they met them, carrying off their women and female children into 
 slavery of the worst description, and shooting the men if they 
 dared to interpose ; and he gives such instances of their after 
 cruelties to their captives as can hardly be read with patience. 
 That there was great truth in what he said on this subject is 
 intli8putal)le, for he was quite fortified by the pre\-ious evidence 
 of Captains Kelly and Hobbs,whohad had accidentally, so to speak, 
 much intercourse with these men in their own various coasting 
 enterprise* of discovery, survey, or Avhuliug. But the protector 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA. 15 
 
 aliirks the question of this traffic in women, which the' others, who 
 hated these men quite as much as him, impute chiefly to the 
 native men, who first bartered their women for the carcass of the 
 seal or for hunting dogs. These unfortunate women became so 
 useful to their masters, that when they could not get enough of 
 them by purchase they kidnapped them, but made no active war 
 on the blacks until the latter rose against them in a body and 
 killed four of them, '• since which time," says Robinson, " the 
 sealers have shot the natives whenever they have met with them." 
 (Appendix, Report 2ith Oct., 1830,) These kidnaijpings con- 
 tributed largely to the decay of two or three tribes less by their 
 onslaughts on the men than the seizure of the women ; and the 
 protector, in one of his many rejiorts on the condition of the 
 natives, gives the names (mostly uupronouncable ones) of every 
 individual then remaining of two of the tribes, who lived within 
 reach of these fellows, viz.. 74, of whom only three were females ; 
 and two of these three did not belong properly to either tribe, 
 being only visitors. 
 
 " This vast disproportion of the sexes," he says, in his report, 
 20th Nov., 1830, "has been occasioned principally by the sealers, 
 who have stolen their women and transported them to the 
 different islands." And in a marginal note against this passage, 
 he says, " there are at the present time not less than 50 aborigi- 
 nal females kept in slavery on the different islands in Banks' and 
 Bass's Straits. (Banks' Strait separates the islands he refers to 
 from the main land of Tasmania). But many of these women 
 were, no doubt, obtained by purchase in former years, a jjractice 
 which in those days Avas not confined to them, but was universal. 
 But this is a matter that Robinson does not touch on. 
 
 To recaj)ture these women and take them under his own pro- 
 tection was always a pet scheme of his, and the means by which 
 he effected it were not always very straightforward or always 
 approved by the Governiiaent he served, who made him restore 
 some of them, who, if they were slaves, as he constantly repre- 
 sents them, were the mothers of the sealers' children. No doubt 
 the conduct of these men, like that of other slave-dealers, was 
 very bad, but he seems to have painted it as disadvantageously 
 as he could. Captain Kelly— no friend of the sealer — states that 
 many of the women preferred living on the islands rather than 
 return to their own jieople, by whom it is well known they were 
 often very badly treated. " The women," Kelly says, in his 
 evidence, " were not always unwilling to go. and after a time 
 preferred stopping on the islands of the straits." He then g'lYQ'i 
 such a fearful account of the torments some of them enduiea^ 
 especialljy from one miscreant named Harrington, that if they 
 
16 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABIT3, &C., 
 
 preferreil the treattneufc he describes, to what they underwent 
 from their own husbands, their condition at all times must have 
 been a truly unhappy one. 
 
 I learned from Archdeacon Reibey, who visited the straits 
 about eight years ago, that there were then five of these women 
 living on the islands, all very old ; but I have since heard that 
 all are dead. 
 
 These sealers were never numerous. The protector of the 
 aborigines, in one of his reports, gives the names of all of them 
 living, 29 persons. Their descendants at this day, who are 
 called " the half-castes of the straits " (being the blood of the 
 two races), do not exceed 100 jjersous. 
 
 To put down such an enemy as the aboriginal of Tasmania, 
 who, I have shown, was neither to be easily met with in fight nor 
 overtaken in pursuit, in both of which he so ;often proved himself 
 the superior man, was obviously a most difficult task ; and either 
 his never-ceasing surprises of the settlers must be quietly borne 
 with, or his race must be removed. For a long time the Govern- 
 ment retaliated with idle proclamations only, published in the 
 official Oazette with as much seriousness as if it really believed 
 this captivating journal reached the hands of these barbarians, 
 and were of course only so many contributions to the waste-paper 
 basket of the colony. One of these silly advertisements defined 
 the limits of the districts they were to live in, and directed them 
 in mandatory terms never more to pass the lines described in 
 this terrible order which could not ITe conveyed to them, nor 
 understood if it were. Abandoning at last this absurd mode of 
 procedure which lasted much too long, while the blacks were 
 devastating the homes of the colonists, almost with impunity,^ 
 Colonel Arthur took more active measures for the protection of 
 the people, and equipped several " roving parties." as they were 
 called, to beat up the natives' encampments, and if possible to 
 convey to the enemy a message of peace ; and as these parties 
 were mostly accompanied by captive blacks, half tamed into 
 subordination, partial intercourse with some of the tribes took 
 place, and beyond doubt it somehow became known to them that 
 the wish of the Governor was to protect eqiially both races, 
 for when Robinson afterwards got a footing amongst them, he 
 not only found that they were well aware that the desire of 
 the whites was for peace, but that the expiring tribes, who were 
 then dying off ulmost as fast as they could lie down, wore not 
 unwilling to " come in," as he calls it, /.f;., to surrender. The 
 dissemination of this desire, in whatever way it reached them, 
 was the principal good done by the roving parties— that is, if it 
 Avere effected by them, as it is said to hilve been ; though con- 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBE« OP TASMANIA. 17 
 
 sidering what was the practical action of some of them, I should 
 think they did more to increase than allay enmity, and it is more 
 likely they heard it from the civilised youth of their own race, 
 who so often eloped from the guardianship of the settler. — But 
 the tribes still remained as intractable as ever, until a man who 
 spoke their own language, and was master of their various dialects 
 (of which Kobinsou says there were six), went boldly amongst 
 them, accompanied by ten or a dozen of their own countryrnen, 
 whom he had perfectly subdued to his will, and conciliated into 
 aftection for his person, and in about five years of most unremit- 
 ting exertion and toil brought in the whole of them (except about 
 four) who, to the great astonishment of every one but himself, 
 were found not to number more than 250. The causes of this 
 declension I shall explain in their proper place, taking Robinson 
 for my authority. In his various reports he always maintained 
 that this people was nothing but a remnant of the six or eight 
 thousand who were living in 1804, and his reports of their 
 strength he had from the most accurate sources, viz., the natives 
 themselves (who, though they had no words to express numbers 
 higher than four, could repeat the names of the individuals of 
 the tribes, and thus he learned their real force), which he never 
 rated eigher than 700— that is, after 1830 ; and year after year his 
 estimates decreased as they died out, and he then reports 500, and 
 finally 300 or 400, and when he got the last of them they had sunk 
 to the number given above, that is — to about 250. _ ..^ 
 
 I hope I shall not be charged with digressing in saying a 
 little about these roving parties, some of whom appear to have 
 wholly neglected their duty, while others quite over-did it. One 
 leader is charged with acting as a land agent whilst in the field, 
 instead of following the blacks — that is, looking up suitable spots 
 for emigi'ants to settle on for a ijrivate compensation ; another 
 with gross improprieties with the half-civilised women of the 
 blacks who accompanied him as trackers and interpreters ; others, 
 with shooting them when they came on the wild tribes — an odd 
 way of delivering a pacific message ; but as some of these charges 
 rest on the report of persons evidently unfriendly to them, they 
 must be read with caution. But when one of these leaders, who 
 was the most active and trusted of the whole of them, tells such 
 a story as the folloAving of himself in an official report to the 
 Government, we have no difficulty in believing that they were 
 not a well-selected set of men for the delicate mission they were 
 entrusted with. He says : — 
 
 "On Thursday, the 1st inst. {i.e., September, 1829), I 
 started again in pursuit of the aboriginies, who have been com- 
 mitting so many oixtrages in this district. On "Wednesdaj^ I fell 
 
JL8 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, kc, 
 
 in Avith their tracks." TbcHC he followed. " We proceeded," he 
 coutiuiies, " iu the same direction until we saw some amoke at a 
 distance. I immediately ordered the men to lie down, and could 
 hear the natives conversing? distinctly. We then crejit into a 
 thick scrub, and remained there nntil after sunset. . . . Made 
 towards them with the greatest caution. At 11 o'clock p.m. we 
 arrived within 21 paces of them. The men were drawn up on the 
 right by my orders, intending to rush upon them before they 
 could rise from the ground ; hoping I should not be under the 
 necessity of tiring upon them ; but unfortunately, as the last man 
 was coming up, he struck his musket against that of another, 
 which immediataly alarmed their dogs, about 40. They came at 
 us directly. The natives arose from the ground, and were iu the 
 act of running away into a thick scrub when I ordered the men 
 to fire upon them, which was done, and a rush by the party 
 immediately followed. We only captured that night one woman 
 and a male child, about two years old. The party were in search 
 of them the remainder of the night, but without success. Next 
 morning we found one man very badly wounded in the ankles 
 and knees. Shortly after we found another ; ten buck shot had 
 entered his body— the man was alive, but very bad. There were 
 a great number of traces of blood in various directions, and I learnt 
 from them we took that 10 men were Avounded in the body, who 
 they gave us to understand were dead or would die, and two 
 women in the same state had crawled away, besides a number 
 
 that were shot in the legs On Friday morning we left 
 
 the place for my farm, with the two men, woman and child, but 
 found it quite impossible that the two former could walk, and 
 after trying them by every means in my power for some time 
 found I could not get them oii ; I was obliged therefore to shoot 
 them." The number of buck shot that he poured in amongst 
 the sleeping tribe, he says, was, 328. 
 
 He proceeds to say that he took the unfortunate mother's 
 cliild from her directly he reached home, sending the mother, 
 herself, to Campbell Town Gaol, of the infant, he says, " I have 
 kept the child, if His Excellency has no ol)jections, I intend to 
 rear it ; " and coolly adds in reference to the assault bn tlie tribe. 
 " the whole of the men behaved exceeding well on this occasion. " 
 (Report, 7th September, 1829.) 
 
 At a distance of little more than a dozen miles from Hobart 
 Town is a hu-ge island called Bruuy, containing much about one 
 hundi'ed thousand acres, which was formerly inhabited by a con- 
 siderable tribe of natives. In past years, these people had often 
 committed the usual outrages of the Tasmanian savage on his 
 white neighbour. But this ill-feeling had partly died out through 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 19 
 
 the intercourse tliey had had with large parties of whalers, stationed 
 for long periods of every year in some of the bays of the island, 
 where they prosecuted, what was then termed the Bay Fishery. 
 These rough fellows, it is well known, cultivated an intimacy with 
 the too facile females of the blacks, conciliating some of the men 
 with presents of food &c., though others were greatly displeased 
 at this intimacy, and indignantly rejected their false friendship • 
 but not so the majority of them. Propriety of demeanour was 
 not uniformly amongst the virtues of the female savage, and very 
 simple acts of good nature propitiated and secured the connivance 
 of, at least, some of the other sex. But -all this, though known 
 well enough afterwards, was very little understood at the time. 
 Here, therefore, Colonel Arthur, some time in 1828, formed an 
 asylum for the reception and conciliation of captured blacks 
 who came in slowly enough, and by ones and twos only. From 
 motives of policy, and possibly of humanity, they were well 
 treated— that is, they were clothed, fed, and hutted, as he meant 
 to set them free again, that they might rejoin their own tribes, 
 and spread amongst them reports of his kindness, and of the 
 friendly disposition of the Government towards them. This he 
 afterwards did, as far as he could ; and I quite believe that some 
 good resulted from it, in smoothing the way to their ultimate sur- 
 render to Eobinson. As for this being actuated by any feeling of 
 compassion towards them, or disposition for " the amelioration of 
 this unhappy race," of which he made such a fuss in his procla- 
 mations, letters, and official memoranda, on this subject, I don't 
 believe a syllable pf them, or that he cared a rap about them, 
 or what became of them, so long as he could get them into 
 his hands, and thus remove the reproach of their existence 
 at large from the history of his Government. For example 
 sake only, he hanged altogether four of these savages, two 
 at one time and two at another ; but when he had the 
 opportunity of punishing any of the very few murderers 
 of this people, he never, as far as I can discover, even 
 censured the authors of this Avickedness, his public manifestoes 
 breathing vengeance against any and every body who wantonly 
 molested the blacks notwithstanding, which, I believe, they were 
 put forth for after-effect only. Beyond doubt there were 
 instances of the murder of these people which went unpunished 
 and iinceusured. Justice metaphorically represented as blind, 
 was literally so in these cases, and no one stepped forth to avenge 
 the criminality of the white against his sable brother. The cruel 
 a,ct of shooting the two disabled and dying savages above 
 recorded, is a case in point. Far from even censuring the author 
 of this inhuman outrage, he never lost his confidence, but for 
 
20 WARS, EXTIRTATIONS, HABITS, A'C, 
 
 louK aftei-TvartlB -was his trustea councillor in all matters con- 
 nected with tlie 8o called conciliation of " this unfortunate and 
 helpless people," as he was fond of calling them. 
 
 Of the asyhim at Bruny, Robinson volunteered to take 
 charge— an office more of love than profit^for the consideration 
 of dElOO a-year, and a personal ration. He was. by trade, a 
 master builder, but gave up his business, said to have been a 
 lucrative one, for a more congenial occupation, which exactly 
 accorded with the natural tastes of the man. His appointment 
 is dated "March 1829." i ,.i , 
 
 He was a person of uncommon energy, and possessed of tliat 
 indomitable perseverance that never yields to difficulties that the 
 will can overcome. In his many well-planned enterprises, for 
 what he always caUs the " subjugation " of the savages he was 
 often in great danger of their spears ; but no risks, however 
 iminent, daunted him for a moment. If they repulsed his ad- 
 vances, or even beat him off, he was at them again next moment 
 When once on the trail of a tribe, the days, or even the hours, ot 
 their liberties were numbered, and theu- long-known haunts 
 ' ' knew them no more for ever. " His heart and soul were deyotetl 
 to the work of ridding the country of them, without shedeling 
 their blood ; and when he undertook the seemingly hopeless 
 task, he never doubted his abihty to remove every one ot 
 them from the main land, which he ultimately effected, witli 
 the exception of four, of whose existence he seems to have 
 been misinformed. They must have been reported dead, tor 
 at the close of his labours he assured myself who knew 
 hhn, not intimately, but pretty weU, that only pne man waa 
 unaccounted for, who he beheved had died in the bush; 
 and which circumstance I have since seen mentioned in 
 one of his official reports. He was a man of strong common 
 sense, but imperfect education. His tu-st reports, though not 
 badly worded, betray his ignorance of spelling, and also tiiat his 
 crammatical studies were not very complete. But he either im- 
 proved in these little matters afterwards, or placed his writings 
 for coi-rection in the hands, probably, of a convict clerk, who was 
 Bubsequently attached to his service. In quoting from these 
 which I shall have to do rather largely, I shall ot |com-se not 
 adhere to his peculiar method of iumbhng the letters ot the 
 alphabet together, which practice he seems to have learned m 
 the schools of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble or Jeames lellowi^lush. 
 He was rather pompous in manner, and vam of his services, in 
 having ahnost single-handed put an end to 30 years ot 
 petty warfare ; and his " dispatches," as lie invariably caUs his 
 interminable reports, in magniloquence of style, throw into the 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 21 
 
 shade altogether the official bulletins of sitch men as Napoleon, 
 Wellington, and others ; still they contain much little known 
 information on very interesting subjects. In his ordinary 
 demeanour he was more patronising than courteous ; and some- 
 what ofifensively polite, rather than civil. For a long time he 
 quite failed of conciliating the colonists as he had done the 
 savages, and was at first looked on by them as nothing but an 
 impostor ; and the flaming descriptions he gave everybody of his 
 friendly interviews with the blacks, which at first had no visible 
 results, were as generally as unjustly discredited. 
 
 His first care after taking charge of the new establishment 
 on Bruny Island, was to learn the language and various dialects 
 of the natives ; and being a man of excellent natural abilities, he 
 soon mastered this part of his self-imposed work, and thus had 
 a great advantage over all others, as no one but himself knew a 
 word of it ; and in a few months afterwards he reports that he 
 had so far got over this difficulty as to be able to converse with 
 them, and that he had commenced the compilation of a vocabu- 
 lary, which, in the end, must have been a pretty complete 
 dictionary ; but I believe he never gave it up to the Government. 
 The langiiage of the tribes seems to have been simple enough, 
 consisting chiefly of verbs, adjectives, and substantives ; and 
 from the few authentic translations that have reached us of con- 
 versations, &c., a good deal must have been left to the imder- 
 standing of the person addressed. A couple of examples taken 
 from one of Eobinson's long letters will illustrate my meaning. 
 Thus a man whose wife was dying, and to whom he o£fered food 
 for her, said, " Tea-noailly — parmatter — panmerlia — linen er, 
 noaillly*," which he translates, "Tea, no good — potatoes — bread 
 — water, no good ; meaning," says Bobinson, " that his wife had 
 no wish for food of any kind." He gives a portion of a Sunday 
 address that he made to them (for he was an occassional preacher), 
 as follows : — •' Matty nyrae Parlerdee, Matty nyrae Parlerdee. 
 Parleevar nyrae, parleevar loggernu taggeerer lowway waerang- 
 gelly. Parlerdee lowway. Nyrae raegee merrydy nueberrae. 
 Parlerdee waeranggelly. Kannernu Parlerdee. Nyrae Parlerdee 
 neuberrae nyrae raegee timene merrydy. No ailly parlevar log- 
 gernu tageerer toogunner. Raegorropper, tienee maggerer. 
 Parleevar tyrer, tyrer, tyrer. Nyrae parleevar maggerer. Par- 
 lerdee waeranggelly timene merrydy, timene taggathe." Wliich 
 he translates thus : — 
 
 " One good God. One good God. Native good. Native 
 dead, go up sky. God up. Good white man sick looks God sky ; 
 speaks (or prays) God. Good God sees good white man no sick. 
 Bad native dead goes down, evil spirit (or devil) fire stops. 
 
22 WARS, EXTIUPATION, HABITS, .tC, 
 
 Native cry ! cry ! cry ! Good iiative stops God sky, uo sick, no 
 
 hunger iug. • i r 
 
 The frequent occurrence of all the liquid letters in the few 
 words given above will strike every reader. Their language, 
 which is all but lost, was peculiarly soft ; and except when 
 excited by anger or surprise, was spoken in something of a sing- 
 ing tone, producing a strange but pleasing effect on the sense of 
 the European. 
 
 Three or four months after his appointment to the charge ot 
 the asylum, he volunteered to visit the wild tribes in their native 
 haunts, and to use his best efforts to conciliate them. He says, 
 " I have proposed to the natives that they accompany me on the 
 expedition, to which they appear extremely anxious. They are 
 well suited to such a purpose. Their aptitude to descry objects 
 is astonishing, so much so that where my \dsion has requu-ed a 
 glass, they can distinguish. . . . Their presence would 
 gain the confidence of the other tribes. They teU me how they 
 would proceed. That upon obsei-ving the natives they would go 
 to them and would tell them that I was very good,— that they had 
 plenty of bread, potatoes, clothes, and huts to live m. &c. " 
 
 In his many missions to the tribes, he had always several of 
 
 his trained blacks with him, and often no others ; and strangely 
 
 enough he never, except once, approached their bivouacs with 
 
 arms of any kind ; and though he generally carried some Tvath 
 
 him, he always made it a point to leave them at his encampment 
 
 whenever (after discovering them) he went forward to meet them. 
 
 This procediu-e, seemingly so dangerous to himself, and novel to 
 
 them, appears to have had generally an excellent effect, though 
 
 there were instances of the contrary— namely, in cases where the 
 
 A\-rath of the resentful savage was so inextinguishable and deeply 
 
 rooted that he refused all intercourse, and would meet him and 
 
 his party on no other terms than those of mortal strife. In one 
 
 instance, the natives pursued him most perseveringly for hours, 
 
 determined to kill him and all his followers ; and the escape of 
 
 the unarmed party was almost more than miraculous. In his 
 
 flight he had to pass through the densest of forests, with the 
 
 blacks almost at his heels ; and to cross a large and rapid river, 
 
 bank high Avith water, caused by recent rains ; and though he 
 
 could not swim a stroke,onc of faithlul followers, whom he always 
 
 calls his sable friends, got him through every difficulty, and he 
 
 reached his camp in safety. This repulse daunted him not in 
 
 the least degree, for after a very brief rest, he went after them 
 
 again, and after another parley with them of some duration, in 
 
 which all his persuasive powers were called forth, tAvo of them 
 
 swam the river and joined him, and tAvo others came iu the same 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 23 
 
 day, and before very long he had the whole of them safe. (I 
 shall presently give the details of this adventure from Robinson's 
 own narrative.) He never fired a shot, or used physical force to 
 a native in his life, and I wish I could add that he is quite free 
 from the suspicion of using decei^tion and making promises to 
 them in the name of the Government, which he should have 
 known could not be kept. It was never quite believed by many 
 of the colonists that he got them all by fair persuasion ; this I 
 have heard hinted twenty times or more, and I notice in one of 
 his reports that he pretty well convicts himself of this. He was 
 a diffuse and seemingly careless writer, but no man knew better 
 than he how to frame his letters to the Government so as to leave 
 httle trace of error behind him. But in a moment of great and 
 natural elation, just after capturing the very worst and most 
 sanguinary of the tribes, the Big River and Oyster Bay people 
 united, he incautiously lets out the secret of his success. He says, 
 "I have promised them an interview with the Lieutenant-Gover- 
 nor, and told them that the Government will be sure to redress 
 all their grievances." (Report, 5th January, 1832.) On hearing 
 which they gave in without one other word, and followed him 
 rejoicingly to Hobart Town, a hundred miles from the scene of 
 their surrender ; from whence, instead of having their grievances 
 redressed, whatever they were, they were immediately consigned 
 to the barren solitudes of Flinder's Island (then a new asylum), 
 where the earthly career of four-fifths of them was ere lonff 
 fulfilled. 
 
 His well-instructed, but unsuspecting sable friends were 
 mere decoy ducks, used by him to bring the wild flight into the 
 net of the fowler ; and cleverly did he make them play his game. 
 His black associates numbered amongst them, people of nearly 
 every tribe, and were devotedly attached to him by companion- 
 ship, and many acts of kindness, which though doubtless spon- 
 taneous, served his ultimate ends. 
 
 On discovering the smoke of the hostile bands, to which his 
 acute trackers never failed to lead him (except once or twice, 
 when their own fears of their wild brethren so overcame them 
 that they dare not approach until forced on again and again by 
 Robinson), it was his invariable practice to halt his party, and 
 form his camp, where he himself remained, with perhaps one or 
 two of his own race (whom he constantly calls his " Uropeans "), 
 and then sent out his natives to negotiate with them for a friendly 
 interview with himself. After a few hours delay, or at the most 
 a day or two, they returned to him, usually with the good tidings 
 that the natives would receive him, when he went forward, and 
 the^ met in peace, Their astonishment at seeing him trust him- 
 
24 WABS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 self amougBt them unarmed, aud iiiiatteuded by any of liis 
 Europeans, and at hearing themselves addressed by the white 
 stranger in theii* own beautiful language was always very great. 
 These circumstances, coupled with the gratifying promises he 
 made them for their future repose and comfort, completed the 
 work of their subjugation, as he aptly calls it. 
 
 He often remained at the huts of these simple-minded child- 
 ren of the forest for weeks together, taking part with them in 
 their hunting excursions and nocturnal sports, which, from 
 previous companionship with his domesticated blacks, he qiiite 
 understood ; all of which was only smoothing the road by which 
 he ultimately led them to the great graveyard of Flinders Island. 
 
 These pleasant meetings were not always imattended with 
 personal inconvenience ; and once during a three weeks' associa- 
 tion with tliis " interesting people," as he often styles them, they 
 infected him and all his blacks with a grevious fit of the itch, 
 which, no doubt, greatly incommoded the party. "During my 
 stay with this people," he writes, (July 27. 1830), " myself and 
 aborigines became infected with a cutaneous disorder to which 
 the natives are subject." 
 
 This friendly interview, of which I shall have to speak more 
 in detail presently, ended in nothing but the establishing of 
 friendly feelings, which, indeed, was all that his instructions at 
 this time permitted. He left them with the best opinions of 
 himself and of the Government he served, which were dissemi- 
 nated amongst all the tribes with whom they were on friendly 
 terms. Presently under the heading of " Legends ef our Native 
 Tribes," I shall give some of the most notable of liis enterprises 
 against the blacks ; but will now proceed to the subject of their 
 
 CUSTOMS, HABITS, ETC. 
 
 Of the mode of warfare of this people little remains to be 
 added to Avhat I have already said, though I shall be unable to 
 avoid incorporating a few incidental remarks on the subject in 
 some of the passages that follow ; for example, in describing 
 their weapons, &c. , it may be referred to again. 
 
 THEIR DBCAY. 
 
 It was held by some very intelligent witnesses who were 
 examined by the Aboriginal Committee in 1830, and who had 
 been in the colony from the day of its foundation, that at the time 
 of the first landing of the European settlers the number of savages 
 then in the woods was not less than 7,000, a fact which could not 
 be certainly known, but which might be pretty fairly guessed 
 from the number of known tribes, and a good estimate of their 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TAb'MANU. 25 
 
 streugtl). In Robinson's time there were 16 tribes still in being, 
 
 and lie says it liad come to liis knowledge that several others that 
 
 were extant 15 or 20 years before he wrote (Eeport,27tli Jiily.lSSO) 
 
 were extinct then (that is, they were in existence in about 1810 
 
 to 1815). On the South Coast alone, lie enumerates by name 
 
 five * that have died out, besides several others in the east, 
 
 whom he does not name. Of the districts of the north, 
 
 or the interior, he at that time knew nothing. Many of the 
 
 tribes that were known to the early colonists numbered from 400 
 
 to 600 persons, and if there were 20 or 25 tribes existent then, 
 
 ■ 7,000 can hardly be an exaggerated estimate. If 500 of these 
 
 were killed defensively by the settlers, or aggressively by the 
 
 sealers and bushrangers, Ave may be assured that it is an outside 
 
 number. A very few hundreds Avere made prisoners. 
 
 Indeed all i-eliable evidence, of which there is plenty extant, 
 shows that what tliey suffered from the whites has been most 
 grieviously exaggerated, and by no one so much, but in general 
 statements only, as by Mr. Eobinson himself ; for lie gives not 
 the smallest proof of it, except in the instance of the sealers, and 
 hardlyonce names the bushrangers. But he adduces abundant 
 examples of murders by the blacks — the " poor helpless, forlorn, 
 oppressed blacks," as he calls tlie one race, and the " merciless 
 white " the other — expressions he so often uses, without the least 
 proof of their applicability to either race, that one sickens of 
 their repetition. From all that I can learn, by the attentive 
 perusal of a vast mass of documentary evidence, I do not believe 
 even as many as 500 of them were killed, and about that number 
 made prisoners. Of the assumed number, 7,000, who were in the 
 colony in 1803 and 1804, at least 6,000 mnst have died at their 
 own encampments, from causes not induced by war, except 
 ti-ibal wars. These latter, taken singly, though not very bloody, 
 produced collectively a large number of deaths. » Their rapid 
 declension after the colony was founded is traceable, as far as 
 our proofs allow us to judge, to the prevalence of epidemic 
 disorders ; which, though not introduced by the Europeans, 
 were possibly accidentally increased by them. The naked savage 
 soon discovered the comforts of covering, and such things as 
 blankets and clothing were often given them by the settlers, or 
 were distributed amongst them by the Government in large 
 quantities ; and in their almost countless hut robberies they 
 never failed of taking away every blanket they found there. 
 
 * These|were the Mo-le-oke-er-dee,Nue-non-i-e,Tur-rer-he-gu-on-ne, 
 Pan-ger-mo-ig-lie, and Nee-1-won-ne, which were doubtlessly the names 
 of their districts and hunting grounds. 
 
26 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, etc.. 
 
 But of all created animals, the untaught savage is the most 
 imprudent ; and he often kept his prize no longer than it suited 
 the idle habits of the wanderer to carry it. Hence, he waa wrap- 
 ped up like a mummy one week, and was as naked as a newly-1 lorn 
 infant the next. The climate of Tasmania is also a variable me. 
 True, there is hardly such a thing known as extreme heat or cold, 
 but there are very rapid changes of temperature, from moderate 
 heat to coolness. Cold, in the Englishman's sense of the word, 
 is unknown, except in the high lands of the country, where for 
 live months of the year it is bitter enough, and something like a 
 seventh or eighth of its area, is over 2,000ft. high ; and no little 
 part of these high-lying lands is double that elevation, and a good 
 deal more, and, therefore, both chilly and humid. The surface 
 is quite as varying as the climate, hence the general beauty of 
 the scenery. Now any person, whether savage or civilised, who 
 wraps up at one time and goes perfectly naked at another, 
 exposed to very frequent changes of temperature, is certainly not 
 likely to keep long in health, but is assuredly laying the founda- 
 tion of fatal consumptive complaints, from which (such was the 
 peculiar constitution of the Tasmanian savage) almost immediate 
 death was certain, and whenever he took cold it seems to have 
 settled on his lungs from the first. Speaking of the many deaths 
 occurring amongst this people from this cause, Robinson says, 
 " they are universally susceptible of colds, and unless the utmost 
 providence is taken to check its jDrogress at an early period, it 
 fixes itself on the lungs, and gradually assumes the complaint 
 spoken of, I.e., Catarrhal Fever." (Report, May 2i, 1831). 
 Again sijeaking of the tribes inhabiting the Western districts, 
 he says, " the number of aboriginals along the Western Coast 
 has been considerably reduced since the time of my first visit," 
 that is, at the beginning of 1830, " a mortality has raged amongst 
 them, which, together with the severity of the season and other 
 causes, has rendered their numbers very inconsiderable." (July 
 29, 1832). I am little versed in the science that treats of epidemic 
 diseases, and cannot therefore explain the processes by which 
 they are spread through entire communities ■\\'ith something like 
 telegraphic rai:)idity, but it is visible to us all, and therefore 
 requires no verbal proof ; and the savage of Tasmania was more 
 than ordinarily liable to its attacks, which, unlike the European, 
 he knew no remedy for, and sought only to relieve his pain by a 
 process far more likely to be injurious than beneficial, namely, 
 the excessive laceration of his body with Hint, or glass if he could 
 get it, which, by producing weakness, made death only the more 
 sjjeedy and certain. He had none of the appliances or comforts 
 of civilised life, and succumbed at once. Colds, settling almost 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 27 
 
 iustantly on the hiugs, sent them to the grave by huutli-eds ; and 
 no wonder that Robinson found a whole tribe housed in a single 
 hut, for whom a twelvemonth before six or seven were necessary ; 
 and I quite believe that the original cause of their decay lay in 
 their own imprudence, generating fatal catarrhal complaints, 
 from which an European, by proper remedial measures, resorted 
 to early, would easily have recovered. These imj^rudenceswere, 
 of course, practised only by a few tribes inhabiting the settled 
 districts, but the consequences, which are of course epidemic, 
 infected all before long. 
 
 Many of the tribes, jjarticularly of the Western and South 
 Western Coast districts, which Avere known to be very strong in 
 numbers, long after the first colonisation of the country, were 
 not exposed to contact with the whites, and yet when taken, they 
 hardly ever consisted of 20 persons, and when larger numbers 
 were brought in at any one time they were always of more than 
 one family. 
 
 Of their rapid mortality when under the immediate observa- 
 tion of the protector at Bruny, Flinders, and Hunter's Islands, 
 I have said something elsewhere. But it may not be improper 
 to add that at the last-named asylum, sickness was sometimes 
 induced by the neglect of the Government, which persisted for 
 some months in supplying them with salt provisions (in spite of 
 the repeated and strenuous remonstrances of Robinson), which 
 they hated the very name of, and only ate from necessity, but to 
 ■which they were too long restricted. The little game there was 
 left on the island, after the incursions of the sealers were prohi- 
 bited, was speedily demolished liy the natives. Of shell-fish, 
 there were few or none hereabouts, and no other fish would any 
 native of Tasmania ever touch ; whether it was natural aversion 
 or superstition is not known, but scale-fish of any kind was as 
 much an abomination to the entire race as swine's tlesli to the 
 Jew or Mussulman ; and they would literally rather starve than 
 eat i 3. In this respect they quite differed from the New Holland 
 sava:|es, by whom it is greatly relished. From some not very 
 satisfactory explained cause, the sheep on the island were not 
 toucaed. Robinson says they were too young and too small for 
 killhig ; but the consequence of restricting the natives to salt 
 provisions was to bring on scorbutic complaints, which 
 terminated fatally iu some instances. 
 
 TREATMENT OF THE DEAD. 
 
 In one of the protector's earliest reports, 12th June. 1829, 
 ho gives some lengthy, but very interesting, particulars of their 
 mode of disposing of the bodies of their dead. He relates 
 
28 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, «S:C., 
 
 notliing but wliat lie saw himself, of the death of the patient or 
 patients, and final disposal of their corpse. As nothing can be 
 more simple or touching than his account on the subject, i eliaU 
 quote aU he says about them. The scenes he describes took 
 place on Bruny Island in 1829 :— 
 
 '•Extracts from my journal.— Monday, May 18, 8 a-pi-— 
 Visited the aboriginal family, Joe, Mary, and two clnldren 
 Mary evidently much worse, appeared in a dying state. •Looked 
 wistfully at me, as if anxious for me to afford her rehof. Alas ! 
 I know not how to relieve her. Ojily the Lord can rehevo m 
 such trying cu-cumstauces. Inquired of her husband the cause 
 of her ixffliction ; he said 'Merriday, byday, hgchnny, lommerday. 
 (sick head, breast, beUy). On each of those parts mcisious had 
 iDeen'made with a piece of glass bottle. The forehead was much 
 lacerated, the blood streaming down her face. Her whole frauie 
 was wasted. She had a ghastly appearance ; she seemed incU-ead- 
 ful agony • her husband, much affected, frequently shed tears. 
 Made her some tea ; could not bear the aflaictmg scene ; 
 returned to my quarters ; the husband soon following me, his 
 cheeks wet with tears, said his ' luberer, lowgerner un-iieuee 
 rwif e, sleep by the fii-e). Stopped about half an horn-. I niade him 
 8ome tea for his childi-en. Asked him if he would take his 
 luberer any. He said, ' tea-noaiUy, parmatter, panmerha, hne- 
 ner no-ailly ' (tea no good, potatoes, bread, water no good), 
 meaning his wife had no wish for food of any kind. In about 
 half an hour I met him coming towards my quarters with his two 
 chUdren, kangaroo skins, &c. At about a hundi-ed yards thstaut 
 I saw a large fii-e. It immediately occiu-red to me that his wife 
 was dead, and that the fii-e I then saw was her funeral pile. I asked 
 him where his luberer was. He said, ' loggeenee uenee (dead 
 —in the fixe). Walked to the place ; the wind had wafted the 
 fixe from her body ; her legs were quite exposed (her^ follow a 
 few iUegible words) ; the fii-e had burnt out ; the body was 
 placed in a sitting posture. While ruminating on the du-e 
 mortality that had taken place amongst the people of this tribe 1 
 was interrupted in my reverie by the husband of deceased, w-ho 
 requested I would assist him in gathering who-ee (wood) for the 
 purpose of consuming the remains of the body My feelings 
 were considerably excited at this-an office of all others I never 
 could have conceived I should have been caUed on to assist in. 
 
 Poor Joe's own turn came in less than a fortnight, and 
 Robinson's joiu-nal thus describes his death, and gives this time 
 a fuller detail of the funeral ceremonies of a native. 
 
 " Sunday, May 31, 5 p.m.— The sick aborigine requested to 
 have u iii-c Uiudc outside the hut, to which he desired to be earned. 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA. 29 
 
 Imagining tliat this man could not survive long witliout immedi- 
 ate medical relief, I ordered tlie boat to be got ready, intending 
 to send him to town. But God's will be done. He expired ere 
 it was ready. These are aflflictive providences. In the death of 
 this man and his last Avife Mary, the establishment has sustained 
 a great loss. He was kind, humane, and remarkably affectionate 
 to his children. * . . . Last Sabbath he appeared in good 
 health, but his spirits were evidently broken since the death of 
 his last wife. He has left two helpless orphans to lament his 
 loss. I took occasion to converse with the natives on account of 
 the death of his two wives, but they told me they did not like to, 
 speak of it." (It is right to say that they never spoke of the 
 dead, nor ever again mentioned their names.) ' 
 
 MANNER OP EUKNING THE DEAD. 
 
 "I was busy preparing for his departure to Hobart Town for 
 medical assistance, when the groans of this man ceased, and with 
 them the noise of the other natives. A solemn stillness prevailed 
 — my apprehensions became excited — I went out — he had just 
 expired. The other natives were sitting round, and some were 
 employed in gathering grass. They then bent the legs back 
 against the thigh, and bound them round with twisted grass. 
 Each arm was bent together, and bound round above the elbow. 
 The funeral pile was made by placing some dry wood at the 
 bottom, on which they laid some diy bark, then placed more dry 
 wood, raising it about 2ft. 6in. above the ground ; a quantity of 
 diy bark was then laid upon the logs, upon which they laid the 
 corpse, arching the whole over "with dry wood, men and women 
 assisting in kindling the fire, after which they went away, and 
 did not aiDproach the spot any more that day. The next morning 
 I went with them to see the I'emains, and foxmd a dog eating part 
 of the body. The remains were then collected and burnt. 
 
 ' ' I wished them to have burnt the body on the same spot 
 where his wife had been burnt, but whether because it was too 
 much troiible, or from superstitious motives, I know not ; but 
 they did not seem at all -willing ; I therefore did not urge it. . . . 
 After the fire had burnt out, the ashes were scraj)ed together, 
 and covered over with grass and dead sticks." 
 
 While the natives Avere making the funeral pile, Kobinson 
 took occasion to extract from them what their ideas were of a 
 future state, and where they^thoxight the departed went to. They 
 
 * Another of these Brvmy islanders, named Woureddy, had the 
 same good qualities, but they were rare amongst the men, who were 
 very tyranuicul. 
 
aO WAKS, EXTIErATION, HABITS, «fec., 
 
 all answered " Dreeuy," that is to England, saying, " Parleevar 
 loggernu ueuee, toggerer Teeny Dreeny, mobberly Parleevar 
 Dreeny," (native dead, tire ; goes road England, plenty natives 
 England). From wluit tliey had seen «f the productions of the 
 superior race, they probably thought there was no happier abode 
 in the universe than England. 
 
 He tried to convince them that England was not the home 
 of the departed, and though like some other orators, he talked 
 them down, he did not argue them out of their belief. 
 
 It has been often said that they had no idea that there was 
 such a thing as a futiu-e state ; but this simple reply shows that, 
 however imperfect their notions were on this subject, they quite 
 believed in a life beyond the grave, or rather after the destruc- 
 tion of the body at the funeral pile. He adds that they were 
 fatalists, and also that they believed in the existence of both a 
 good and evil spirit. The latter, he says, they called Bageo 
 wropj)er, to whom they attributed all their afflictions. They 
 used the same word to express thunder and lightning. He also 
 says that the dying native had a keen perception of his approach- 
 ing end, and when he knew it was at hand his last desire was to 
 be removed into the open air to die by his fire. 
 
 Eobinson was a reformer, and an enthusiast in everything, 
 and was too fond of persuading them to put off ancient practices 
 for European customs. I believe he almost thought he could 
 make an Englishman out of black materials. Before long he 
 induced them not to paint themselves, from which, no doubt, 
 they derived warmth ; and he now jjersuaded them to submit to 
 the burial of their dead, instead of burning them. It matters 
 little in what way the living consign their dead to decay, but he 
 was no respecter of ancient customs, and when I visited the 
 asylum at Bruny immediataly after its abandonment in 1830, I 
 saw many grave-mounds there. 
 ^ In the same report, he says they always retired to rest at 
 dusk, rising again at midnight, and passing the remainder of the 
 night in singing to his own very jjarticixlar discomfort, as there 
 was no more sleep for him after they woke up, " My rest," he 
 says, " has been considerably broken" — by this disagreeable prac- 
 tice of theii-s of night-singing — " in which they all join. This is 
 kept up till daylight ; added to this is the sqxialling of their 
 children," and here he ends the sentence. 
 
 In a subsequent report, August 6, 1831, written after he 
 became acquainted with the hostile tribes, he says that the most 
 popular of their songs were those in which they recounted their 
 attacks on, and their fights Avith, the whites. 
 
 It lias been customary to rauk the Tasmaiiiau savRges with 
 
OF THE NATITE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. itt 
 
 the most degraded of the human family, and possessed of inferior 
 intelligence only. But facts quite disprove this idea, and show 
 that they were naturally very intellectual, highly susceptible of 
 culture, and above all, most desirous of receiving instruction, 
 which is fatal to the dogma of their incapacity for civilisation. 
 Beasoning from such facts as that they went perfectly naked, 
 were unacquainted with the simplest arts, were even ignorant of 
 any method of procuring fire, and erroneously thought to have 
 no idea of a Supreme Being or future condition, they were almost 
 held to be the link that connected man wttli the brutes of the 
 field and forest. 
 
 The aboriginal's wants were indeed so few, and the country 
 in which it had pleased the Almighty to place him supplied them 
 all in such lavish abundance that he was not called on for the 
 exercise of much skill or labour in satisfying his requirements. 
 He had no inducement to work, and (like all others who are so 
 situated) he did not very greatly exert himself. Necessity, said 
 to be the parent of invention, was known to him only in a limited 
 degree ; and his ingeniiity was seldom brought into exercise. 
 His faculties were dormant from the mere bounty of providence. 
 The game of the country and its vegetable productions would 
 have amply supported a native population ten or a dozen times 
 larger than it ever was. Kangaroos, opossums, wombats, birds, 
 shell-fish, were j)lentiful, far in excess of his wants. Of fruits 
 there are indeed none worthy the name. But in the vast forests 
 of the country are to be found very many vegetables which, 
 though quite disregarded by Europeans, were relished by the 
 savage ; and Robinson in one of his letters speaks of his resort- 
 ing to their j^ractice of using certain edible ferns, which are so 
 abundant in many districts that credulity could hardly believe it. 
 How they prepared them, or what species they used, he does not 
 say. Indeed the subject of their customs and peaceful pursuits 
 does not seem to have been a favourite study of his, and except 
 their practice of lacerating the sick and burning their dead, 
 which he has been at the pains to describe, we gather very little 
 knowledge of their habits from his letters, except from scattered 
 incidental remarks. 
 
 His country lying a little north of a line, mid-distant from 
 the pole and equator, the climate of its low-lying lands is neces- 
 sarily mild and very agreeable, so that bodily covering of any 
 kind, though prized after habituation to it, was easily dispensed 
 with, and the skin of the kangaroo, so fastened over one shoulder 
 as not, to impede the free use of the arms, was enough for the 
 female and her infant, the adult male going generally quite naked. 
 That he was ignorant of any artificial means of procuring fire may 
 
32 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABWS, &C., 
 
 be traced to the nature of tlie woods of liie country, which with 
 hardly an exception, are nearly as hard as wlun-stoue, and not 
 very inflammable either, so that no amount of manual friction 
 could possibly ignite them. Hence his fire, however he first 
 obtained it, like that of Vesta, was never suffered to die out, it 
 being the province of the women to keep it constantly supplied 
 ■vvith fuel when the tribe was stationary, and to preserve it when 
 on the move, by bark torches renewed as required. That he had 
 
 phis own ideas, not very perfect ones, of a good and e\-il spirit, 
 and believed also that absolute annihilation did not occur with 
 death, we have already seen. He, perhaps, did not reflect much 
 on these subjects, but then he was quite uninstructed, and no state 
 of isolation could have been more complete than his own ; so that 
 knowledge of any kind from sources outside his island home never 
 reached him. But when once tan ght, there never was a people, 
 according to Robinson, who more readily received instruction, 
 or were more eager for it than the savages of Tasmania. 
 School learning was acquired rapidly by them, even the adults. 
 Scriptural truth was taught them both by their protector and a 
 catechist specially appointed to instruct them, and they seem to 
 have understood "it, and for a short time it may be said of them, 
 in the language of a sacred writer that they " saw it and con- 
 sidered it well, they looked upon it and received instruction." 
 But of their capacity for civilisation, as explained by Robinson, 
 I shall speak by-and-by. 
 
 *- In stature some of them weie tall, and a few were robust ; 
 but the most of them were slimly-built persons, wiiy and very 
 agile. The features of neither sex were prepossessing, especially 
 after they had passed middle age. Their noses were broad, and 
 their mouths generally protruded extremely. In youth, some of 
 the women were passably good-looking, but not so the most of 
 them ; and only one of the many I have seen — the wife of a chief 
 was' handsome. The women however appeared to great disad- 
 vantage, by their fashion of shaving the head quite closely, 
 which in 'their wild state was done with flints and shells, and 
 afterwards with glass, when they could get it. The men, on the 
 contrary, allowed their natural head covering, wool, to grow very 
 long, and plastered it all over very thickly with a composition of 
 red ochre and grease, and when it dried a little their locks hung 
 down so as to resemble a bundle of painted ropes, the red powder 
 from which falling over tlieir bodies (which were naturally a dull 
 black colour), gave the naked savage a most repulsive look. 
 
 The shoulders and breasts were marked by lines of short, 
 raised scars, caused by cutting through the skin and rubbing in 
 charcoal. These cuts somewhat resemble the marks made by a 
 
OF THE NATIVE TKIBES OF TASMANIA. 33 
 
 cupping instrument, but were mueli large and further apart. 
 They never permitted tlieir wives or children to accompany 
 them in their war expeditions, either against the whites or 
 enemies of their own race, but left them in places of security and 
 concealment ; and Kobinson told me that though their wives 
 went with them in their hunting excursions, they did not allow 
 them to participate in the sport, and that they acted only as 
 drudges to carry their spears and the game ; but that the fishing 
 business (for shell-fish only, obtained by diving) was resigned 
 wholly to them. The men, he said, considered it beneath them, 
 and left it and all other troublesome services to them, Avho, in 
 nine cases out of ten, were no better than slaves. If a storm 
 came on unexpectedly, the men would sit down while the women 
 built huts over them, in which operation, as in all others of a 
 menial nature, the man took no part. To make his own spears, 
 to hunt, fight, and salve himself with his ochreous mixtute, were 
 his principal, and perhaps only, occupations. 
 
 The huts of this people were the frailest and most temporary 
 structures conceivable. They were often meant only for a night, 
 and perhaps were seldom occupied for a week, though those of 
 some of the west coast tribes were most substantial. Uniformity 
 of design was, of course, quite out of the question ; for these 
 hovels were suited to the circumstances of the moment only. 
 Some that I once met with in the Western Mountains seem to 
 have been constructed in a great liurry, and were composed of a 
 tew strips of bark laid against some large dead branches that 
 were used just as they had fallen from the trees above. Others 
 that I have seen had, pretty evidently, been occupied for several 
 mg-Jits. These were also of bark, supported on sticks driven a 
 little into the ground, and were adorned, according to their ideas 
 of ornament, mth several rude charcoal drawings, one represent- 
 ing a kangaroo of unnatural appearance, that is, with its forelegs 
 about twice as long as the hinder ones ; another was meant for an 
 emu; a third was also an animal that might have been either a dog, 
 a horse, or a crococ ile, according to the fancy of the connoisseur! 
 -But the chcf-cV-muvre was a battle piece,a native fight— men dying 
 and flying all over it. These huts were closed only on the weather 
 side, and perfectly open in front, some large enough for several 
 persons, others less ; and the one with the elaborate designs was, 
 1 suppose, the residence of a single man, being the least of all. 4 
 His spear was a long thin stick pointed at both ends, made 
 ot a hard heavy wood, called by the colonists tea-tree. The 
 weapon of the adult Avas< 10ft. long or more, and was throNvn from 
 the hand only, with great force and precision, having a range of 
 l.beheve, about GO or 70 yards. Both the throwing-stick and 
 
34 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C,, 
 
 shield of the New Hullaiicler were uuluiown to him. The only 
 other weapon lie nsed wjis the wadJie. This was made of the 
 same wood as the spear ; not two feet long, and thicker at one 
 end than the other. It was held by the thinner end, and was 
 used either as a club or a missile. Used for the latter purpose, 
 it was hurled with awful force and certain aim. When his other 
 weapons failed him he fought with stones, and even with these 
 he was a very formidable opponent. The waddie, however, was 
 chiefly used in the chase. 
 
 In fight, the vengeance of the savage was not appeased by 
 the death of an enemy. The mutilation of the body, and parti- 
 cularly of the head, always followed, unless the victor was 
 siu-prised or apprehended surprise. This was done either by 
 dashing heavy stones at the corpse, or beating it savagely with 
 the waddie. In many of the inquests that I have spoken of in 
 the early part of this paper the deceased were hardly recognis- 
 able. 
 
 The Tasmanian aboriginal in advancing on an unsuspecting 
 victim whom he meant to kill treacherously, approached, appa- 
 rently quite unarmed, with his hands clasped and resting on the 
 top of his head, a favourite posture of the black, and with no 
 appearance of a hostile intention. But all the time he was drag- 
 ging a spear behind him, held between his toes, in a manner 
 that must have taken long to acquire. Tlien by a motion as 
 unexpected as it was rapid, it was transferred to the hand, and 
 the victim pierced before he could lift a hand or stir a step. This 
 practice and some others of theu-s, are, I believe, common in New 
 Holland, and seem to favour the idea of original migration from 
 thence. But they were not of the same stock. There Avas one 
 very marked difiference between the races, tbe Australian being a 
 straight-haired man, and the Tasmanian a wool-headed. 
 
 The hatred of the w^omen for their half-caste offspring has 
 been named before, and I have been told that the New Holland 
 woman has the same aversion. My informant was a gentleman 
 who had resided long in the wilds of Australia, and said that 
 though children of mixed blood we?-e to be met at the encamp- 
 ments of the blacks, he never saw an adult half caste amongst 
 them, and he believed they destroyed them. There are about a 
 hundred of them now living in the Straits, the results of union 
 between the sealer and tbe savage, many of Avhom have not only 
 reached adultness but old age. But here the parents lived together 
 in settled life, and thefathers, bad as they are said to have been, 
 were there to protect their children. No doubt the characters of 
 these men have been taken from the worst and most hardened of 
 them. But in Australia I have heard that the union fnmi which 
 
OF THE NATIVE TKIBES OP TASMANIA. 35 
 
 these unfortunates are produced is of the most temporary nature, 
 and usually dissolved after a brief intimacy, tlie care of the 
 offspring of it being wholly surrendered to the mother, in whose 
 charge it seems never to reach even adolescence. 
 
 It is nowhere stated, that I know of, that polygamy Avas 
 practised by the Tasmanian ; but as the man Joe, whose death 
 and funeral ceremonies I have recorded, had two wives at the 
 same time, it cannot be said that the joi'actice was itnknown to 
 them. 
 
 To the other services rendered by the woman must be added 
 the entire care of the children. She carried her infant, not in 
 her arms, but astride her shoulders, holding its hands. 
 
 The construction and propulsion of the catamaran, or boat 
 of the native, was also the work of the women. This " machine," 
 as Robiuson^contemptuously calls it, was only used by the people 
 of the south and west coasts. The northern and east coast tribes, 
 he says, " have not the slightest knowledge of this machine." 
 (Report, Feb. 24th, 1831). The configuration of the north and 
 east coasts — which are not much indented Avith bays — made it 
 hardly necessary to the people inhabiting them. It was of con- 
 siderable size, and something like a whale-boat, that is, sharp- 
 sterned, but a solid structure, ;and the natives in their aquatic 
 adventures sat on the top. It was generally made of the buoyant 
 and soft velvety bark of the swamp tea-tree {Melaluca >Sp.), and 
 consisted of a multitude of small strips bound together. * The 
 mode of its propulsion would shock the professional or amateur 
 waterman. Common sticks with points instead of blades were 
 all that were used to urge it with its living freight through the 
 water, and yet I am assured that its' progress was not so very 
 slow. My informant, Alex. M'Kaj^ told me they were good 
 weather judges, and only used this vessel when well assured 
 there would be little wind and no danger, for an upset would 
 have been risky to some of the men. who unlike the women, 
 were not always good swimmers, though most of them were 
 perfect. In crossing from South Bruny to Port Esperance, 
 which they sometimes did, the distance is not less than eight or 
 ten miles, and in stormy weather this is no pleasant adventure, 
 even in a first-class boat. 
 
 They were great flesh-eaters but not cannibals, and never 
 were ; and some of them being incautiously asked if they ever 
 
 * They were sometimes made of wood, a friend of mine who 
 lately conversed with Trucaniua, was told by her that she had been on 
 Maria Island ; and on his asking Trucauina how she got there, she 
 rephed, "on logs." 
 
36 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 iuJulgctl iu this practice, exin-essed gi-eat horror at it. They 
 never nametl the dead, aud certainly never ate them. Large and 
 email game was supplied them so plentifully, that they had no 
 occasion to resort to the revolting custom. 
 
 Their mode of ascending trees after opossums, was to cut 
 small notches in the barrel, just large enough to admit the toes. 
 These were cut with a sharp stone. The labour of making these 
 stepping-places Avith these simple instruments was such as to 
 cause them to cut them at long intervals, which induced the dis- 
 coverer of the country, Tasman, to believe that they must be of 
 gigantic stature, which I need hardly say they were not. Their 
 condition in a land of plenty rendered an accpiaintance with arts^ 
 of any kind nearly unnecessary. The fabrication of their simi^le 
 arms, baskets, canoes, string, and necklaces, I believe, exhausts 
 the list of their manufactures. 
 
 Theu' baskets were made of the long leaves of the plant 
 called cutting-grass very neatly woven together ; and the neck- 
 laces of small, beautiful shells, iridescent, the purple tint 
 predominating. These shells in their natural state have no 
 great beauty, but after remoAdng theii- outer coating, theii- ap- 
 pearance is quite altered. This removal they eflected with acids, 
 how obtained in theii- wOd state I know not, but I presume from 
 wood. In their captivity at Oyster Cove, where they made them 
 for sale, they used vinegar. . I think a moderate heat was 
 necessary in removing this outer covering, for on ^asitiug their, 
 huts when they were i^reparing them, a woman handed me a 
 saiicer of them, which she took from the fli-cplace. 
 
 Kobinson's reports are so much taken uj) ■nith his own 
 personal adventures — suflferings from excessive fatigue, his 
 successes and many disapj^ointments, and comi^laints of the most 
 annoying red-tapeism of the commissariat and ijort offices, which 
 ■were then enough to diive one to the mad-house, — that, as I have 
 said before, he does not tell us very much about theii- customs, f 
 which would have relieved the tediousuess of his "nTitings. He 
 speaks a little, incidentally, of theii' internecine strife, and of the 
 ineffaceable hatred of rival tribes, which he takes) credit for 
 having entirely allayed, after theii* removal to Flinders Island, 
 though I shall show he was not quite successful, and that w-heu 
 his back was turned it was very difficult to keep them from coming 
 to blows. Nor does he say one w'ord about their general assem- 
 blies of confederated tribes, which they are known to have held, 
 , probably to concert measures relating to war, A curious account 
 '"of one of their places of meeting is preserved in an official letter, 
 written by Mr. W. B. Walker, dated December 21, 1827, from 
 which the following is taken : — 
 
OF THE NATIVE TBlBllS OF TASMANIA. 37 
 
 . '.' Some time since Mr. W. Field had occasion to searcli for a 
 fresh run for some of his cattle, in the coxu-se of which he found 
 a fine tract of land to the west of George Town, in which is an 
 extensive plain, and on one side of it his stockkeepers found a 
 kind of spire, curiously ornamented Avitli shells, grasswork, &c- 
 The tree of which it is formed appeared to have had much labour 
 and ingenuity bestowed upon it, being by means of fire brought 
 to a sharp point at top, and pierced with holes in which pieces of 
 wood are placed in such a manner as to afford an easy ascent to 
 near the top, where there is a commodious seat for a man. At 
 the distance of 15 or 20 yards round the tree are two circular ranges 
 of good huts, composed of bark and grass, described as much in 
 the form of an old-fashioned coal-scuttle turned wrong side up, 
 the entrance about 18in. high, 5ft. or 6ft. high at the back, and 
 8ft. or 10ft. long. There are also numerous small places in form 
 of birds'-nests, formed of gi-ass, having constantly 14 stones 
 in each. The circular space between the spire and the huts 
 has the appearance of being much frequented, being trod 
 quite bare of grass, and seems to be used as a place of 
 assembly and consultation. In the huts and the vicinity were 
 found an immense number of waddies, but very few spears. The 
 stockkeepers, several of whom have given me the same account, 
 call them preaching places, and state that there are two others, 
 but of inferior construction, one about five miles from the Supply 
 Mills, and the other west of Piper's Lagoon, north of the West- 
 ern River (now the Meander). One of my informants, who has 
 been much in the habit of kangaroo hunting, says they are places 
 of rendezvous, where the natives keep a large stock of spears and 
 waddies. He described the spears as carefully tied to straight 
 trees with their points at some distance from the ground. He 
 states that he has frequently met small parties of natives on their 
 way to and from the two last-named places, and that the parties 
 that ramble about this part come from thence." 
 
 Animosities ran high amongst them, and their quarrels never 
 died out except with the extinction of their ^enemies. They made 
 long marches to surprise them ; and to come on them unperceived, 
 if possible, was their constant object. But it was most difficult 
 to approach them thus, the greatest circumspection being neces- 
 sary, for such was their vigilance, tliat it was rare to catch them 
 off their guard ; and this dilficulty must have been much increased 
 when they became possessed of dogs, of which every tribe had an 
 immense pack, varying from 30 to 100. In a country less abound- 
 ing in game than Tasmania, such numbers could not have been 
 kept. There seems to have been an hereditary feud between the 
 men of the eftp,t,aud, the west, and whenever their captor, Bobin- 
 
38 WA<lS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 son, met them, they were either on the march to meet their 
 ancient opponents, or were returning from a victory ; for I do not 
 recollect a single instance in which they ever acknowledged defeat. 
 It was not till after his bush labours were over that Robinson 
 took charge of Wyba-Luma (as the natives called their village 
 on Flinders Island) with the designation of commandant. He was 
 nominally so from the first, bxxt his long and frequent absences 
 from it required that a resident manager of the place should be 
 there ; and this office at one time was filled by a gentleman of the 
 name of Nickolls, who appears to have had the greatest difficulty 
 in repressmg the illfeeling of the members of rival tribes who 
 were then on the island, who, according to the good old customs 
 of their fathers before them, were always for fighting it out, and 
 settling their little differences in this way. This gentleman thus 
 wrote to the Colonial Secretai-y on the 9th June, 1835 :— " The 
 greatest di-awback to a perfect civilisation is the determined 
 hostility of the Ben Lomond and Big Eiver tribes to each other. 
 The Western natives have attached themselves to one or other 
 of the two tribes, as their inclination led them ; thus virtually 
 making the whole body for the puirposes of war to consist of only 
 two tribes. It requires great vigilance to pre\ent them from 
 breaking out into open hostilities : a very little would set them 
 in ilame, they are so very jealous of each other. Upon the 
 arrival of those from town who principally belong to the Ben 
 Lomond tribe, at present rather the weakest in number, I much 
 fear a rupture will take place if extreme caution is not used." 
 But matters went further than this soon afterwards, and the two 
 parties went out to fight, and were only prevented from doing so 
 by the prudence of that gentleman and his family, who reminded 
 them of the expected arrival of the Governor amongst them 
 (which was then looked for), and how it would displease him to 
 hear of their differences, and so on ; and my informant told me 
 that just at this moment the topmasts of a vessel were seen on 
 the horizon, which it was thought might be those of the brig 
 having him on board (though they were not so), and they desisted. 
 " Their march was described to me as a very regular one, and that 
 they stepped pretty well together, singing or shouting some war 
 chant, and rattling their spears as they went along, striking the 
 ground with great force with the foot every third or fourth step. 
 The look of each was determined and ferocious beyond expression. 
 Mr. Nickolls soon afterwards retired from the island, and Eobin- 
 Bon, after the completion of his bush services, took charge of the 
 establishment himself. 
 
 CAPACITY FOR CIVIMSATION. 
 
 Of their mental faculties and aptitude for acquiring knoTT- 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. SQ 
 
 ,,•>/; .^"i':'i/-. ■•i-.ri'i /:! :r-\j:i( 
 
 ledge he speaks in laiTdatory terms. In a lengtliy report, dated 
 July, 1836, lie gives a great deal of valuable information on these 
 interesting subjects, wliich dispels the long received notion that 
 they were incapable of civilisation ; and as this intelligence 
 relating to an extinct race can hardly fail of gratifying laudable 
 curiosity, I shall repeat a good deal of what he says, running the 
 extracts I make into a continuous narrative : — 
 
 " The minds of the aborigines," he says, " are beginning to 
 expand. Tliey have more enlarged views of their present situa- 
 tion, and are grateful for the favours conferred upon them. They 
 are volatile in their spirits, and are extremely facetious and 
 perfectly under command. They studiously avoid exciting my 
 displeasure, and appear grieved if they imagine I am in the least 
 offended. The natives are placed under no kind of restraint, but 
 every degree of personal freedom consistent with a due regard to 
 their health, and the formation of religious and civilised habits. 
 The natives are now perfectly docile, and the greatest tranquility 
 exists among them. The mortality that has taken place among 
 the aborigines on the islands may be attributed to a variety of 
 causes, but the following appear to be the chief — the exposed 
 and damp situations of their dwellings, and the frail manner of 
 their construction ; their want of clothing, the saline property of 
 the water, and the continued u se of salt provisions. The catarrhal 
 and pneumonic attacks to which they are so subject, and which 
 are the only fatal diseases among them, are caused by the injudi- 
 cious system of changing their food and manner of life. 
 
 " Tne natives are instnicted in the principles of the Christian 
 religion. PubUc worship is celebrated twice on the Sabbath. 
 The service is commenced by singing, and reading from the 
 Scriptures select portions, &e. A short jirayer, a few cursory 
 remarks from Scripture are then delivered, when the service is 
 concluded by singing and prayer. The native youth, Walter, 
 acts on these occasions as clerk, giving out the hymns, and read- 
 ing the responses. The rest of the service is conducted by the 
 catechist. 
 
 " Catechetical instruction is the best suited to the capacities 
 of the natives ; for whi3h purpose the catechist was a short time 
 since to commence a course of this instruction on Tiiesday even- 
 ings and which is the only weekly religions instruction afibrded 
 the natives. 
 
 " In reference to the foregoing subjects, I am proud to state 
 that the most astonishing and marked improvement has taken 
 place among the aborigines. In the attendance at divine worship 
 the people are left in a great degree to their own choice, and 
 which, in matters of religion, I think they ought. But as example 
 
^ 
 
 .JV/'nr- IT Ut . .7.1i.;. 
 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 teaches before precept, I am a constant and rcgiilar attendant. 
 Their conduct dui-iug divine worship is of the most exemplary 
 kind. They are quiet and attentive to what is said, and tlie 
 chnrch is crowded. The ignorance of the natives heretofore in' 
 the first principles of religion was more the fault of the system 
 than of the people, lor I am fully persuaded they are capable of , 
 high mental improvement. 
 
 SACRED MELODY. 
 
 " This had always appeared to me a delightful part of worship, 
 and as the natives were generally partial to music, I requested 
 singing to l:)e introduced. It is truly gratifying to see with what 
 avidity they listen to this part of devotion. The singing of 
 the women and of the native youth has a pleasing effect, their 
 melody being soft and harmonious. 
 
 " My family and the civil officers and their wives act as 
 teachers (i.e., of the native schools), and the average attendance 
 is from 60 to 80. No language can do justice to the intense 
 anxiety manifested by the adult aboriginal for learning, it must 
 be seen to be properly comprehended. The desire of the natives 
 for learning is not the result of compulsion, but is the free 
 exercise of their own unbiassed judgment. Six months have now 
 l^assed away since the schools were commenced, and there is not 
 the slightest diminution of their numV^er, The same vehement 
 desire continues unabated. The anxiety of the natives for the 
 attainment of knowledge is great. Their proficiency is astonish- 
 ing. Some are now able to read in words of three syllables. The 
 juveniles are making considerable proficiency in learning, and 
 several are in writing, and have acquired a knowledge of the 
 relation of numbers, and some can add tolerably correctly. 
 
 "The aborigines have shown every disposition to become 
 civilised. The men are employed in rural and other piirsuits, 
 and the women are occiipied in domestic concerns, and for which 
 these people have shown the greatest aptitude, and by their 
 frequent enquiries e\iuced the strongest desire to become ac- 
 (piainted with the arts of civilised life. Their wild habits are 
 fast giving way. Their corroberies (i.e., violent dances, accom- 
 l)anied by vociferous singing) and perigrinations into the bush are 
 less frequent. They are becoming more cleanly in their persons, 
 and are rapidly acquiring industrious luibite. The use of ochre * 
 and grease, to which they were so miicli addicted, they have 
 entirely refrained from. The women take particular pains in the 
 arrangement of theii- domestic economy. Theii- cottages are ., 
 
 * The natives called this mineral Lat-teen-ei% or Lat-te-win-er. 
 See llobiusou's note to Editor of C'ourur, March, 1815^. 
 
 i 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 41 
 
 carefully swept twice a day. The cleanliness, order, and 
 regularity observed by the inmates of the new cottages in the 
 disposition of their culinary utensils, furniture, bedding, would 
 do credit to many white persons. In sewing, the women have 
 made great proficiency. They make all their dresses. The native 
 women provide fiiel for their firew, they also wash their own 
 clothes, bedding, &o. The male aboriginals are equally indus- 
 trious. A road more than half a mile in length, cut through a 
 dense forest in the rear of my quarters, to the beach, as well as 
 cross roads, have been done by them. Several acres of barley, the 
 first grown upon Flinder's Island, have been reaped by them with 
 the assistance of the civil officers, and the facility with which 
 they executed this branch of husbandry was a matter of surprise 
 to every one. The Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, taken col- 
 lectively, are the most advanced in civilisation, (these and the 
 Stony Creek tribe were the most ferocious and predatory of all 
 the natives), and the western tribes, who occupied a country far 
 remote from any settlement, and, therefore, could not have 
 acquired any previous knowledge of rural pursuits, were equally 
 as ready at reaping as the others. Indeed, their aptitude to 
 acquire knowledge can scarcely be credited. 
 
 " The natives now cook their own meat and bake their own 
 bread. The contrast between their present and past condition 
 in this respect is stj-iking in the extreme. In their primitive state 
 their mode of cooking was to throw the animal upon the fire, and 
 when half warmed through, take out the entrails, and rub the 
 inside over with the paunch. It was then eaten. Their mode of 
 cooking now is widely different. They follow the example of the 
 whites, and adopt their practices in everything. 
 
 " Their chief amusement is hunting (and it seems they soon 
 extirpated the game), ^\^len at the settlement, they amuse 
 themselves by dancing, bathing, cricket, trap-l)all playing, and 
 recently they have constructed swings. But the amusement to 
 which they are most partial is marbles. The women join in the 
 dance, and have lately taken a fancy to play at marbles also. 1 
 have given several entertainments in the bush, which the officers 
 have attended. These festivities afforded them much amuse- 
 ment." 
 
 He concludes an interesting report by saying he believes 
 they have no desire to return to their old haunts and ways of 
 life, and so long as he was with them to keep their minds and 
 bodies in exercise it is very likely they thought but little on the 
 subject of their former wild existence. But I liave been told that 
 their natural longing for their own districts afflicted them greatly 
 after his family left the island, and that they often sat for ho;ir» 
 
•12 WAltS, liXTllU'ATlON, UAlilT.S, &C., 
 
 looking at tlio bills of llio muiii liiiiil, which in cle* wciithcr were 
 visibli^ from FlinderH iKlund. Bnt after years of confinement at 
 the Wyba-Luma settlement, they lost hoj^e and fell into 
 apathy. 
 \^ After retiring from the oflice of commandant of Flinders, 
 
 Robinson settled in the colony of Vict(jria ; where for many 
 years he was chief protector of aborigines. He was a native of 
 London, I believe, and died a very few years ago at Bath, in 
 comfortable, but I Tinderstand, not alHuent circnmstances. 
 
 Little more remains to be said of the natives but what is 
 nn2:>leasant to relate. 
 
 On the retirement of this most useful and energetic man 
 from the public service of Tasmania, it was difficult to meet with 
 u fitting successor for the ofKce he had tilled, and impossible to 
 find one like himself. Such servants are not to be replaced. 
 Persons of better education there were plenty, but who lacked 
 the qualities he possessed in so great a degree, to guide, instruct, 
 and attach the natives to his person. His successors were not of 
 his mould at all, and some of them had no love for anything 
 relating to the duties of tlieir pastoral and paternal office, except 
 its emoluments ; and all that he had done for them was rapidly 
 undone. And those Avho saw the aborigines after their removal 
 from Wyba-Luma to Oyster Cove could never believe them to be 
 part of the same people, who ten years before had given such 
 goodly proof of rapid emergence from barbarity. 
 
 A i^lausible successor of Robinson's, a man of the pseudo 
 dilettante class (a class that flourishes very luxuriantly in Tas- 
 mauian soil), probably sick of his isolation, persuaded the head- 
 strong Governor of the colony to transplant the black establish- 
 ment from Wyba-Luma to Oyster Cove ; the worst and most 
 dangerous neighbourhood that could have been selected in all 
 Tasmania. Nothing could surj^ass the general sterility of the 
 soil of this place (except live or six acres of it) or the moral taint 
 of its atmosphere, its neighboiirhood being then inhabited only 
 by woodcutters, avIio (particularly in those days) contained some 
 of the worst and lowest of our population amongst them. This 
 removal, as I think I have said before, took place in about 1847. 
 Their retrogression was pretty Avell fultilled before they quitted 
 their asylum in tlie Straits, but here their recession into some- 
 thing worse than their original barbarity took place. Theajjathy 
 into Avhich they had been permitted to sink from neglect of 
 cultivation i^'c'veiitcd any recurrence to their old jjredatory liabits, 
 tor tlicy liad now liavdiy life and spirit left for action beyond 
 exeursKms to the public-liouse whenev<.r they could raise the 
 means, either l)y the sale of necklaces (or Avorse practises) or the 
 
OF THE NATIVE TEIBBS OF TASMANIA. i:} 
 
 gooLl nature of visitors, to obtain drink, or as they called it 
 "giblee." Here for several years they were under uo other 
 supervision than that of a petty constable or two, and menials, 
 while their paid superintendent Avas pursuing his elegant studies 
 and follies in Hobart Town, 20 miles ofl". He was removed from 
 his office, or probably retired, in 1855, but not until the demora- 
 lisatio}! of the natives was completed, and the natives had become, 
 when I and many others saw them, nothing better than a horde 
 of lazy, filthy, druidven, listless l)arbarians ; and in everything 
 except the practice of theft, a good deal the inferior of the gipsy. . 
 
44 WARS, EXTIBPATIOX, HABITS, kc, 
 
 CHArTEE II. 
 
 The history of the old races of mankiutl furnishes many ex- 
 amples of the decay of nations, bnt feAV, if any, where annihilation 
 has followed the declension of their independence, and their 
 emmergence into barbarity. With the subsidence of their power, 
 and loss of national statixs, they have not necessarily passed 
 away from the earth, but are still reiDreseuted among its peoj^le, 
 though it may be that their descendants are unknown to us by 
 the names that distinguished their ancestors. The many great 
 Communities mentioned in the Old Testament as then existiug — 
 the Idumean, Chaldean, Assja-ian, and others — though long since 
 politically extinct, have not died off", but are still pei-petuated, 
 though not as distiwct nations. 
 
 The contact of the suiierior families of mankind witli one 
 another, even where it takes the form of collision, does not neces- 
 sarily imply the extermination of either, and if it has ever occun-ed 
 at all, it has not been with the frequency Avith which it has been 
 observed, where civilisation has been opposed to pure barbarism, 
 as in the New World, in Australasia, and Polynesia, where the 
 existence of the i^rimitive man seems incompatible with that of a 
 superior race, as if the apijroach of the latter carried witli it a 
 decree for the retreat and extiri^ation of the other, though that 
 extinction has always appeared to me, (at least in the case of the 
 Tasmanian savage, ) to be traceable to very different causes from 
 those it is iisual to ascribe to it, such as the pretended dissemi- 
 nation of Euroi3ean vices and practices among them, to which by 
 far the larger number were never exposed, and to cruelties that 
 were never dii'ected agamst them in anything like the degree 
 which some inconsiderate WTiters have too rashly affii'med. 
 
 It is not, however, the object of this chapter to repeat what 
 I have said elsewhere, of the real causes that have led to the total 
 eradication of the aboriginal men of Tasmania, but only to collect 
 together before the opportunity is wholly lost, a few of the 
 vestiges that are still unforgotten of a people whose generations 
 have passed away, whose days, as the inspired jjsalmist says, are 
 gone, and whose years are brought to au end, " as it were a tale 
 that is told." 
 
OF THE NATIVE TEIBES OF TASMANIA. 45 
 
 Of wliat has beeu recorcled of oiir first acquuintauce witli 
 this people, and of their early misuuderstandiugs with the colo- 
 uists, I shall say uuthiug here ; uor eveu follow the fashionable 
 practice of (luotiug stale goverumeutal proclamations abont them 
 (published, as I believe, for after eftect only,) libelling the 
 colonists, by <lescribing them as very generally the originators 
 of the many disputes that took place between the two races, but 
 shall commence the task I have cut out for myself by gathering 
 up the few scraps of intelligence I can discover, either of tribes 
 or individuals, of whom any trace is left, who playeel a part in 
 the outrages that followed the cessation of the partial intercourse 
 that once subsisted between them, and which terminated much 
 about fifty years ago, when it is that their history begins to be 
 interesting. 
 
 Up to this time the appearances and some of the realities of i 
 
 friendship existed between one or two of the many tribes, into r 
 
 which the native population was split, and the settlers. But as n 
 
 the favourite hunting grounds of the former were contracted by J 
 
 the spread of settlement, and their occupation by stock, hostile j< 
 
 collisions between black and irhifc became more and more fre- 3 
 
 queut, and a petty war of assaults and reprisals was carried on, 1) 
 
 the black jDeople having then, as, indeed, the very generally had 'j 
 
 the best of the tight. But still this did not put an end to all (J 
 
 good understanding, for in some districts both sides c(mtinued h 
 
 to exhibit reciprocity of friendship, or, at least, of a civility. [J 
 
 But this intercourse, such as it was, was brought to a close \ 
 
 by Colonel Arthur, who was quite as fond of maintaining order j 
 
 by making examples, as of administering the law with strict 
 justice ; and who, managing to catch four aboriginals during the ^ 
 
 war of attacks and reprisals then going on (each side being as 2 
 
 bad as the other,) he, faithful to his practises, hanged them all. ^ 
 
 The acts, though much applauded at this time of general excite- t 
 
 ment against. the old possessors of the land, have not always b 
 
 found favour with his commentators, one respectable writer, ^ 
 
 Henry Melville, maintaining that these men, being prisoners of 
 war only, ought not to have sufifered for acts justified in war time 
 by the usages of all nations. 
 
 With the deaths of these four men the estrangement of the 
 two races, which before was never more than temporary and 
 partial, became comjilete, and all the fatally disastrous consequ- 
 ences that befell both races afterwards may be dated from these 
 unfortunate occurrences. 
 
 But whatever were the sentiments of the white people at 
 witnessing these most impolitic executions, they were viewed by 
 the other race "with surprise aud horror. At first, how;ever, they 
 
46 -VVARS, EXTini'ATlON, HABITS, &C., 
 
 did not believe Colonel Artliur to bo in oarnesfc with them; for 
 even after th(^ deatlis of the two -svlio were lirst disjjosed of, they 
 still eame to the settlers' Iionies , iind departed peacefully from 
 them as before. But when tliey saw two more of their number 
 put to deatli for mui'dor, wliil(> no kind of 2iHnislnnent overtook 
 those who inHictcd similar violence on them, they sullenly with- 
 drew to the woods, and never more entered the settled districts, 
 except as the deadly enemies of our people. 
 
 But in contrast witli thes(> and (jtlier acts of violence ; said to 
 have been indulged in ag-ainst the blacks, a solitary exception has 
 to be made in favour of one of a most dej^raded class of men : 
 namely, Michael Howe, the bushran^ifer, of whom it is recorded 
 by the historian of Tasmania, West, that he infiicted severe 
 corporal chastisement (m a companion, for Avautonly assaulting a 
 native — aii ijistance of commendable fin^liug, from which his 
 Ijotters might have taken a lesson. The long career of outrage 
 of this outcast, presents too dark a picture to allow us to dispense 
 with one illuminating ray ; and I therefore introduce the follow- 
 ing extract, from which the above statement is derived, from the 
 Hlstorif of TccN mania, vol. ii. page 17 : — "Whether from policy 
 or humanity, Michael Howe formed an (>xceptiou," (that is to 
 Avanton cruelty), "he would n<3t allow them to l)e molested, 
 'except in ba,ttle,' and he Hogged v>^ith the raf one of his 
 comrades who had 'broken the articles,' by wantonly wounding a 
 native." — Stated I)}/ a oovipanion. 
 
 That the above account of their separation from the colonists 
 is the correct one, is proved by the report of a number of gentle- 
 men styled the Aboriginal Committee, who were appointed by 
 Colonel Arthur, in 1830, "to iu(piire into the origin of the hostility 
 displayed by the black natives of tlie island, and to consider the 
 means exjiedient to l)e adopted, with the view of checking the 
 devastation of property and tlie destruction of human live.i, 
 occasioned by the state of warfare which has so extensively 
 prevailed," wlio state, "that after tliese executions, tlie natives 
 cauie no more to the usual place of resort," meaning Kangaroo 
 Point, where the two last who died were taken. 
 
 Tlu^se fimr men were hanged at different times ; two of them, 
 known to the Avhites as Mus<piito and Black -Tack, on the '25th of 
 February, ] 825 ; and the .otli(>rs, called .Tack and l)ick, on the 
 13tli September of tlie next year. 
 
 In writing of the origin of the strife that now commenced in 
 earnest, I shall have little to say of these victims, except of the 
 two Avho died first ; for \(>ry few ])articulars have reached us that 
 relate to the dthers. 
 
 The l)lack nameil Musiputu was a native of New South Wales : 
 
OF THK NATIVE TIUBES OF TASSMANTA. 47 
 
 but lie Liul resided long iu tins colony, and was wluit was called 
 a cu'ihscd black, that is, one who liad lived among Europeans 
 and learned something of their arts and practises. In former 
 years he had acted for the Government as a tracker of the bnsh- 
 raugmg classes, then a pretty numerous ccmimuuitv, but more 
 particularly as the pursuer of the "last and worst of the bush- 
 rangers," as he Avus styled, namely the notorious Michael Howe 
 J3ut alter the downfall and death of this desperate outlaw, which 
 put an end to freebooting in Tasmania for one long while his 
 services were no longer required by the police. 
 
 It might, however, have been expected that such a person as 
 Musquito, who had "done the state some service, " and jeopardised 
 his safety over and over again in his dangerous calling, would 
 have received something more than a mere dismissal when no 
 longer wanted, which was what he got, and no more. i 
 
 The occupation he had followed so long, and now involun- \ 
 
 tarily relinquished, acquired for him, especially with the prisoner \ 
 
 classes, a large share of the odium that attaches itself to the ^ 
 
 miserable office of an informer, exposing him to insult wherever K 
 
 he appeared, that was more than the sensitive savage could bear ' !) 
 
 with. Exasperated at the indignities he was doomed to undergo 1) 
 
 now that governmental employ and protection were withdrawn he ') 
 
 separated himself from the whites, and joined his fortunes with (1 
 
 tliose of one of the East Coast tribes, afterwards styled the Oyster I 
 
 iiay tribe, of which he became the leader, and, it 'is believed its f\ 
 
 instructor in mischief. ' * 
 
 During the pericxl of his connection with these new associates 5 
 
 he IS accused of having slaughtered very many stockkeei^ev.s '• '^ 
 
 but the number of these atrocities is probably much exaggerated • I* 
 
 and the reports, though written iu a most inimical s]nri't, do not 
 seem to implicate him much more deeply iu them than the rest ►, 
 
 of his gang. It was, however, determined to get hold of him if V 
 
 possible, and bring him to justice, that the punishment of such f. 
 
 an arch ofiender might act as a warniug to others. " 
 
 Of the horde with whom the Sydney native was associated ^' 
 
 was a man whose tribal name has not descended to us, but who 
 was known to the colonists by the nickname of Black Jack, the 
 same who died with Musquito, as related precedingiy. Mur( 'uito 
 suffered for the murder of two men, named respectively William 
 Hollyoak, and Mammoa, who was a native of Otalieite ; and 
 Jilack Jack for kilhng a person named Patrick McCarthy. Jack 
 was also tried for implication in the offence for which Musiiuito 
 died, as he was present at them along Avith sixty oy seventy others 
 ot his countrymen ; but as guilty participation could not be 
 brought home to him, he was ac(iuitied of the charges for which 
 
 N 
 
 i» 
 
48 WARS, EXTIRrATlON, HABITS, &C., 
 
 the other was concloraued. But [McCarthy's death being then 
 brouglit against him, he was not so hicky as to escaije condemna- 
 tion a second time, and was ordered lor <»xecution accordingly. 
 
 The jnnrders of Hollyoak and the Otahetian took phice on 
 the 15th of November, 1823, on tlie land of Mr Silas Gatelionse at 
 (Triudstone Bay, which is on the East Coast, between Spring Bay 
 and Little Swaujiort, and abont sixty miles, by laud, from 
 Hobart Town. 
 
 Though not far from the East Coast road, it is even at 
 jjresent a rarely visited and most retired spot ; and to any person 
 disposed to encourage desjjondency, and anxions for com^jlete 
 seclusion and isolation from the world, I should certainly recom- 
 mend lum a location at Gnndstone Bay. 
 
 There is, however, some fair cultivable land about it, and a 
 large extent of rough pasture ground between the shoreline anil 
 the East Coast tiers, which conmieuded it to Mr. Gatehouse as 
 suitable for farm purjioses ; though what it was that induced 
 anyone to fix his homestead hereabouts fifty (jr sixty years ago, 
 when nearly all the best lands of the colony Avere to be had for 
 the trouble of asldug, we need not now concern ourselves aboxit. 
 It is, however, as said just above, a grassy tract, and then 
 swarmed with large game, namely, emu and kangaroo, and was 
 one of the hunting grounds of the tribe who were just now 
 roaming about this quarter. 
 
 It may be worth remarking that the last emu eaught in 
 Tasmania — as far as I know at least — was taken not very far from 
 here, and just about thirty years ago. 
 
 But the monotonous quietude that generally prevaded the 
 listless neighbourhood of Grindstone Bay, was dispelled by the 
 unwelcome arrival of a strong detachment of the sanguinary 
 Oyster Bay natives, on Thursday the 13th November, 1823. 
 They numbered sixty-five, and took up their quarters by a small 
 stream that flowed past Mr. Gatehouse's stock hut, then occui)ied 
 by three persons, namely, John Kadford, William Hollyoak, and 
 Mammoa. 
 
 But at this period of partial intercourse between the two racss, 
 the appearance of a horde of natives, though not an agreeable 
 event, did not always excite the extreme alarm, with Avhich it 
 was witnessed a few years afterwards. But whatever may have 
 been the fears of the solitary stockmen, at the sight of such a 
 number of -wild looking fellows, and weird looking women, they 
 were allayed, or i)artially so, by the assurances of the leading 
 man, Musquito, that no mischief was intended, and all went on 
 friendly enough until the catastroijhe that terminated tlie lives of 
 Hollyoak and Mammoa took place, 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. . 49 
 
 The survivor of the rencontre that took i^lace, seems all along 
 to have had some suspicious of the sincerity of Musquito, that 
 were engendered partly by his overacting his part of a friendly 
 visitor, and partly by his everlasting intrusions into the hut, the 
 black eating like a wolf of Radford's provisions, at every visit. 
 
 The day before the arrival of the natives, an invalid servant 
 belonging to the establishment of Mr, George Meredith, of Oyster 
 Bay, who was just discharged from the Hobart Town Hospital, 
 and was journeying homewards, arrived at Gatehouse's farm hut ; 
 but being still weakly, he was unable to proceed further without 
 a day or two of rest, ai'ter travelling sixty miles of one of the worst 
 bush roads in Tasmania. The unfortunate fellow's request was 
 granted directly, and he was admitted. He was William Hollyoak. 
 The blacks lingered about the premises, unoccupied except 
 when at play, until 2 or 3 o'clock on Friday afternoon, when i 
 
 Musquito and most of his associates went aAvay to hunt, or pre- l 
 
 tended to do so, but returued before dark, the chief uninvitedly I 
 
 supping Avith the stockmen of course. > 
 
 The keen eye of the savage was everywhere, and soon 'j 
 
 informed him of Radford's means of defence, which consisted of j 
 
 a musket and fowling-piece, which the chief took down from the 1' 
 
 wall, and examined Avith the acumen of a connoisseur, and having l 
 
 replaced them, returned to his camja by the creek. V 
 
 By daydawu of the fatal 15th of November, the blacks ^ 
 
 were all astir. The principal men of the tribe had by this time V 
 
 taken possession of the stock yard, where they had kindled a fire, f| 
 
 round whicli they sat in earnest consultation, doubtlessly touching i 
 
 the attack they were about making on their white entertainers. 
 The rest of the party, according to the evidence given at the !| 
 
 trial, were " over the creek, where tliey had been at their diver- ft 
 
 sious. The natives who were playing, might be 150 yards from fJ 
 
 the hut. " Tlie stockmen witnessed their games with some interest, in 
 
 and Radford and IMammoa imprudently walked towards them, «t' 
 
 leaving the invalid at the hut with directions, if he followed them,' j^, 
 
 to bring the guns. He, however, neglected the precaution and 
 joined his friends, Avhich some of the blacks seeing, slipped 
 stealthily inside and secured their weapons unobserved by the 
 three stockkeepers. 
 
 The first indication of active hostility was given by Musquito 
 making prize of the shepherd's dogs, and nearly simultaneously 
 by the rest of the natives marching on the hut. On observing 
 the direction they were taking, Radford and Hollyoak ran for 
 their arms but found them gone. By some artifice, Musquito 
 had separated Mammoa from the others, and he re-joined them 
 no more. The natives were at the door directly afterwards, all 
 
50 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, <feC., 
 
 armed witli twelve foot spears excei)t Musquit<j, wlio that day 
 carried a waddy only. "They stood" says Radford in his 
 evidence, "with their spears raised and all the jjoints directed 
 towards me and the deceased, Hollyoak," In their defenceless 
 state, the oidy chance of life left the two shepherds was in flight, 
 and off they set, l)nt pursued by thirty or forty enemies. The 
 tii'st spear that was tlirown pierced Radford in the side, and 
 Hollyoak was very badly hit in the back the next instant. At 
 tliis time Radford was ahead of his companion, but stopped a 
 moment for liim and withdrew the sjjear from his back, and then 
 continued running at a tremendous pace, gaining ground every 
 minute. But not so the other, who was overtaken and speared 
 to death directly, the last words of the dying man that reached 
 his comiJunion being, " O my G(jd, the blackfellows have got 
 me." Radford though speared himself, still ran, and finally 
 escaped them. 
 
 The murders of Mammoa and Hollyoak, who were both 
 killed that morning, were accomplished with all the savage 
 brutality usual with the aboriginal man of Tasmania, whose 
 wrath, as said before, was seldom appeased by the death of his 
 victim, and whose body he continued to assault, long after life 
 had gone out. The condition of the corpse of Mammoa is par- 
 ticularly described by the witness who discovered it about 
 eight days afterwards, as having been horribly dealt with — the 
 head beaten almost to pieces — the body pierced by spears in 
 thirty- seven different places, and then thrown into a waterhole ; 
 and such was the force with which they cast their weapons at the 
 body that many broken spears were afterwards found scattered 
 about the ground where he died. — {Gazette, December 3rd, 1824.) 
 
 The principal Avituess, Mr. John Radford, who gave evidence 
 at the trial of these savages, is still living at Little Swanport, not 
 very far from the scene of the murders described above ; and I 
 tliink I am not far wi-ong in saying he has resided there ever 
 since — a period of fifty-two years. 
 
 Of the death of Patrick McCarthy, for which the companion of 
 Musquito (Black Jack) suffered, no jjarticulars are preserved in 
 the old Gazette:^ ; nor of the murder of the stockkeeper, Thomas 
 Golley, at Oyster Bay, for which the other two aboriginals, Dick 
 and Jack, were executed. The Colonial limes of the 15th Sep- 
 tember, 1826, does indeed jjublish a detailed account of the 
 execution of the two men last-named ; but as the article contains 
 nothing very interesting, I shall abridge the details. The elder 
 one Dick, who seem to have had a very lively abhorrence of the 
 executioner, of his entire apparatus, and above all of his office, 
 which lie quite understood, resisted the Slieriff's officers mos( 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA, 51 
 
 pluckily, refusing to mount the scaffold for any of them ; and 
 when forced np at last, he gave them such a specimen of his vocal 
 endowments, as might have been heard halfway to Kangaroo 
 Point ; and being a particular sort of a fellow, he would not 
 stand iij) to be hanged, along with the other six culprits (live of 
 them whites,) who were ranked up to die along Avith him, * but 
 insisted on having a seat, and was accommodated with a stool, on 
 which he squatted himself to receive the final attentions of Mr. 
 Dogherty, the Sheriff's assistant ; which seat, says the Colonial 
 Timea quite gravely, " dropped with him when the awful moment 
 arrived which plunged him into &c., &c. The other black, a 
 mere youth, treated the whole legal ceremonies that intervened 
 between his capture and p,vecTition, with great unconcern, buthi>: 
 sufferings were painfully prolong^^d, by an accident that h.appene>l 
 at the moment, before strangulation was completed, i 
 
 Having described above the origin of Musquito's fleeing to t 
 
 the woods, it is necessary to the comijletion of his history to j 
 
 explain how he was taken at last, J 
 
 This man had caused the death of so many stockmen that his [" 
 
 removal from his old haunts, and associates, either by capture or j 
 
 death, was no longer a simple desire, but a overpowering neces- jl 
 
 sity. Biit then to lay hands on a man, so overflowing with arti- i 
 
 fice and difficult to find off" his guard as he, and who was known () 
 
 to be a most desperate fellow, was something like the old project N 
 
 for belling the cat, a thing very easy to propose but difficult to () 
 
 achieve. All sorts of rash designs were proi^osed by aspiring (^ 
 
 policemen, or officious saran-s of the outside world, for the </ 
 
 capture or destruction of the enemy, that were abandoned as 
 soon as examined, as failures, or sure to be so if tried. However, [| 
 
 after a thousand devices had been gravely discussed, with the t9 
 
 invariable fate of dismissal as impracticabilities, an idea occurred vj 
 
 to a simple tradesman that was worth them all. This man was f^ 
 
 only a printer and editor — a mere newspaper conductor like *f 
 
 yourself, sir. v 
 
 Mr. Andrew Bent — one of the fathers of the Australian press . ' ' 
 
 — was at this time proprietor and conductor of the llobart Town 
 Oazettc and General Advertiser, and combined in his own per- 
 son, I believe, the entire literary and mechanical staff of the 
 Gazette office. He was editor — he was reporter — he was reader 
 — he was clerk, compositor, pressman, and deuce knows what 
 besides. He was lame, little, and ugly ; but as a counterbalance 
 
 * At this horrible gaol delivery, uo fewer than tireiity-ci(/ht men 
 tlicd, They were executed on four nearly following mornings, in in- 
 stalments of seven, (I'sM, ni/w, undfour persons. 
 
o2 WABS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, itc'., 
 
 of tlioHo i)(>rRonnl defocta, ho wnsa man of bruins, common fcusc, 
 find iiiiluKtrv ; nnil ■whilst otiicrs wore iJix^pounding all sorts of 
 iinprficticiiblo schcmrs for the oljjcr't above stiitcnl, it occurred to 
 liim to ortVr to the Governnient the services of a domesticated 
 aboriginal ycmth who -was in the employ of Mr. Bent's family as 
 general servant, in the very widest sense of the word, his duties 
 in the house Ijeing as multiform as his master's Avcre in the 
 office. 
 
 Tegg (such being th(> name l)y which the young black was 
 known) is rej^orted to have been a most intelligent lad of about 
 seventeen, possessed of all the itrtifices common to his race, and 
 above all that acuteness of vision, which, united to practice, made 
 a perfect hunting-dog of him, able to follow even the smallest 
 game by its tracks. This boy had been employed to chase bush- 
 rangers, and on one occasion the gang led by Matthew Brady 
 was dispersed through his co-operation with the i)olice. 
 
 Colonel Arthur accepted Bent's otier and according to a 
 pretty broad statement which appears in the Uazcttc of the 8th 
 of Ai)ril, 1825, promised the boy a boat, if successful, which he 
 greatly coveted. This lad had accpiired a notion of trading 
 whilst living with the whites, and Bent says he meant to run her 
 between Hobart Town and Bruny Island, to traffic with his 
 ccmutrymen there in kangaroo skins. But after the capture of 
 Muscpiito V)y him. the promise Avas forgotten, and the keen feel- 
 ings of the boy were so wounded by this cruel and imiaolitic 
 breach of faith, that in sheer resentment of it he quitted Bent's 
 employ, and says the (iiucUc quoted from just above, he was 
 heard as he left the house, to say, " they promised me a boat, 
 but they no give it ; me therefore go with Avild mob, and kill all 
 white men come near me," a true exposition of the savage 
 style of thought, which meditates indiscriminate and general 
 resentment for a single wrong ; and he accordingly joined the wild 
 natives, transformed almost in a moment from a tractable youth 
 to a very demon. 
 
 The young black, accompanied by two Europeans, named 
 Godfrey and Marshall, all well armed, started from Hobart Town 
 early in August, 1824 ni route for the usual retreats of the 
 Oyster Bay tribe. All of them must have been excellent walkers ; 
 for, notwitlistanding the dreadful state of the East Coast road 
 then, they reached Oyster Bay on the third day of their journey, 
 a feat that would not be too easily accomplished even now. 
 
 The malevolent angel that had heretofore directed the move- 
 ments, and watched over the safety t)f the grim chieftain Musquito, 
 deserted his charge of this moment of danger, and took side with 
 his euemy. For some cause, perhaps momentary caprice only, 
 
OF THE NATIVE TKIBES OF TASMANIA. 53 
 
 he was eucamped with his two women hj himself, the rest of the 
 tribe being in another glen. Tegg ]iad good information of his 
 movements and of the direction lie had taken, so he got on his 
 tracks without difficulty. Fatigued as the jjarty were after their 
 rai^id march, the pursuit commenced immediately, and before 
 dusk of the day of their arrival at Oyster Bay, they came in view 
 of the bivouac of the savage. He had, luckily, no dogs, and not 
 expecting ;>, hostile visit from anyone, he Avas not on the watch, 
 as usual with him. His women were at a little distance from the 
 wretched bark weather screen they had put up for him, to break 
 the force of the cutting wind, which was cold enough noAv. Tegg 
 directed his compani<nis to take post between the chief and his 
 females, which they did by stealthily advancing in the direction 
 indicated l)y the young black, but "who himself made a cat-like 
 movement toward the hovel in which Musquito lay, half-roasting > 
 
 himself by the lire that blazed up merrily m front of it. \ 
 
 Musquito started from the ground at the first indication of I 
 
 approaching footsteps, at sound of ,vliieh Tegg darted forward to J 
 
 confront him before could seize his arms, which Tegg divined but A 
 
 for once wi-ongly, that the other had at hand ; but so assured 'J 
 
 Avas the doomed man of security, that he had not a spear in his () 
 
 camp. Tegg then fired at him,' sending a ball through his body, '] 
 
 from one barrel and two into his thighs from the .other. But ft 
 
 badly Avounded as he was he ran oft', but pain and loss of blood fi 
 
 soon brought him to a stand. ^ 
 
 In the meantime Godfrey and Marshall had taken both of i 
 
 Musquito's Avives ; and whilst the latter stood sentry over the J 
 
 tAvo prisoners, Godfrey ran off to assist Tegg. On joining his ^ 
 
 youthful leader 'he found Musquito Avounded, as said above, and I* 
 
 at Ijay, but still making a poor effort^to defend himself Avith sticks S 
 
 and stones. Seeing, however, the futility of resisting tAvo armed ? 
 
 men, he at length surrendered. f 
 
 HoAv it Avas that a man so badly wounded was got to Hobart t 
 
 ToAvn, I have no information, but suppose he Avas sent round by y 
 
 water. He reached this place late in the evening of the 12th of , ^' 
 
 August, and Avas placed in the Hospital, Avhere the sable chief 
 Avas mtervieAved by his brother potentate, the Governor ; from 
 Avhence, in process of time, he Avas removed to the Supreme 
 Court, to take his trial for the murders named above, and from 
 here, by a natural transition, to the condemned cell and gibbet. 
 
 If the report such as it is, that is given in the official Gazette 
 of the trial of this man be correct, it is not easy to understand on 
 Avhat it Avas he was convicted ; for Avhatever may have been his 
 guilt, there Avas no legal proof of any, beyond presence at the 
 iuit along Avitli sixty or seventy more, and some slightly suspi- 
 
54 \VA«S, EXTIRl'ATlON, IIAIUTS, A:f., 
 
 riouR circumstances, but not f^noufjli, at least, for a jury of our 
 times to convict on, or on Avliich a laotlern judge would condemn. 
 ])ut as it may have l)eou thought necessary to make a few 
 examples he may have been sacrificed to intimidate his surviving 
 brethren into 8ul)misRio]i to the sui^erior race ; and from what I 
 remember of the Gdvernor of the time, of the judge who tried 
 them, and of military juries generally, I don't lielieve that 
 justice, or anything like it, Avas always done here fifty years ago. 
 
 But whatever was the motive that led to those executions, it 
 quite failed of producing anything but evil, its only effect being 
 to imbue the entire race Avith a most active spirit of resentment 
 that never died out, so long as- they remained at ];n:go — about ten 
 years longer ; and Colonel Arthur was quickly niade to under- 
 stand by their uncensing iTostilities, and most sanguinary 
 aggressions, that a grand mistake had been made, and that he 
 had formed a very [false estimate of their real character, if he 
 thought to frigliteu f/iaa into submission l)y any such examples 
 as these. 
 
 Before proceeding fiirther with the fcAv tales or legends of 
 aboriginal existence that I have been able to collect together, I 
 shall say a little of the intellectual endowments and martial 
 character of the extinct Tasmanians, stating here once for all that 
 I derive a very great deal of my information aboiit them from the 
 best living authority, namely, Mr. Alexander McKay, of Pepper- 
 mint Bay, Avho knew this people intimately when in their A\-ild 
 state — who jjassed several years of an useful life, either in jjur- 
 suit of them, or amongst them at their camp fires, and who did 
 so much to aid their chief captor, Mr, George Augustus Eobinsou 
 to "bring them in," as to call forth from the Government of the 
 day, a special lujtice of the great value of his serA'ices. 
 
 Of the mental qualities of no race of men, has a falser 'esti- 
 mate bee}i made by nearly everj' Avriter on Tasmania than of the 
 ancient possessors of the land. In consequence of the untrue 
 delineation of the character of our natives, made by Hobart Town 
 writers, and others Avho have cojiied from them ; who luiew 
 nothing of the bush or its Avild occupants, an idea preA'ailed 
 which has not yet died out, that they stood almost on a level witli 
 the brutes of the forest. 
 
 The usual style of this class of writers may be gathered from 
 the following sample of one of them that ;I extract from a work 
 pul )lished in this very city of ours about f orty-tAvo years ago, Avhilst 
 several tribes w^ere still at large ; which Avork Avas very extensively 
 read at the time, both here and elscAvhere, and has been purloined 
 from often since. Tliis anonA^n()us Avriter thus expresses him- 
 self : — " Perhaps of all creatures that Avear the human form, they 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 55 
 
 may be justly placed iu the very lowest scale of barbarism ; " 
 and he adds, " they live iu a state of brute nature." But this 
 was not the case, for they were naturally an intellectual race, 
 Avith faculties susceptible of very easy culture, as they showed 
 when in their wild state, by the clever manner in which (after a 
 brief association firstly wth the half civilised Musquito, and 
 secondly, with some other domesticated blacks, such as Tegg for 
 example, and many others, ) they planned all their operations 
 against the Settlers, in wliicli they seldom failed of success ; and 
 by the facility with which, when in captivity and under good 
 guidance, they received instruction, and accommodated them- 
 selves to European habits. They must not be judged of by what 
 we of the present day saw of them in the dark state of their 
 demoralisation at Oyster Cove, where, as at Flinders Island 
 during the last years of their sojourn, they were suffered to sink 
 into a state of degradation, even lower that from which they had 
 emerged. 
 
 Forty years and more have passed away since they ceased to 
 exist as an independent race of men ; and their frequent hostile 
 incursions into the settled districts, their slaughterings and 
 houseburnings, are well-nigh erased from recollection ; but that 
 they were a most mischevious, determined, and deadly foe, is 
 l^roved not only by a multitude of contemporaneous documents, 
 preserved in the Colonial Secretary's Office, but by the news- 
 papers of the day, that teem with narratives of their aggressive- 
 ness, and shew us that even in the days of their decay — chiefly 
 from natural causes — they took life about five times as often as 
 it was inflicted ujjon themselves, besides-committing such devasta- 
 tions on property, as we iu these j)eaceful times can scarcely be 
 brought to understa]id. 
 
 THEIR RELUCTANCE TO KILL A WHITE WOMAN. 
 
 Mr. McKay, who knew this people so intimately, relates a 
 circumstance in connection Avith their manifold aggressions on 
 our people, that has not been published before. Indeed it could 
 hardly be known to any except to one who like him, had Lived 
 very much amongst them. But it is so creditable to the great 
 mass of them, that justice to the memory of this people requires 
 that it should not go unrecorded. He reminded me of the fact of 
 our women being sometimes killed by them in the many farm 
 fights in which they were concerned ; but he assures me that 
 with hartlly an exception the men highly disapproved of it ; an 
 that every one of this class of murders, with which the whol 
 race was credited, were really traceable to two individuals onlv 
 both of whom Avere chiefs, namely, the leader of the Piper's 
 
56 WAKS, EXTlllI'ATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 River trilje, wlio was nainod Le-iU'r-o-p:lo-laiig-e-iiei-, anJ Mua- 
 to-pc-lc-ter, the cliicf of the Big llivor piujple. McKay dt'scribes 
 the tirst-uameil us a. miserabh' little brute ; aiul he believes his 
 sway over the rest was acHiuireJ by his excessive impudence aud 
 persistent bullying of them, qualities which we see even iu 
 civilised life, i)iaee a man too often in front of his betters. The 
 other was a tinely made, strai>piug fellow, " Every inch a king," 
 us poor Lear says. 
 
 McKay, whoso words I took down as he spoke them, says : — 
 " It is very possibh) that iu the excitement of ft'ght, Avomeu may 
 have been killed by other men ; but excej^t in the cases of the 
 above named chiefs, there was no premeditation in the act, for 
 they were naturally opposed to taking the hfe of a female. Of 
 women slain by Moutepeleter, Avere tlie two Misses Peters of 
 Bagdad, Mrs. McCasker of Westbury, and several others. Of 
 those killed by the other chief, he now remembers the name of 
 one only; namely, Mrs. Cunningham, the wife of a veteran living 
 at East Aim on the river Tamar. The murder of this last named 
 person led to further outrages on the jjersou of a black, who rated 
 tlie little chief for what he had just done. This man was a Cape 
 Portland native, but was staying with the Piper's Eiver fellows 
 at the time (this practice of visiting seem to have been quite 
 common amongst friendly tribes), "and when he heard of the 
 death of this woman, he spoke very disapprovingly of it, adding 
 that the men of his tribe never killed a white woman. Greatly 
 incensed at his interference, the chief angrily enquired what 
 business it was of his, who was not one of ///« peojile ? The two 
 disputants soon got to very high words, wlien all at once the 
 long named chief seized his spear, and drove it through the Cape 
 Portlander's body, and killed him on the spot." 
 
 The jjoor victim's Avife aud their child were present at the 
 moment ; and she having a keen perception of what would folloAv, 
 if she remained even for a moment where she was, snatched up 
 her child and hastened to make her escape from the murderer's 
 jn-esence ; but his thirst for blood was not yet slaked, and he 
 sent a spear after her that struck her on the forehead, but it 
 luckily glanced off without seriously hurting her, and she eventu- 
 ally rejoined the tribu she belonged to. 
 
 GEOEGE AUGUSTtTS EOBINSOX. 
 
 In continuing these legends, it is now necessary to introduce 
 to the reader a personage once Avell known to the colonists of both 
 Tasmania and Victoria, who during his residence in this colony, 
 rendered it such great and beneficial services as were not sur- 
 passed even by those performed by our third Governor, Colonel 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA. 57 
 
 Sorell. This man was George Augustus Eobinson, to whom 
 Tasmania oAved, bnt very imperfectly paid such a debt, as none 
 but he coukl have laid it under, in removing from their ancient 
 haunts, every remaining member, excepting four individuals who 
 had escaped his notice, of the sixteen tribes of natives whom he 
 found still in existence, (for several tribes whom he enumerates 
 had wholly died out before) when he undertook the seemingly 
 hopeless task of transplanting them, firstly to Swan, next to 
 Vansittart's or Guncarriage, and finally to Flinder's Islands. 
 They were truly an aggressive race, and the colonists of 
 Tasmania, caluminated as they have been, were never more 
 libelled than by those scribblers, who have described them as 
 uniformly, or even generally, the assailants of the primitive 
 iuhal)itants of this country. 
 
 In the long warfare that ensued between black and white, 
 after their disconnection, as described foregoingly,the aboriginals, 
 with some, but not very many exceptions, began every skirmish, 
 our own race having generally by far the worst of the fight ; and if 
 during the historic age of Tasmania, the blacks diminished from 
 several thousands to a very few hundreds, it was owing far more to 
 sickness than strife that they were thus thinned out — sickness, 
 taking the form of fatal catarrhal complaints, that sent them by 
 thousands to the grave. 
 
 Forcible measures having quite failed to subdue, or even 
 serioiisly to damage these jjeople, or to check their unceasing 
 aggressions, Eobinson tried other means with them, namely, 
 pacific overtures and conciliation ; and what could not be effected 
 by the combined action of several thousand armed men, he and 
 they who acted under him achieved, without using violence of 
 any land : and in about five or five and a haK years (between 
 1829 and 1834) he succeeded in removing every one of them who 
 were left, with the slight excej^tion named above, from the main- 
 land of Tasmania. 
 
 I will now take leave to give the details of some of liis 
 many pursuits after them, Avhich he continued to make with the 
 most unremitting perseverance at all seasons, and often under 
 circumstances most adverse to success, for five years, during 
 which the native tribes fell one by one into tlie snare ; for, beyond 
 doiibt, they were the victims of the well-devised and cleverly- 
 conducted artifices of a man from whom they had no more chance 
 of escaping than a fly has when entangled in the web of the 
 spider. 
 
 His first enterprise against them, undertaken at the end of 
 December, 1829, was quite an unsuccessful one, and excited 
 nothing but derision, and, of course, increased his discredit ■w'ith 
 
58 WARS, EXTIHrATIONf, HABITS, <S:C., 
 
 the cnloiiiets, who believed liim be nothing but a plausible 
 chiirlatau. He desi)i8ed their taunts, and replied not a word to 
 one of them. 
 
 Several months of apparent inaction, but of real preparation, 
 then followed, and it was not before May of 1830 that he set out 
 again with 18 others, 10 of whom were blacks, to confer with the 
 enemy. 
 
 Lautliug at a place on the South Coast, called Kecherche 
 Bay, from an open boat.so leaky that it was witli the last difficulty 
 he kept her from sinking Avith her living freight (all thanks to 
 official rcd-tapeism), he at once pushed over to a fiu'ther point 
 called Spring River, from which he started inland with his blacks 
 and three Eurojjeans, the rest remaining with the boat. From 
 here he proceeded cross-country to Poi't Davey, traversing a 
 mountainous, difficult, and heavily-wooded tract, and reached the 
 great 'open country beyond, about the 17th of May. This part of 
 Tasmania was then, and still is, a joerfect alpine solitude, and he 
 saw not the trace of man till he reached the last-named place. 
 " Here," he says, "a munerous band of natives appeared in sight. 
 On observing my people they fled, setting the heath on fii-e as 
 they went along," He was anxious to confer -ndth them, but the 
 suspicious savages evaded the desired inter^aew. Sending 
 forward some of his blacks avIio spoke the dialect of the South 
 Coast tribes, they overtook them, and explained the object of 
 this unexpected intrusion on lands that had never been visited 
 by a white man before, and very seldom since, the coast line 
 alone being known then. Their mission was greatly facilitated 
 by one of the women being related to the stranger blacks, and a 
 long-lost brother of hers was found amongst them. The tribe 
 consented to receive Robinson, and the next day was fixed on for 
 his first interview with the wild al)original man of the country; 
 the meeting to take place at a point amongst the moimtaius, 
 about three miles from his tent. Here he went accordingly Avith 
 his natives and three armed Europeans. The appearance of the 
 latter with their muskets at once excited their suspicions that his 
 mission was not of the pacific nature they expected, and they 
 broke up and left before he could reach them. From this time 
 he determined never again to go amongst them Avith arms of any 
 Bort, and if possible only with his blacks. 
 
 Nothing daunted by this faihire, he sent after them again, 
 and his black ambassadors once more succeeded in arranging for 
 an interAdcAv, and his first meeting with them took place on the 
 21st. " The object of my mission," he says, " I full}' explained 
 to them, Avith which they ai:)iieared highly pleased. With this 
 people I sojourned for about three Aveeks, travelling Avith, and 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 59 
 
 sleeping amongst them around their fii'es at night, accompaniecljby 
 a few aboriginals attached to the expedition." (RejooitjJuly 27, '30) 
 "During this visit, one of the women of the party, "he 
 says, "espoused a man of the Nine-nees," that is, the Port 
 Davey tribe, and of course followed him no further. 
 
 Soon after leaving the Niue-uees, he visited some other tribes 
 with whom he opened an intercourse in his usual manner. 
 " Several of these," he says,, " evinced a hostile feeling, which 
 was ultimately overcome. " 
 
 There were j)ersons amongst the natives whom he fell in 
 with on this occasion who had formerly lived mth the settlers, 
 and spoke our langitage well. But they used it only in abuse of 
 him, "making use," he says, "of very sciirrilous language." 
 The tribes that these men lived with were, he tells us, the most 
 ferocious of any he visited, no doubt insti'ucted by these " civil- 
 ised blacks," as this class of natives were not very properly 
 called, and of whom I shall have more to say before I have done 
 with the subject. 
 
 I should have said before that Port Davey is situated almost 
 exactly at the south-west corner of Tasmania ; and from hence 
 Mr. G. A. Robinson, the native protector, in this expedition 
 proceeded overlantl to Emu Bay, on the north coast, about 160 
 miles off, by direct measurement ; but in following the tracks of 
 the Avandering tribes dwelling in the western hemisphere of Tas- 
 mania, his route was so circuitous, and his counter-marches so 
 frequent, that he walked 1,000 miles in all before he reached the 
 bay. How he supported his jDeople during his ten weeks' journey 
 does not appear (for he says the only provision he carried was a 
 little wheat meal) ; but I presume he roughed it, to use a bush 
 phrase, along with his sable friends, living on kangaroos, wom- 
 bats, opossums, or anything that came to hand fii-st. 
 
 He completed this tedious journey on the 26th July, having 
 sown the seeds of future succes -• amongst more than half the 
 native races, and might have taken pretty nearly as many of them 
 as he thought fit, but he was restrained by his orders, which 
 at this time were to conciliate only. Diu-ing his absence a 
 general order was issued encouraging the api^rehension of the 
 natives, but of this he was ignorant until the opportunity Avas 
 gone, at least for the presnt. 
 
 His next expedition was as barren of results as his first one. 
 He this time traversed the East Coast districts, were large 
 bodies of natives were said to have appeared, but could not get 
 on their tracks, and he returned from his wearying enterprise, to 
 experience new proofs of public distrust in lam, by which he was 
 in no way distressed. 
 
60 WABS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C,, 
 
 He was, however, soon afterwards enabled to give proof of 
 his powers to do as he liked with the natives, and to induce their 
 surrender at his will, or pretty nearly so, now that his instructions 
 permitted him to do so, of Avhich he quickly availed himself. 
 
 He went again, unarmed as usual, Jimongst several con- 
 federated tribes living in the eastern districts of the colony, and 
 soon induced 13 of their people to follow him into hopeless 
 captivity, and located them for the present at a temiiorary asylum, 
 formed at a place called bwan Island, lying oft" the north-east 
 coast of Tasmania. He learned from his ijrisouers that they had 
 just returned from an expedition, against others of this unfortu- 
 nate race, over whom they had obtained a \nctory, if it may he so 
 termed where only three of the vanquished were slain. Those 
 tights often lasted for hoiu's, but such was the dexterity of the 
 savage in evading the sjiears of his adversaries that they seldom 
 struck him. Without moving an inch from his j^ost, he would 
 avoid a discharge of three or four well-directed spears sent at 
 him at the same instant. By a contortion of his body, a movc- 
 of his head to the right or left, or raising his leg or arm, he seldom 
 failed escaping them all, any one of which would have transfixed 
 the less agile Eiiropean with the most perfect certaint3\ 
 
 He remained at Swan Island till the middle of the year 1831, 
 organising his new establishment, roving amongst the many 
 islands of Bass's Straits, quarrelling with their occupants, the 
 sealers, about their women, and boring the Government as often 
 as he could with letters tilled with abuse of these men, and sick- 
 ening details of their cruelties ; about which I need say no more 
 than I have already done, except that he would have their women, 
 many of whom he took from them, but they also concealed many, 
 whom he never got ; after which he returned to his more proper 
 calling of following the natives of the wilderness. 
 
 But during nearly the whole of the year 1831, his successes 
 were inconsiderable. He pursued his prey with his accustomed 
 ardour, but the natives avoided and constantly escaped from him ; 
 and the most he effected during the best i^art of that year was 
 the partial disorganisation of some of the tribes, by the rather 
 unexpected but fortunate caj^ture of two or three of their chiefs. 
 
 But he was more fortunate just at the close of this year, and 
 removed to Flinder's Island, on which the aboriginal establish- 
 ment was now planted, the remains of two once powerful and 
 still very sanguinary tribes, after such a series of marches and 
 counter marches, of trials, hopes and disappointments, which he 
 describes in lengthy detail, as it is quite wearying to wade 
 through, the account of his meeting with them and their surren- 
 der being the only portions of two long-winded reports, dated 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 61 
 
 respectively the Sth and 30th January, 1832, that are worth 
 quoting, and from which the substance of what follows is 
 derived. 
 
 In the pursuit of these tribes he was aceompauied by a party 
 of 15, mostly blacks, and he fell in with the enemy on the great 
 central plateau of Tasmania, which he crossed and re-crossed 
 times almost without number before he could come upon the 
 active and susj)icious tribes he was after. He was at a jjlace 
 called Bashan Plains on the 2;'3th of December, when he saw their 
 smoke under a mountain called the Platform Bluft", which, however, 
 was a long way off. How he knew them to proceed from the 
 fires of the blacks I know not, Ijut he constantly asserts in his 
 writings that his own trackers knew the smoke of a native's fire 
 from that of the white — whether by its volume or what he does 
 not say ; and it seems they were never mistaken. 
 
 I pause a moment to say that habit, or the exigencies of their 
 state, had given this race a wonderful acuteness of observation, 
 not intelligible to us. Thus we learn from the report of another 
 of their pursuers — not a very successful one — namely the once 
 well-known Jorgen Jorgensen, that they possessed a faculty for 
 discovering water in situations where no European would 
 think of looking for it, and that these strange places were their 
 favourite camping grounds ; and this it is possible, may on this 
 occasion, have been the key, enabling them to determine whether 
 or not the smoke they saw proceeded from fires kindled by some 
 of themselves, from observing them in a place to which none but 
 their own people would resort. 
 
 Christmas Day, of 1831 — which must have been a dreary one 
 to him and his companions — was jDassed on the elevated pasture 
 field of Bashan Plains. It was noticed of Eobinson on this day, 
 though he was not much given to fits of dejection, he was rather 
 downcast, the natural effect of langour occasioned by the weari- 
 ness of an unusually protracted chase after the triiae, whom he 
 began to despair of overtaking. But towards evening of this day, 
 the heart-cheering intelligence was brought him by some of his 
 sable scouts, that the smokes of their camp fires were visible, and 
 that they were in the glens of the mountain called the Platform 
 Bluff". The news once more rekindled the usual ardor with which 
 he always undertook a piirsuit, and the march recommenced. 
 
 When he came on their footmarks at last, his people — such 
 was their acute knowledge of these faint imprints on the grass, 
 which a European would not discern at all — that they at once 
 pronounced them to be those of the Big River and Oyster Bay 
 tribes united. ("A female," says he, "assured me they were 
 the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes. She kuew them by their 
 
62 WARS, EXXniPATlON, HABITS, &C., 
 
 footmarks.") Zefollowetl ou their trail till the last day of 1831, 
 when he says : — "I sncceecled iu effecting a friendly communica- 
 tion with those sanguinary tribes." But his own dark-coloured 
 friends were so much afraid of the strangers, that it was long 
 Ijofore he could persuade them to go over to them. They told 
 him they were (piite certain these men would kill them all, and 
 made all sorts of excuses to get out of it ; but he would not hear 
 them, and one of them, a chief, ran away sooner than face them. 
 His messengers at length consented to go to them, but quite 
 failed in their mission, and instead of i^roeuriug a friendly meet- 
 ing the two tribes marched in a body to his tent to destroy him. 
 He says : — "In less than half-an-hour I heard their war-whoop, 
 by which I knew they Avere advancing upon me. I also heard 
 the rattle of their sjiears as they drew near." It must have been 
 a moment of deep anxiety and fear to all ; but the wf)nderful 
 i:)resence of mind of the man, which never deserted him in danger, 
 now carried him successfully through this aAvful interview, and 
 the extraodinary negotiation which concluded it. 
 
 They were now within about thirty yards of him, w-ith their 
 spears poised for the attack, and they were just about (.lischarging 
 them, when they were completely thrown ofl" their guard, at 
 hearing him address them in their mother tongue. The effect of 
 his words on the minds of these unsophisticated children of the 
 wilderness was magical, and they [involuntarily lowered their 
 weapons as if spell-bound ; and it is a singular fact that before 
 dayclose, they gave themselves up to him as prisoners, and con- 
 seutedto accompany him to Hobart Town, about a hundred miles 
 off, where thoiisands of us saw them all a few days afterwards, 
 peacefully encamped ou his oym premises in Elizabeth-street, 
 just opposite James' Brewery. These people had with them o)ic 
 hundred dogs. 
 
 In his journey to Hobart Town with them, he placed them 
 under no restraint whatever. He permitted them to leave his 
 camp at will, to hunt or otherwise amuse themselves ; but such 
 was the ascendency he acquired over them from the first, that 
 they made no effort to quit him, but slejit around his tent every 
 night. 
 
 In thus giving up their wild liberty, they were seduced by 
 the fair and captivating promises he made them, firstly of an 
 interview with the Governor, who, he told them, would redress 
 all their wrongs, whatever they were ; and secondly, of future 
 supjjort and governmental jjrotection against outrage. 
 
 It was an awful day for the natives when they trusted the 
 good faith of the Government, which seized them as prisoners 
 directly they got them, and cousigued them to the Straits islands, 
 
OP a?HE NATIVE TEIBES OP TASMANIA. 63 
 
 wliere in a dozen years or so, four-fiftlis of them died. But I 
 have been told by one of the very few whom Kobinson admitted 
 to intimacy, that he was often heard to speak regretfully about 
 the promises he made tliem' on behalf of the Government, being 
 so faithlessly kept. 
 
 He always considered the removal of these two tribes as his 
 crowning achievement, and he sjieaks of it with a little 
 pardonable bombast. " This," he writes, "is all that remains 
 of both tribes. Tranquillity is, therefore, through the blessing 
 of the Almighty, restored to the colony, and the people are 
 treated as human beings ought to be treated. No restraint in 
 any way has been i^laced upon them." But this tranquillity was 
 not yet restored, for many tribes remained to be brought in, 
 which he afterwards secured, who, by living more remotely from 
 the settled districts than those just ensnared, had less opportuni- 
 ties of doing mischief than them, but still never neglected to do 
 it whenever they got the chance. 
 
 The men he had just taken delivered to him several stand of 
 arms that they had stolen in different enterprises. He says, 
 " previous to leaving the natives' encampment the tribes 
 despatched four of their females for spears, when they shortly 
 returned with three large bundles, and the chief of the Big Eiver 
 tribe took me to a tier of hills, and surrendered to me six stand 
 of firearms loaded, viz .-—three muskets and three fowling- 
 pieces," 
 
 The attenuated remnants of these once powerful tribes, 
 formerly niimbering perhaps a thousand peojjle, yielded, all told, 
 only 26 individuals. Yet were they still as troublesome as in 
 the days of their strength, and committed more murders and 
 robberies, in their decay than they were knoAvn to have done at 
 any former period. Like most of their race, they had not suf- 
 fered much from the hostility of the colonists, nor even greatly 
 from rival tribes, of whom they were generally the masters. 
 
 Without going into the general subject of the decay of this ' 
 race in this place. I may venture a passing remark on the sub- 
 ject of their rajDid and remarkable declension, which had been 
 going on for some years before this time, as if the very plag:ie 
 had seized on them. Wliole tribes (some of which Eobinson 
 mentions by name as being in existence 15 or 20 years before he 
 went amongst them, and had probably never had a shot tired at 
 them) had absolutely and entirely vanished. To the causes to 
 which he attributss this strange wasting away, as coming under 
 his own personal observation, I think infecundity, produced by 
 the infidelity of the women to their husbands in the early times 
 of the colony, may be safely added. This, I believe, was not a 
 
64 M'ARS, EXTIEPATION, HABITS, ScC, 
 
 mere oconRioiinl, but very general failing, nmongst llie women ; 
 and jn'ostitutiou, all the world over, vitiates the powers of the 
 females, wholly ol)strneting production. Roliinson always 
 enumerates the sexes of the individual she took, and distinguishes 
 between chiljUiood, adolescence, and manhood ; and, as a general 
 thing, found scarcely any childi-eu amongst them, and quite 
 reversely of the natural condition of our race adiiltuess was found 
 to outweigh infancy in a remarkable degree everywhere. In the 
 l^resent instance his capture was found to consist of sixteen men, 
 nine women, and one child. 
 
 The well-known doctrine of Strezelecki that the savage 
 woman, after contamination l)y the white, is invariably and for 
 ever infertile, is only an amusing tiction, instances of the contrary 
 having occurred, both in New South Wales and Tasmania, in 
 cases where I presume the cohabitation was not a very protracted 
 one. Nor can the decadence I have spoken of be traced to in- 
 fanticide, at any rate of children of their oavu blood, of whom the 
 mother was jjassionately fond ; though it seems possible that the 
 peculiar exigencies of their state may have sometimes produced a 
 forced, but certainly most unwilling abandonment of them. 
 Instances of infanticide did, indeed, come within Rol)inson's 
 knowledge ; but then the victims were half castes, whom the 
 savage women both of Australia and Tasmania, is known to have 
 detested. In one of the cases in question a mothr ]• suffocated 
 two of her oftsijringby thrusting grass into their mouths till they 
 died. (Report 13th May, 1831.) In concluding his account of 
 this cruel tragedy, he says: — "The aboriginal females in the 
 Straits do not entertain an equal degree of fondness for those 
 children Avho they have derived from Eurojjeons, in confirmation 
 of which several facts are on record." And he adds, in reference 
 to these murders "this circumstance is borne out l)y the united 
 testimony of the aboriginal women of the establishment." (Swan 
 j^Island). But this subject will be treated of hereafter. 
 
 The removal of this horde of depredators and i^rofessional 
 murderers, from whom the colonists had suffered more than all 
 the rest, was a very emiiient service. It is not indeed easy to 
 understand its value now that the large majority of those who 
 were the objects of their craft and passions have passed away by 
 death or emigration ; but any one whose recollections, like my 
 own, will carry him back to the period I am writing of, or who 
 will take the trouble to read through the accounts of the crimes 
 of this people, written at the time, and i^rinted in the early pub- 
 lications of the colony, or preserved in at least a thousand M.S. 
 rejiorts, chiefly from the police magistrates of the territory, will 
 be made to comi)rehend that the capture of these two tribes was 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA. 65 
 
 au advantage of tlie higliest order to the community. 
 
 Tlie black associates of Eobinson received a considerable 
 reward at his instance. I do not know its amount, but it was no 
 trifle, and they were to have it in anything they liked, and Robin- 
 son was directed to ascertain in what way they would like it paid 
 them and strangely enough, they, everyone of them, chose sheep, 
 and a flock, I think, of 500,but am not quite sure (for I write of their 
 numbers from memory only) was placed on Flinders Island for 
 them. He himself received a gift of £300, additional to £100 
 already paid him. (Colonel Arthur's order, 14th Febniary, 1832.) 
 
 KOBINSON AT THE ARTHUR RIVER. 
 
 The five years that he pursued them were years of real toil 
 of painful anxiety and bitter privation to him ; but he never 
 intermitted pursuit, so long as he thought one of them remained 
 at large ; and though in the end he brought all in but the trifling 
 remnant I have named, he never shed one drop of blood. He 
 visited the encampments of even the most hostile of the tribes 
 without arms of any kind, and in seeming confidence, but doubt- 
 lessly not without fear, which he must often have felt most 
 keenly, as on many occasions he was in great danger of their 
 spears ; but sijeaking their language, he successfully negotiated 
 Avith every tribe for its surrender, and brought all in, either to 
 Launcestou or Hobart Toavu. His services were amongst the 
 greatest benefactions the colony has ever received from anyone ; 
 and though like all public men who have disdained to bid for 
 jjopular applause, he had a host of detractors, still no one who 
 remembers the ever recurring incursions of the aborigines into 
 the settled districts, their well devised onslaughts, their murder- 
 ings and burnings, which he put an end to, will ever underrate 
 his merits, or assign him any other than a very high place 
 amongst those who liave done good service to tlie coiintry. 
 
 I have spoken above of the manifold risks he ran in his mis- 
 sions to the encampments of the blacks But from the following 
 extracts from a letter of Robinson's, that has been kindly pre- 
 sented me by his most intimate friend, Mr. G. Whitcomb, it 
 appears he considered one of the greatest dangers he ever en- 
 countered from the natives, was at the Arthur River in the North 
 Western districts, from a horde of blacks, headed by ,a chief 
 named Wyne, all the details of which are contained in the rejDorts 
 lie made to the Government, of this assault upon him, which I 
 shall presently quote from. 
 
 West Hunter Island, 
 
 October the 4th, 1832. 
 
 Mj Dear Sir, — Little did I imagine when I last addressed 
 
GG WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &e., 
 
 yon that I slioukl have boon bo siiditenly calleiT upon to encminter 
 one of the greatest daugei-H that I have ever been exposed to 
 dnring the whole conrse of my long career in the aboriginal 
 service. My escape from the hands of these misgnided savages 
 is to me a matter of the greatest astonishment, and almost 
 miraculous. 
 
 I trust I am fully sensible of the goodness of God in pre- 
 serving me amid so very many dangers, more particularly on 
 this extraordinary occasion, which was premeditated, and my 
 destruction at that time ajjpeared inevitable. 
 
 I had all along considered that my labour was nearly at an 
 end, being well acquainted with these aborigines from the inter- 
 course that I had with them at the time of my firat expedition, 
 from the good eft'ects produced on that occasion, led me very 
 naturally to conclude that I should shortly be able to remove 
 them. From a conviction of this circumstance I had written to 
 Mrs. Robinson, acquainting her that I thought I should be able 
 to spend a part of the summer vnth my family in Hobart Town, 
 provided that my successes met with no reverse ; and although 
 I was sensible that the conduct since pursued towards tJiem had 
 considerably excited them, still I flattered myself that I should be 
 able to overcome this difficulty. This attack was therefore the 
 more sudden and unexpected ; from the excited state of the 
 aborigines along the western coast, more time and trouble will be 
 requisite ere they are removed, and although I am persuaded of its 
 being effected, still I know that armed jjarties could not effect the 
 least possible good. . . . Thrice have I joiu'neyed down the 
 western coast, and thrice have I been successful. It is my inten- 
 tion to visit my family forthwith, either from here or Macqiiarie 
 Harbour. ... I have been most shamefully neglected as 
 regards supplies. I have here now upwards of fifty souls depend- 
 ing on me for subsistence, and all that I have received from the 
 commissariat at Launceston is one cask of flour, one bag of 
 biscuit, and one cask of salt beef, and 50 blankets. . . . 
 
 I remain, my dear Sir, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 G. A. Robinson. 
 To Geo. Whitcomb, Esq, , &c. , &c, , &c. 
 
 Several months had elapsed since his last success (over the 
 Oyster Bay and Big River tribes) before he was jjrepared to take 
 the bush again in earnest. This time he proceeded against the 
 l)eople inhabiting tlie north-western districts, where the Vaii 
 Diemen's Land Company have large possessions, as they had at 
 the time I am writing of. These districts were then infested by 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 67 
 
 four tribes, each numerically reduced to insignificance, partly 
 througli tlie ravages of the sealers, but chiefly from causes quite 
 ai^art from war, except, i^erhaps, tribal war. These men had 
 made many incursions into the estates of the company, isluuder- 
 ing their outstations, and lulling their servants, witli more than 
 usual impunity, but had received one or two checks lately from 
 a small Government party, acting under a person named Alex- 
 ander M'Kay, * formerly one of the most active and useful 
 attacMs of the aboriginal embassy under Kobinson, from whom 
 he had shortly before parted in anger, at some neglect he felt he 
 had received at the hands of his leader. This man, when acting 
 under Eobinson, had taken several natives himself, and 
 handed them over to his superior. He had also performed other 
 meritorious services, which received no recognition whatever, 
 nor were placed to his account in any manner, He was not a 
 man to bear with this kind of treatment, and refused to remain 
 in Ms service any longer, and, proceeding to Hobart Town, made 
 a report of his own services to the Governor, who always had a 
 high opinion of him. There was mutual dislike between the 
 master Bobinson and the servant M'Kay ; and that of the former 
 was greatly increased by the spirited action of the other, and he 
 was very little pleased to hear that, directly after his interview 
 with the Governor, he was placed in charge of a small roving 
 party who acted independently of himself. M'Kay was a resolute, 
 active, and persevering young man, and, perhaps, the best bush- 
 man who ever traversed the "svilds of Tasmania. He soon efit'ected 
 good service, and took several men of the same tribes whose 
 remains Robinson himself was now in pursuit of, for which he 
 received the complimentary acknowledgements of the Govern- 
 ment, that were conveyed to him by the manager of the Van 
 Diemen's Land Company's Estates, Mr. Curr. 
 
 Robinson, like the race he subdued, never forgot an'afifront ; 
 and had such a dislike of this useful servant of the government, 
 that many of his after reports teem with abuse of him ; and every 
 failure of his own against the tribes M'Kay had visited are 
 ascribed to his rash and imprudent attacks, as he call them on the 
 natives which he constantly asserts had throAvn the tribes of this 
 quarter, and those of the whole of the West Coast also, into such 
 a state of excitement, that for a time they would hold no inter- 
 course with him, and refused (like Rachel mourning for her 
 children) to be comforted with his assurances of protection, 
 redress. &c. He magnified the defensive action of this man into 
 a barbarous aggression, and a felling bloAv that he dealt one of 
 
 Now living at Peppeimiut Bay, D'Eutrecasteux Channel. 
 
r>R WARS, EXTinrATIOK, HABITg,\"krC. , 
 
 nil attackiiig party on his haril head with the butt of a pistol, 
 n rescuiiit:: oik^ (»f liis oonipiiuy from the fury of several of them 
 who had him down, was enlarf^ed into murder, though the mau 
 was only stunned and made prisoner of by M'Kay. The manner 
 in which he assails his old servant, even for years after, shows 
 that forgiveness was not amongst his virtues. 
 
 The savages of this quarter were a very j^uguacious set of 
 fellows, and had long been the objects of the miscreancy of the 
 sealers, and hated the wliite race accordingly, and they gave the 
 conciliator of their i)eoi3le more trouble tlian any others, and 
 never was he and Iuh party in such danger of their lives as now, 
 for which M'Kay gets the entire credit. 
 
 Of the four tribes inhabiting the north-west districts, ho, 
 with great trouble, removed three entirely, and tV)ur adults of the 
 other ; which last he calls the Tackiue or Sandy Cajje natives. 
 They Avere found to number 23 persons, of whom four only were 
 children ; a quarter of a century before their strength was pro- 
 l)ably 50 times greater. The remnants of tlie three entire tribes 
 that he now took, laid down their spears to him between the 19th 
 of June and the 15th July, 1832, and the four Tackines came over 
 to him oil the 4th of September. 
 
 His account of these transactions is contained in two reports, 
 dated 29th July, and llth September, 1832, from both of which 
 the ft)lloAviug extracts are taken : — 
 
 " In my communication with the ' Tackine ' or Sandy Cape 
 natives, I had to encounter one of the greatest dangers that I had 
 ever been exjiosed to during the whole of my long career in the 
 aboriginal service. . . . These people came with the avowed 
 purjiose of massacring my aboriginal attendants and to have 
 seized upon the women and dogs, and to have returned again to 
 their own country. . . . The first indications of these abori- 
 gines Avere discovered on the olst ult., (August), between six and 
 seven miles north of the Arthur Eiver. From those traces it 
 was apparent that the natives had returned to their o-wti country. 
 They had l^een on a war expetlition in quest of the people I had 
 removed. ... On my arrival to within one and a half miles 
 of the river, I halted my jjeople and formed an encampment. 
 Three of the recently captured aborigines, with four of my 
 friendly natives, I sent forward to proceed with all i^ossible 
 celerity, and to omit no endeavour until they had effected a com- 
 munication, and which they considered they could do without 
 my being present. 
 
 " On the 3rd inst., I set out to meet the natives, having the 
 previous evening descried a large smoke, a signal that my natives 
 had got to them, and which had been previously agrcetl upoia 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 69 
 
 bet-ween me and them. Conceiving that my joresence wotilcl give 
 them confidence, I crossed the Arthur River, accompanied by 
 lour of the friendly natives (this he did on a raft). Soon after I 
 had crossed, a body of wild natives, well armed with spears, 
 were descried in the woods, and advancing to where I then stood. 
 This was at meridian. On their arrival I proposed to cross the 
 river and proceed to my encampment ; but this was objected to, 
 and it was suggested that we should remain for the night on the 
 south side of the river, and that the male aborigines should hunt 
 for game. 
 
 " Previous to setting off on the hunting excursion, I distri- 
 buted amongst them presents of beads, knives, boxes, handker- 
 chiefs, ttc, with which they appeared highly delighted. 
 
 " At the time I met these people I was unaccompanied by 
 any but my aboriginal attendants, and without the slightest 
 means of protection," (he means fire arms, for his men had their 
 spears). " I sojourned for upwards of 18 hours with them." 
 
 He says that during the whole night he was with the Tackines 
 " I was kejjt in a state of the most awful suspense that it is pos- 
 sible to imagine ; for it was not till night set in that I was made 
 acqiiainted with the extreme danger of my situation. Escape 
 appeared to me impossible, and every moment I exiDected to be 
 massacred. ... I was in the midst of them. They slept 
 not, but employed themselves in preparing their spears ; some 
 sitting with tiiem across their shoulders, others held them across 
 their knees, while others kept walking about. Their fires were 
 put out, and they sat by the embers. My aborigines kept their 
 fires in for the jjurpose of watching them, and the better to see 
 their spears coming." (Then follows a little half -poetical bosh 
 about nothing being heard but the " hoarse whisperings " of his 
 new acqxiaintances, &c., which is not worth quoting.) " On this 
 occasion I deemed it i^rudent not to evince the least feeling of 
 alarm." So he undressed and lay down in his blanket as usual. 
 
 "At the earliest dawn of day, they made a large fire, round 
 which the men assembled, and began preparing their weapons 
 intended for my destruction. At this juncture, one of the wild 
 natives (a relative of one of my friendly aborigines) commenced 
 a vehement discussion, and argued against the injustice of killing 
 me, and asked why they would'kill their friend and protector ? 
 
 •' I had by this time put on my raiment. My aboriginal 
 companions were exceedingly alarmed, and on looking for their 
 spears, found that the wild natives had taken them away during 
 the night. ... In the midst of the discussion I rose up and 
 stood in front of them, with my arms folded, thinking to divert 
 their savage purpose. I said if they were not willing to go with 
 
70 WARS, EXTIKPATION, HABITS, <tc., 
 
 mc, tlioy could rotnrii iifrain to tluMro-wn conntrv. Scarcely liaJ 
 I HiJokcn when they shouted tlieir war-whoop, seized their si^ears, 
 and proceeded at once to surround me. . . . My aborigines 
 shrieked and fled. Tlie natives had nearly encircled ine — their 
 spears raised, were i)oised in the air — the friendly al)origine8 
 were gone. At this crisis I made off, although I saw not the 
 slightest cliauce of escape. 1 pursued my Avay rapidly through 
 some copse, winding round the aclivity of some low hills, and 
 took a north-east direction towards an angle of the river, on ap- 
 l^roaching which I saw one of my friendly natives that had 
 escajaed, wdio, with much treiiidatiou, said that all the rest of the 
 natives were killed. • At the same instant she descried the hostile 
 blacks approaching, and in much alarm begged me to hide whilst 
 she swam the river and went to the encampment. To have at- 
 tempted concealment at such a crisis woiild have been next to 
 suicide, and looking up (for the river hath steep banks on either 
 side) I saw one of the wild natives looking for my footsteps. At 
 this mcmient he turned, an<l I lost sight of him. I saw no chance 
 of escape except by ci-ossiiig the river — the difficulty seemed in- 
 surmountable — I coTild not swim — the ciirrent was exceedingly 
 rapid, and it required time to construct a machine " (/ e., a raft, 
 or catamaran). " The natives were in strict search after me, and 
 I exi)ected every moment to be overtaken. ... I made an 
 attempt to cross on a small spar of wood, and was precipitated 
 into the river, and nearly carried away by the current. After 
 repeated attempts, I succeeded with the aid of the woman. * 
 When about midway the aborigines again made theii* appearance, 
 and followed my track down to the river. My clothes were left 
 behind. I then returned to my encamiDment, where my son and 
 some natives were staying. With these people I returned again 
 to the river, and was agreeably disapijointed to find that my abori- 
 ginal friends escaped uulmrt, and that two of the hostile blacks 
 had joined them. The wild natives had assembled on the op- 
 posite bank of the river. Here they continued to exhibit the 
 most violent gestures, and were exceedingly boisterous in their 
 declamations, threatening to cross the river and massacre us. 
 
 " From these fugitives I learnt that when the hostile blacks 
 found that I had escaped, thej' searched the Imshes, supposing I 
 had hid myself." He also learned that it was their intention to 
 have killed the w-hole of the party except the women But for 
 Robinson himself was reserved a special fate, namely, the muti- 
 lation and burning of his body, " and my ashes," he says, " made 
 into Ray-dee or Num-re-mur-he-kee (i.e., amulets to be worn by 
 the natives)." 
 
 * This woman was Tnigauiui, who is still living. 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 71 
 
 " My exit from the hands of these savages was so sudden and 
 so unexpected, that -with all the vigilance (for which they are so 
 remarkable) they scarcely saw me ; and the efl'ect produced on 
 their credulous minds led them to believe that I was influenced 
 by more than an ordinary spirit ; to this suijerstitious notion 
 may be attributed iu a great measure the preservation of the 
 people's lives. Failing in their attempt to kill me, they became 
 suddenly dismayed, and the consequences that would ensue as a 
 punishment caiised them greatly to despond, on observing which, 
 the sti'angers that now accompanied me rejjroached and taunted 
 them. They would not nay-wid-ding-er {i.e., eat much), the 
 num-mer (white man) would return with plenty of pur-da-bar 
 (guns,) and kill them all. 
 
 " Whilst at the Arthur Kiver, I entered into a parley with the 
 hostile blacks across the river, and assured them that I had no 
 bad feeling towards them — that I forgave them the attack they 
 had made on my life ; " and on giving them his usual assurances 
 of protection, &c., two others swam the river and joined him. 
 
 But notwithstanding theirjdespondency and dismay, they were 
 greatly irritated at the desertion of any of their jseople to the 
 enemy particularly their chief, Wyne, who, "putting hiraself in a 
 menacing attitude, threatened to come over and murderu!-i." Their 
 terrors oithenuminer f\.\\i\.\\i&purdabar had quite subsided, and 
 Robinson had great diliiculty, he says, to prevent a colliidon ; and 
 had his presence of mind failed him for a moment, the: death of 
 all was certain. But following the native custom, he ;sent up a 
 a huge telegraphic smoke, as if signalling for the assi stance of 
 his whites, on observing which the natives went away, and Rob- 
 inson was not long in doing the same, only in an opposite direc- 
 tion, with his imexpected prize, and eventually rea(3hed the 
 land's end of Tasmania in the north-west, namely. Cape Grim, 
 as quickly as he could reach there, followed by his 27 p risoners, 
 Avlio, it may be safely presumed, had no idea that he nvas only 
 leading them into captivity, from whence they were never to 
 emerge. 
 
 Renehingthe Cape, after a march of 40 miles, he immediately 
 transferred his prisoners to some large islands called the ! Hunters, 
 that lie a few miles off this headland. A sealer's boat was 
 luckily lying at the place, and their removal was effected at once, 
 where they would all have been starved but lor the f ortunate 
 circumstance of the shores and oft' lying rocks of tliesi 3 islands 
 abounding with sea birds and their eggs just at this ' season — 
 chiefly the albatross and penguin. The natives were ver y partial 
 to birds, and Robinson says that when they were very ill they 
 woiild often eat one, when they rejected all other food,'a.nd here 
 
72 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C,, 
 
 they had an abuudancc of their most favourite diet. 
 
 But death which was uow demolishing this i^eoijle, well nigh 
 as rapidly as he could cut them down, followed on their tracks, 
 and overtook them here also ; and 13 of them succumbed to his 
 shafts within the first fortnight of their landing on the Hunters, 
 The doom of numljers of them apjoears to have been greatly ac- 
 celerated by removal from their ancient haunts, and the partial 
 adoption, perhaps too hastily, of European habits. Thus in 1829, 
 wlien he gathered together a couple of score of them on Urnny 
 Island, 22 of them died between the 12th of June and the 23rd of 
 September of that year,in other words in about 15 weeks. (Report, 
 23rd of Sei^tember, 1829. ) This [mortality was also very rapid 
 at their little village, which they called Wyba-Limia, at Flinders 
 Island, where Robinson says about 250 were landed altogether, 
 of whom 120 had gone to the grave, by the date of his general 
 report on their condition of " July 1836 ; " of the remaining 130 
 (exclusive of a few births that hai^pened at Wyba-Luma) 4(5 only 
 were living, on the removal of the establishment to Oyster Cove 
 in 181:7, the great majority of whom Avere young or middle-aged 
 persons Avlien taken and landed there. "WTien I visited Oyster 
 Cove eight years f_afterwards, April 1855, 30 of this miserable 
 remnant were lying in the little gravej'ard of the Cove, and 
 at this moment of writing, one only (Robinson's first and 
 principal dlecoy-duck) sixrvives to mourn over the fall, and pos- 
 sibly to de]plore, the active share she had in the ruin of her race. 
 
 I have but a few more words to say about the captives on 
 Hunter's Iidaud, and these are only to describe the rai^idity of their 
 decay, wlieui sickness seized ujjon them ; and here again I must 
 quote from Robinson, who was the eye-witness of these death-bed 
 scenes. Speaking first of his domesticated blacks, he says, he is 
 liaijpy to say that they are in a state of " invalescence," for lie is 
 fond of unusual words; but he "regrets to state that the 
 strangers Inive been subjected to a severe mortality, and out of 
 the 27 of tj le last removed, 13 are defunct. This dire malady," 
 he says, ''' had every appearance of an eiiedemic, the patient 
 seldom living longer than 48 hours after being attacked. All 
 ages and sexes fell victims to its ravages, and they generally ex- 
 l)ired in a Mtate of delirium. They were all in apparent health 
 when first brought to the settlement." 
 
 It would be tiresome to pursue him in his other hard and 
 long journ eys, after the residue of the blacks who dwelt either 
 in the interior districts or the west coasts. It is (Miougli to say 
 tliatin the end he removed them all except four. The last tribe 
 that was b; nought in was captured by his son G. A. Robinson, on 
 the 28th D ecember, 1834. It consisted of only eight persons. 
 
OF THT! NATIVE TEIBES OF TASMANIA. 73 
 
 lu reporting this ultimate success of his party, he pledges 
 himself to the Government that the entire native race are removed 
 " with the exception of one individual, who was very old, and in 
 a i)recarious and sickly state. The entire aboriginal population, " 
 he continues, " are now removed, and so firmly convinced am I 
 of this fact that I pledge myself to pay the reward heretofore 
 offered by the Government for all the aboriginals that may here- 
 after be brought in. The final tranquility of the colony, as 
 regards the aborigines, is firmly established." (Eeport, 3rd Feb., 
 1835,) But he was not quite correct, for about nine or ten years 
 afterwards four more were taken, who, there can be no doubt, 
 were the last of them, for the smoke of the savage has been no 
 mor^ seen in Tasmania since. - 
 
 Whatever the future historian of Tasmania may have to say 
 of this ancient people, he will do them an injustice if he fails to 
 record that, as a body, they held their ground bravely for 30 
 years against the invaders of their beautiful domains. 
 
 Robinson was never the jjopular man he might have been 
 had he been a little more sociable than he was. There was 
 nothing rude or repulsive about him, bixt still his manner was 
 not assuasive, and as he careel but little for society, he had few 
 friends. He was moreover an enthusiast in everything that his 
 natural tastes permitted him to indulge in, particularly in religi- 
 ous observances, and was an occasional visitor at the hospital, 
 goal, etc., and sometimes read, and at others gave the best advice 
 he could to the unfortunate occupants of these establishments. 
 But the times were not favourable for such devotional practices 
 as these, nor was the small class of devotees to whom he belonged, 
 treated with much reverence then, and though he was never 
 known to take a part in any dishonourable act, still the current of 
 popular dislike ran so strongly against him, on both sides of the 
 island, that he was almost iiniversally denounced as an impostor, 
 and no terms, however vulgar, were too vulgar if only applied 
 to him. The Government, too, while it affected to ap^jlaud him 
 in print, and even to reward his services, was not a sincere 
 encourager of his, and its petty subordinates, with many of whom 
 he had necessary transactions, taking their cue from above, 
 seemed to vie with each other to impede, distress, and annoy him, 
 from no other motives, os I believe, than those that sprang from an 
 illaudable sentiment of jealousy — he and those under him having 
 achieved, single-handed, so to speak, what the Governor and his 
 subordinates, backed by four thousand armed men, had failed 
 to accomplish. 
 
 This pitiful feeling, I have read, was once exhibited towards 
 liim hi a manner thnt lu- must have t;^it keenly enough. It was just 
 
74 WARS, EXTinrATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 after some one of Lis marvellous adventures iu the North, that 
 he came into Lauuceston so emaciated by privation and overwork, 
 and altogether so Avi-ctched, that he might have passed for a 
 pauper, as indeed he appeared to be. 
 
 Though both himself and mission were known to the com- 
 munity he was sojourning amongst, the ill-feeling referred to a 
 little above, showed itself unworthily enough just now ; and the 
 friendless man might have wandered through the streets uucared 
 for and hardly noticed, but for one gentleman, who, though a 
 stranger to him j^ersonally, knew him by repute, and who held 
 very different opinions from others respecting the real character, 
 of the man, and of the great value of his services to Tasmania, 
 which he had the moral courage to avow, whilst he vindicated 
 him and the cause he served from the aspersions of those who 
 afi'ected to treat him, at one time as a madman, and at others as 
 an imiJostor. Moved by the pitiable condition of the wi'etched 
 wanderer, he at once offered him and his attendant blacks a home 
 so long as it suited him to remain in Launceston, which Robinson 
 Avilliugly and gratefully accepted, and on every after visit he made 
 to the town both he and his followers were Avelcomed'at the same 
 friend's roof. This gentleman was Mr George Whitcomb. 
 
 The service thus feelingly rendered was never afterwards 
 forgotten by Robinson, and to the end of his life he kept up a 
 most friendly correspondence with his old benefactor, under 
 whose roof, as the poet Campbell says, he found 
 
 A home to rest, a shelter to defend ; 
 Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend. 
 
 I am unable to name the time of Robinson's arrival here. I 
 believe he was in humble circumstances then, a jDOor artizan and 
 probably a steerage passenger, a class whose names seldom ap- 
 pear in the published shipping reports. He was a good trades- 
 man and soon established himself here as a master builder, but 
 he was no designer or architect, as may be seen in the case of 
 his own residence iu Elizabeth-street (now No. 168), which was 
 built by himself, or after his own designs, and its present curious 
 roof added iu after times under his own direction. 
 
 After (luittiug the service of our Government he received the 
 appointment of Chief Protector of Aborigines iu Victoria, on 
 < luittiug which employ, he retired lo England, where he died on the 
 18th of October, 1860 (at Bath, I believe). He was twice mar- 
 ried, and some of the sons by his first wife I hear are still living 
 on some of the islands of Furneaux Group, Bass's Straits. 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 75 
 
 FABLE OF A WHITE MAN AMONGST THE BLACKS. 
 
 There prevailed here at oue time an ixniversal belief that a 
 man of our own race was living with the blacks, not only on 
 terms of amity, bnt as the active abbetor of, and instnictor in 
 their hostile operations against the colonists This story which 
 was only oue of the many Munchauseu-like inventions aloout the 
 natives, with which public credulity was pretty well satiated at 
 this time, originated with a mendacious witness, who told it to 
 the Aboriginal Committee, of whom I have sj)oken before. 
 
 Information so startling, and yet so probable, when viewed 
 connectedly with the many well matured devices of the blacks for 
 surprising the settlers, which men of such low intelligence as 
 they were erroneously believed to possess, received for a long time 
 a too ready credence, and the Committee hastily accepting the 
 intelligence as a most valuable addition to the evidence they 
 had collected, commended the author, as I have been told, 
 to the Government for a special reward, and which I believe he 
 received. But M'Kay, who often related the report to different 
 parties of natives, says they — one and all — gave the most un- 
 equivocal denial to it, and assured him there was not the smallest 
 ground on which to base such an invention. But the story, as 
 some will still remember, had gained such credit with the public, 
 that it was nowhere doubted, and on one occasion it nearly cost 
 M'Kay his life, through his being mistaken for the mythical 
 "white man." 
 
 A military, but none too martial settler, had just so far com- 
 pleted a residence on a new location as to make it passably 
 habitable for himself and wife ; and in a placid mood of mind, 
 such as steals over us when quite at peace with oiu'selves and the 
 world, was making an ocular survey of this conception of his 
 genius, in comijany with the partner of his cares and troubles, 
 just as a tribe of natives, who approached it by the rear as 
 stealthily as so many cats, had gotten possession of it by the 
 back entry. Having satisfied himself by a minute examination 
 of its front elevation, that everything was quite to his mind, he 
 retraced his steps to take another look at the internal arrange- 
 ments, but only to find every room occupied by a horde of stark 
 naked blacks, more like demons than beings of this world, as 
 wild as the winds of winter, and armed at all points either for 
 attack or defence. According to their crude ideas of enjoyment, 
 they were very i^leasantly occuisied in turning everything topsy- 
 turvey, having a general rummage, and helping themselves to 
 what they liked best. 
 
 At a scene so portentous as this, the captain very naturally 
 
76 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &0., 
 
 started, a good deal after the mauuer of Hamlet at the siglit of 
 liis father's ghost ; but his fears being more strongly iii^ou him 
 thau those of the Daue, his placidity and pluck evaporated 
 siniiiltiiueousJy, iind Ik; dropix^-d liis wife's arm as quickly as if 
 she had the plague, made for the gax-deu fence (to which he had 
 secured his horse not ten minutes before) cleared it at one leap 
 like a kangaroo, and next vaulting into the saddle, the line fellow 
 was off Avith tin; velocity of Camilla herself, — or as M'Kay in his 
 half-poetical phraseology says, " he hooked it," so quickly that 
 some of the natives coming out for a shot at him, went iu again 
 at observing him quite out of range already. 
 
 As he was tearing along like the spectre huntsman and hell- 
 dogs of Boccaccio, he chanced to meet my honest friend M'Kay, 
 who, accomi:)anied by a lot of blacks, was in pursuit of the very 
 tribe from whom the astounded shepherd-militant was Heeing like 
 a mardi-hare. Finding himself placed, as his disordered imagin- 
 ation suggested, between two fires, namely, the vagabonds who 
 had cai)tured his citadel following hard behind, while another 
 set of villians were coming on him in front, the excessive peril 
 of his situation as he believed it, gave him a sjiark of that false 
 courage that is generated by despair ; and raising his gun, which 
 everyone carried then, he was about sending a shot through 
 M'Kay, but was thrown off his guard by the cool impudence of 
 the latter, <iuietly enquiring, " What the devil had put him in 
 such a flutter ? " An exi^lanation now. took j^lace that satisfied 
 the military man he was in no danger from the new comers, and 
 M'Kay who was then a match even for a professional walker, 
 hurried rai:)idly forward to the resciie of the lady, whom her 
 husband had left in the hands of the blacks. But they were 
 gone ; and she was nowhere to be found, an idea naturally arose 
 that they had carried her off", and for a while the worst fears were 
 entertained for her safety. 
 
 But enquiry soon brought the fact to light, that after the 
 captain's fiight, the clatter of horses' hoofs and the shouts of 
 riders were distinguished by the sharp-eared natives, and the 
 greater part of them made oil" in a body, but not (piite all, a few 
 gi'oups of them still hovering about the premises lilvc disap- 
 jjointed spirits. But directly the coast was thus far cleared and 
 the premises vacated, the lady re-entered them alone, and 
 securing a loaded pistol that lier husband had left behind him in 
 his preciisitation, she marched undauntedly from room tc room, 
 and finally into one of the back ones, of which the window was 
 imglazed, calico sui^ijlyiug temi^orarily the place of glass. As 
 she entered, she observed the head of a black, Avho was outside, 
 placed against the temporary weather screen as if ho were 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OE TASMANIA. 77 
 
 listening. The unflincliing lieroiue walked straight to it and 
 fired on liim, but as might be expected of one of her sex, un- 
 accustomed to the use of arms, missed him, and he fled to the 
 woods. 
 
 The horsemen whose advance the natives had heard, now 
 galloped up, and rescued the lady from her perilous positon, and 
 she was eventually restored by them to her recreant husband. 
 
 THE DEATHS OP CAPTAIN THOMAS AND ME. PABKEB. 
 
 In a previous part of this paper, I have had occasion to speak 
 of the frequency with which murder and other outrage was done 
 by the primitive inhabitants of this country on the colonists, and 
 of the savage violence with which they treated any victim who 
 fell into their hands, instances of which came to light almost 
 every week, but particularly at those times when the natives were 
 on the move from district to district, or from the coasts into the 
 interior and vice versa ; their migrations frequently extending 
 over large portions of the island. These ever recurring instances 
 of slaughter, fire-raising, &c., &c., kept the colonists in a state of 
 constant ferment and excitement such as a few of the present 
 generation can have any conception of ; and the conversations 
 of every fire-side related in some form or other to these deplorable 
 acts of the natives, which but for the will of the Almighty in 
 afflicting them with sickness in a very fatal form, might, and most 
 probably would have continued to this hour ; for with the ad- 
 vantages they possessed of a most difficult country for an 
 European to advance through, it is not easy to iinderstand how 
 they could have been put down, had the tribes remained at any- 
 thing like their original strength. 
 
 But of all the murders that were committed on our race by 
 this people, none that I recollect caused the same amount of 
 regret and consternation as were felt at the deaths of Captain 
 Bartholomew Boyle Thomas, and his faithful farm overseer Mr, 
 James Parker, who died by the hands of the blacks on the 31st of 
 August, 1831 ; that is to say by the hands of a detachment of the 
 Big Eiver tribe, then encamped very far away from the river by 
 the name of which they were known to the colonists, namely, at 
 Port Sorell on the North Coast. 
 
 Captain Thomas had settled in Tasmania about five years 
 before the date indicated above, landing in Hobart Town from 
 the ship Albion on the 3rd of May, 1820. He came hither as 
 manager of an Agricultural Company that had been formed in 
 England the year before — a season known in commercial history 
 as the Year of Bubbles, when all sorts of mad projects that an 
 inordinate thirst for gain could beget, were afloat in England, 
 
78 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C,, 
 
 two of whicli, that were amongst the least uusoiiml of them, were 
 couucctocl -with Tasmania, one styled the Van Dicmen's Land 
 Company and the other the ""/an Diemen'sLand Establishment, it 
 Avas Avith the last named that Thomas Avas connected, as manager 
 I belie\'e. 
 
 The professed, or indeed the real aim of the Establishment, 
 Avas the improvement of the live stock of the colony, for which 
 pnrpose some of the best blood that the ample means of the 
 company enabled them to procnre Avas shipjied for this colony, 
 along Avith a number of farmers and farm-hands, to manage the 
 lands and stock of the Establishment. But the fatality that 
 brought to grief nearly all the companies of 1825, attacked this 
 one also witli disaster, but it surAdvedit. The misfortune aros(>. 
 from the I death of. a very large proportion of its costly blood 
 stock between land and land. Thus of five and thirty most 
 valuable horses shipped in England,ouly tweh'e were disembarked 
 here, the rest dying at sea ; and much the same thing hapi)ened 
 to their sheep and horned cattle. 
 
 If I remember rightly, it was the fii'st intention of the mana- 
 ger to take up the large tract of land tliat the partners Avere 
 entitled to on the coast of Bass's Straits, nearly opposite to 
 Waterliouse Island, which may be about tAventy miles westerly of 
 Cape Portland ; but happier thoughts eventually preA^ai^ed, and 
 the fine estate of Cressy, by Longford, was fortunately selected 
 instead. 
 
 But some disagreement occurring between the jDartners at 
 home, and the manager on the sjjot, Captain Thomas, he cut the 
 connection, receiving, as I have read, a good round sum for what 
 he gave up, with which he fixed himself at Port Sorell, on a tract 
 of land he Avas entitled to, and Avliich he called Northdown ; and 
 was the fii'st settler established on the long line of coast between 
 Emu Bay and the western head of the Tamar. 
 
 I have here to state that after the death of the gentlemen 
 whose names are at the head of this section, their boches remained 
 undiscovered for many days, notwithstanding the vigorous but 
 not very well managed search that was made to find them. But 
 they Avere eveutuallj' traced out by the indefatigable Mr. M'Kay, 
 from whose narrative and the newspaper report of the inquest, 
 given in a journal then published in Launceston called the 
 Independent, it is that the following sketch is compiled. 
 
 At this time M'Kay was emjiloyed by the Government, but 
 under Robinson, in pursuit of the natives, and he was just then 
 stationed at the Western Marshes, near to the present Deloraine. 
 In the absence of his chief, M'Kay, was at the head of a small 
 imrty, amongst Avhom Avcrc one or tAvo blacks. News did not then 
 
OV THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA. 79 
 
 travel quite so quickly as now, and it took six days for the report of 
 these deaths to reach Lauucestou, so several days were passed 
 before it penetrated the solitudes of the future Deloraine. As 
 said before these gentlemen were slain on the 31st of August, 
 and M'Kay thinks it was on the 6tli of the next month, that he 
 chanced to meet Dr. Westbrook, the same he believes who after- 
 wards practiced in Hobart Town, who was passing near to his camp 
 on this day. The doctor knowing M'Kay and the business he 
 was uj^on, told him what had taken place, and that iip to this 
 time, the search parties who were out had failed to discover their 
 bodies. M'Kay immediately took steps to join in the search. 
 
 He started accordingly to the residence of Captain Moriarty, 
 who was a magistrate living on his own beautiful estate of Dun- 
 orlan, near the Whitefoord Hills, and about, six miles beyond 
 Deloraine, to take counsel with him, and to get whatever assist- 
 ance the active seaman could afford him. The news of these 
 deaths had just before reached Dunorlan, and at the moment of 
 M'Kay's arrival the Captain was discussing the matter with one 
 of the Thomas' family, a nejphew of the murdered man, by whom 
 the intelligence had reached thus far into the wilderness. 
 
 As this was the age of bushranging, and also when the 
 natives were very active in the practice of mischief, detachments 
 of military were to be met with in every district into which set- 
 tlement had penetrated, and there was one stationed in this 
 neighbourhood, whom Moriarty found means of starting to Port 
 Sorell, putting them under the guidance of M'Kay, who Avas the 
 best bushmau in the country, as hundreds could then have 
 avouched as well as myself, who have travelled some thousands 
 of miles with him in past years. Moriarty directed M'Kay to 
 lead the soldiers to the Port straight through the bush, whilst 
 he and young Thomas rode there by the usual track. 
 
 On reaching the port, M'Kay found Moriarty already there, 
 and that the usually lifeless district was all astir with armed 
 men, of which every district had either sent or v/as sending in its 
 quota to recover the bodies, for no one now doubted that both 
 had been murdered. The soldiers were acting under the orders 
 of Ensign Dunbar, who had come from George Town, while the 
 constables and civilians were directed by Moriarty and a Dr. Smith, 
 and such was the number of parties, that camp fires v/ere seen 
 nearly everywhere ; and in nearly every direction except (as 
 usual) the right one, men were to be met perambulating the 
 bush through all the hours of daylight ; but though it was now 
 ten days since the missing men were last seen, not a trace of 
 them had been found up to this time. 
 
 I must now go back to the day of the murders to give the 
 
80 WAR8, EXTIBrATIOV, HABITS, &C., 
 
 pai'ticnlars of some occurrences that took place, it may be an 
 lionr before the deplorable transactions Avhicli form the subject 
 of this paper were completed. 
 
 On the day of his death Captain Thomas accompanied by 
 Mr. Parker, rode down to the usual lauding place to supei'intend 
 the diseliarge of a large boat loaded with provisions and stores 
 for Northdown that had just before this arrived from Launcestou. 
 Two bullock carts followed them to commence the conveyance of 
 the freight to the homestead. The boat was a very large one, 
 and the weight of goods on board amounted to several tons. 
 Near to the boat a large tent was jDitched, for the convenience of 
 the boatmen when on shore. 
 
 A goodly detachment of the Big river tribe were at this time 
 sojourning at Port Sorell, some of whom were sauntering about 
 the sliore, but the greater number stood about the tent of the 
 boatmen, who being well armed caused the natives to be civil 
 enough ; for they were a set of cunning fellows, and never attacked 
 at a disadvantage. But each side Avas on the watch, the one to 
 rush the boat, and the other to entrap the blacks, for the sake of 
 the reward that was offered for all who were brought in alive, 
 which I think Avas five pounds a head, with a good chance of 
 some Governmental indulgence being added thereto, if the service 
 rendered were considerable. With this view the men gave them 
 liberally of whatever they seemed to covet most, such as tea, 
 sugar, tobacco, and bread, which latter, says one of the -witnesses 
 at the inquest, they asked for by the name of " breadlie ; " but 
 they were too A\dde awake for their would be captors, for thoixgh 
 two of them entered the tent (most likely only to see whether it 
 were worth jDlundering) not one of them would triist himself 
 within the boat. 
 
 When Thomas and Parker come down to the port, the blacks, 
 though bent on mischief, appeared to be perfectly quiet and 
 friendly with their new acquaintances, which the former Avho was 
 as guileless and confiding as a child, quite mistook the meaning 
 of. He was one of those kiudhearted fellows who never siispect 
 others of being worse than themselves, or of entertaining designs 
 that have no place in their own thoughts. He had long held the 
 belief, that this people were poor inofl'ensive creatures if left 
 alone, and that the manifold acts of violence done by them were 
 defensive onl}^ and not the result of premeditation, as was con- 
 stantly charged against them, of which oiiinions their present 
 seemingly i)acitic demeanour was an abundant confirmation, as 
 he thought ; and he at once took the fatal resolution of v-isiting 
 their camp alone, with the view of aiding the Government in its 
 /< called nureiiul endeavours, to establish a got:d undcrstaniling 
 
OP THE NATTTE TEIBES OF TASMANIA. 81 
 
 with them and thus eflfecting the conciliation of the two races 
 which it professed or pretended to aim at, which was something 
 hke trying to patch up the long established quarrel between the 
 cats and dogs. 
 
 On reaching the boatmen's tent, he enquired of the blacks 
 (some of whom of nearly every tribe spoke our language as 
 Eobmson was constantly discovering) if there were many others 
 about ? to which one of them, holding up all his fingers replied 
 m passable Enghsh, " good many more," (evidence). "Captain 
 Thomas _ continues the witness, "asked them to take him to 
 them, which they readily agreed to do," in other words the 
 savages were only too happy to separate him from his party and 
 get him into the bush. Thomas now dismounted from his horse 
 to accompany them ; but here Parker, who had none of the fine 
 feelings, as they are called, of his employer, and no good opinion 
 of the natives strove hard to dissuade him from engaging in so 
 rash an enterprise as the one he was going on, saying to him— 
 "Surely, Captain Thomas, you are never going to trust yourself 
 with those blackguards, who'll kill you directly they are out of 
 our hearing " ; but the infatuated settler was not to be persuaded 
 out of his belief of the harmlessness of their nature, and merely 
 rephed, " Oh, they are not so bad as they are represented I am 
 not afraid, and will go by myself. " Parker stood amazed at the 
 indiscretion of the other, but mistrustful as he was of the natives 
 himself, the noble-minded fellow, after a moment's thought 
 would not suffer him to go alone, so springing from his horse 
 and shouldering his double-barrel gun, he strode after him 
 Parker was a very robust young man, a little over thirty and 
 possessed of wonderful resolution, and he had no doubt armed 
 as he was, of being able to protect his employer against half a 
 dozen of them if they came to blows ; but the poor fellow had no 
 idea of the artifice inherent in the savage, and in this one 
 particular they were an overmatch for him. 
 
 Before following Thomas, he gave a fow'hasty directions to 
 the bullock drivers, not to start until they returned, which he 
 hoped would not be long first ; and on parting from them— as it 
 proved for ever- he ordered them not on any account to let their 
 horses get astray, as they should want them directly they came 
 
 As Thomas and himself proceeded towards the camp of the 
 blacks, their two or three attendants were, as if by pre-arrange 
 ment, soon reinforced by others ; one fellow meeting them hei-e 
 another a httle further on, and a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth' 
 somewhere else, until they grew like Falstaft's recruits into a 
 large but most disreputable looking troop, of whom the majority 
 
82 wABs.'EXTmrATiONjJnADrrs.I&c., 
 
 kept an cyo on the unarmed captain, wliilBt two or three only, 
 but the most resolute of their number, marched on either side of 
 his companion, of whom the most conspicuous were two named 
 Mac-a-mee and Wow-ee, by whom the assault that followed was 
 commenced ; the former, unarmed, walking on the right, and 
 the other, bearing a heavy waddy, on the left hand. 
 
 The party had moved forward about two miles when the 
 assault commenced, by Mac-a-mee, as quick as thought, snatch- 
 ing the gun out of Parker's hand, which he did with such force 
 as to turn him more than half round, and then running oflf as fast 
 as he could with the prize. At this moment Parker's face was 
 tm-ned away from the other savage, who swinging his waddy 
 aloft, dealt him such a blow on his temple, that he reeled and fell 
 to the ground, apparently a lifeless man. 
 
 It is not in the power of language to describe the excitement 
 of the men of the tribe at witnessing the fall of another of tho 
 enemies of their race, nor the scene that took place at this 
 moment between them and their wives, such as no one would 
 expect to read of as an usual incident in savage life, the men 
 rushing up with yells of savage joy to finish the fallen man, and 
 the women equally vociferous, interposing, by entreaty, to stay 
 the wi-ath of their husbands, and to save him from death, but 
 without effect in the case of either victim, and it is a fact that on 
 finding themselves powerless to prevent murder they sullenly 
 withdrew from the scene, neither threat nor persuasion availing 
 to recall them ; and without thought of the danger they ran in 
 exposing themselves at such a moment to the whites, they 
 marched in a body to Northdown, where, as will be presently 
 seen they were made prisoners of, as well as some of the men, 
 namely, Mac-a-mee, Wow-ee, and Calamaroweuee, who followed 
 them thither to force them to return, but which the poor creatures 
 rafused to do. 
 
 In the end, Parker was literally nailed to the ground by the 
 spears of the blacks, twelve of which were driven through and 
 1 1 rough him, every wound, according to the testimony of Dr. 
 Smith, being quite sufiicient to cause death. 
 
 Captain Thomas, on seeing the fate of his friend, to whom 
 he could give no assistance, ran oflf, screaming out murder as 
 loudly as he could, which the natives, who were often capital 
 mimics, afterwards told M'Kay of, without knowing what he 
 meant by it. He was an uncommonly active man, and on foir 
 ground ran with such speed that few could contend against But 
 Bsvift footed as he was, he was no match here for the agile savage 
 unencumbered by clothes ; and several young fellows starting after 
 him were at his heels by the time he had got sixty yards, which 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 83 
 
 was tlie distance he ran when they overhauled him. Tlie captain 
 wore a half military frock coat at the time, at the skirt of which 
 the foremost of them made a grasp, and, though it gave way, his 
 speed was so checked that they had him before he could advance 
 another yard. He was knocked over directly and speared to 
 death, his body being pierced quite through in ten places. 
 
 The demeanoiir of the women at this time, as it is described 
 above, was only what they always displayed on occasions like 
 this. They were seldom jireseut at a fight, unless it were an 
 unexpected one, being always left behind, as many have thought, 
 for their safety, but really because their presence was embarras- 
 sing to their husbands, for, with rare exceptions, they were 
 against excessive violence being done, and it would not be 
 diflScult to give instances where their interposition in stopping it 
 was more successful than it was at this time. 
 
 We must now go back to the beach, where we left the two 
 carters, whom Parker had directed to remain, until Captain 
 Thomas and himself returned to them, and where they awaited 
 until the sun was getting low, loitering about till the last minute, 
 so as not to go without them, and firing their guns for their 
 return but to no purpose, for they were both dead long before 
 this ; so yoking up their bullocks, they reluctantly faced home- 
 wards, taking with them the two horses of the now missing men. 
 
 By the time the drivers had got about half way to Northdown 
 they were joined by the black women, who had quitted the tribe 
 after the murders described above, and now followed the carts as 
 though they were of the party. But they had not gone far before 
 they were overtaken by the three men named a little above, who 
 seemed by their gestures, to insist upon their immediate return 
 to the camp ; but they were too much excited by the events of 
 the day to obey, so they continued to follow the bullock carts, 
 the three men walking with them, sometimes entreating them to 
 return, and at others threatening them with their waddies if they 
 persisted in going on ; but they were not in any temj^er to do the 
 bidding of the others, and sullenly kept on their way Avith the 
 drivers. 
 
 It was night when they reached Northdown, and as the 
 blacks seldom travelled after dark, there was no help for it, but 
 for all of them to remain at the homestead ; and Mrs. Parker, 
 though very little pleased at her hiisband's absence, having at 
 present no seriou.s fears for his safety, Idudly directed the men to 
 look after the wants of these most unexpected, and none too welcome 
 visitors ; and she further instructed four of the servants to go to 
 the port at daylight, and, if possible, to trace out the whereabouts 
 of her husband and his employer ; and then commenced the 
 
%i WAK8, KXTinrATION, HABITS, &0., 
 
 ■wearisome scftrch that followed, andwhieb, but for M'Kay (as I 
 gather from the newspapers of the time), would have proved an 
 unavailing one. 
 
 Next morning four of Thomas' assifjned servants, as convicts 
 in private employ were called, started on their mission ; but not 
 so the natives, the females of whom were still as sulky as black 
 cockatoos are sometimes said to be, and would not retui'n to their 
 tribe ; and as the men would not go Avithout them, about a third 
 of their number were billited at Northdown for two or three days, 
 poor Mrs. Parker entertaining, biit most unconsciously, the very 
 individuals who had made her a widow. 
 
 The natives had not been long at Northdown, before some of 
 Thomas' men, who began \o suspect that foul play had been 
 done, commenced making enquiries of such of the blacks as 
 could uuderstaud them, where they had left the gentlemen whom 
 everyone now felt anxious to hear something about. But though 
 it was evident enough there was some misunderstanding amongst 
 them, there was no getting them to play false to each other, and 
 not a word could be extracted from them that the tribe knew any- 
 thing about them ; but this was not believed, so some of the 
 farm servants, taking the law into their own hands, no uncommon 
 practice with the blacks at that time, enticed them into the most 
 secure room of the house, locked them ujj, set a sentry over them, 
 and there kept them until the boat retiirned to Launceston. when 
 they were all marched down to the beach, \)ut on board and sent 
 oflf "to George Town gaol, which wretched place chancing to be 
 empty at the time, they had it all to themselves. 
 
 As said before, the search Avas kept iip from morning to 
 night for many daj'-s, but neither Thomas nor Parker turned up. 
 though it was noAv the 9th of September,or ten days after they were 
 missed. Then it was that M'Kay "with his soldiers and one 
 native woman arrived at Poi-t Sorell to aid the searchers. This 
 woman whose tribal name M'Kay forgets, was known to our 
 people as Black Sal, and like all the women whom Robinson 
 instructed to assist him in the subjugation of her race, her whole 
 heart and soul were in the business in hand. Like the still 
 living Trucauini, she was one of the most artful and energetic of 
 the decoy ducks whom he had trained to entrap the rest. 
 
 M'Kay, with the practised eye of a bushman," had not been 
 long on the ground without seeing that the search was an ill- 
 managed one, prosecuted by men of slight bush experience only, 
 who instead ol finding anyone, were constantly getting lost them- 
 selves, and that unless some other means were employed to 
 discover the missing men or their remains, the entii-e plaii must 
 end in failure. 
 
OF THE NATIVE TBIBE3 OF T. \SMANIA. 
 
 85 
 
 M'Kay is, what poor Moriarty tvas, a 
 known to the Captain, had his confidence 
 the surest way to succeed was for himsel 
 George Town, along with his companic 
 with the imprisoned natives ; explaining 
 he spoke their language, and understood 
 of thought, so different from ours, he fe 
 their tribe knew anything of the missing 
 confession from them, and by their meai 
 for no one now doubted that tbey werede 
 as this met with instant approbation, and '. 
 armed with a letter to the authorities a 
 them to give their best assistance to '. 
 business that all were interested in. H 
 on Monday the 11th, and presenting his C] 
 with an order to confer with the prisoner 
 and with another one directing the gao 
 assistance in his power likely to promoti 
 
 On entering this abode of misery he 
 condition almost bordering on destitui 
 imperfectly attended to, their apartment < 
 themselves huddled together for a litth 
 weather was icy cold, the officials with t 
 the time, had allowed them no fire, th( 
 that a native had most difficulty to disjien 
 of the poor shuddering wretches made hi 
 and they were so downcast, that it was 
 would speak a word in rei^ly to his que 
 about as kind-hearted a man as you would 
 and he could not stand the scene of wi 
 His first impulse was to order a fire to h 
 that he thought that would be most ac 
 provided, hot tea, bread, meat, and toba 
 and to use M 'Kay's homely expression, i 
 mad, but of course gave over at last. 
 
 One of the first efi"ects of good cheei 
 and women, is to produce good humoui 
 after they had eaten to repletion — a very 
 all ; the sullen frame of mind in which 
 quite passed off, and even the strong 1 
 they held towards the whites was a litt 
 favour of their benefactor. The good o] 
 ceeded from a natural feelin^j; of compa 
 Sal," who having her own ends to serve, ] 
 in her attentions to them, even though 
 
 born sailor, and being 
 ; and he now suggested 
 E to proceed directly to 
 n Black Sal, to confer 
 to the Captain, that as 
 their habits and style 
 Lt quite sure, if they or 
 men, he could extract a 
 IS recover their bodies, 
 ad. A plan so feasable 
 tie started next morning 
 t George Town, urging 
 M'Kay, to forward the 
 e reached George Town 
 •edeutials,was furnished 
 s as often as he pleased, 
 ler to render him every 
 ) the mission, 
 found the prisoners in a 
 ion, their wants most 
 ;old and comfortless and 
 } warmth. Though the 
 he customary apathy of 
 3 next thing, after food, 
 se with. The condition 
 01 angry with the gaoler 
 sometime before either 
 istions. Now M'Kay is 
 meet with in a thousand 
 •etchedness before him. 
 e made, and everything 
 iceptable to them to be 
 ceo without restriction, 
 they ate and drank like 
 
 ; on half famisned men 
 • ; and M'Kay noticed— 
 marked change in them 
 he found them having 
 eeling of aversion that 
 le assuaged— at least in 
 Bees of the latter pro- 
 ssion ; but not so" Old 
 bad been most assiduous 
 she cared not one straw 
 
86 
 
 WAns, 1 '.XTIRPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 about them. She now 
 an extremely liandsome 
 them was, named Nun, 
 pleasant chit-chat about 
 she was njion, the cue 
 brouglit about the subje 
 of coaxing and cajolery- 
 whole truth out of the'p 
 been killed by the men ( 
 Thomas as " Ivandowm 
 person, such as the chit 
 him to be, as distinguis] 
 mon fellow, like a stoe 
 Avhom the natives hated, 
 they designated the De 
 got to be good friends,' 
 had died by the spears 
 men then in gaol were i 
 two she declared to be M; 
 to show us the bodies 
 M'Kay accepted directl; 
 morning, accompanied bj 
 of the George Town polic 
 The party was cros 
 Heads, and soon reache 
 on M'Kay signalising hit 
 ing place. He next rep 
 Doctor Smith, informing 
 arrival, Nunginabitta, la; 
 men lay, but which, froi 
 any other except himsel 
 her, and her peculiar hun 
 her guidance, and she le( 
 "She took us," says Wa 
 into the bush, when they 
 cried, and would not go 
 where the bodies were to 
 statement to the jury, wi 
 
 * Robinson, in one of! 
 lent for Devil, but adds tha 
 lightning, which uo doubl 
 M'Kay say.s that nearly all c 
 manner, that they had seen 1 
 and were highly offended ■« 
 their creduhty. 
 
 took her place beside one of her own sex, 
 
 voung woman, as here and there one of 
 
 ;-in-a-bit-ta, and after a good deal of 
 
 matters quite foreign to the real business 
 
 ning old faggot, by insensible degrees 
 
 ct of the two missing men, and by dint 
 
 (after the ways of woman) wormed the 
 
 oor simpleton, which was that they had 
 
 if her own tribe. She spoke of Captain 
 
 •e," meaning, says M'Kay, a superior 
 
 f of an establishment which she divined 
 
 led from " Eageo," which meant a com- 
 
 vkeeiDcr for example, a class of persons 
 
 Eageo being part of the term by which 
 
 vil, " Rageoroppa. " * " Wlien we had 
 
 says M'Kay, " she confessed that they 
 
 of her tribe, and that two of the three 
 
 he most active in the murders, which 
 
 icameeand Wowee ; and she volunteered 
 
 of the murdered men," an offer which 
 
 r, and he started for Port Sorell next 
 
 the two -women, and an active constable 
 
 re, named George Warren. 
 
 icd over the water at Port Dalrymple 
 
 1 Port Sorell, which they passed over, 
 
 ; arrival on the shore opposite the land- 
 
 orted progress to Captain Moriarty and 
 
 \ them at the same time that the new 
 
 ew where the bodies of the murdered 
 
 1 some caprice, she refused to show, if 
 
 f, Warren, and Black Sal accompanied 
 
 lOur being respected, they started under 
 
 I them straight to where they had died. 
 
 rren in his evidence, " about two miles 
 
 ," that is the two women. " stopped and 
 
 any further, but pointed to the place 
 
 be found," which according to M'Kay's 
 
 is about a hundred yards from where 
 
 ills reports, gives this word as their eqniva- 
 t they used the same to express thunder and 
 they connected with the Evil Presence- 
 f them declared to him, in the most serious 
 he " old gentleman," at one time or another, 
 rith him if they caught him even Bmihng at 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TA 3MANIA. 87 
 
 they sat down. M'Kay describes the spot where this tragedy 
 was performed as nearly open ground, and ^ ery inferior, and as 
 they approached the spot where Parker lay, many crows iJew up 
 from it, thus indicating the precise spot w here he fell. Sixty 
 yards further on the body of Thomas was discovered. It was 
 thirteen days since they died, but the weath er had been so cold 
 that decomposition had not yet set in. Still the body of Parker 
 presented a shocking spectacle, that M'Kay n(5ver speaks of, even 
 now, without horror, I shall not perpetuate his description. 
 Thomas seemed more like one asleep than de id. 
 
 M'Kay next went down to the port, and informed Dr. Smith 
 he had seen the bodies, and several other persons went up iiuder 
 his guidance to where they were, and a kind of stage was built 
 on which they were deposited for the night, and they were sent 
 on to Launceston next morning, where they arrived the day 
 afterwards. 
 
 A coroner's inquest was held directly but not concluded for 
 several days, owing to the absence of M'Kay, who wag required 
 not only as a witness, but interpreter also. His absence was 
 accounted for thus :— Nunginabitta had informed Old Sal (in 
 strict confidence of course, but who blabbed directly) that her 
 husband, Killmoronia, had taken some part in the death of 
 Thomas, and had retreated to the Surry Hills, towards which 
 M'Kay turned directly to pick him up, but was stojiped in 
 his advance by the first river westerly of Port Sorell, namely, 
 the Mersey, which was then greatly swollen ; and it was whilst 
 he was making a raft to cross this dangerous stream, he learned 
 that his new companion intended giving him the slip to rejoin 
 her husband. But she being too imj^ortant a personage to lose 
 sight of just now, he marched her off to Launceston, where he 
 arrived with her three or four days after the first assembling of 
 the Coroner's jury, which both were required to attend directly. 
 M'Kay having given his own evidence was next sworn to interpret 
 hers. But after handing her over to the authorities she was 
 injudiciously allowed to see the prisoners, and when she came 
 before the jury she contradicted all she said before. It now 
 came out she had passed the preceding night with them and she 
 so prevaricated, that M'Kay at last told the jury " it was evident 
 to him that a plan had been laid to get the prisoners off by 
 contradicting her former evidence " She, however, still admitted 
 their presence at the murders, but contended that they took 
 no part in them. "She would not allow," says the report, 
 " that any of the men present had anything to do with the mur- 
 ders, but that they were sitting down. " The jury, however, 
 did not believe her story, and all three men were adjudged 
 
88 WAB6, EXTIEPATION, nABlTS, &C., 
 
 to be guilty, wero committed to gaol accordingly, and M'Kay 
 bound over to appe ar at their trial ; but the Attorney-General of 
 the time, the shre tvd but eccentric Algernon Montagu, who <if 
 it -were jjosBible) cared less for public opinion than even the 
 JDuke of Wellingto a, woiild not prosecute, so they were discharged, 
 that is, if consign ing them to the islands of Bass' Straits could 
 be called discharjjiug them. 
 
 After it had become known to the men of the Big'Eiver tribe 
 through M'Kay, that Thomas' dispositions towards their race 
 were friendly, they expressed great sorrow at having killed him 
 in which M'Kay believed them to be perfectly sincere. ' 
 
 I 
 
OF THE NATITE TEIBES OP TASMANIA. 89 
 
 SEALERS V. BLACKS : A STBAITSMAN'S STORY. 
 
 (From notes supplied by Mr. Alexander M'Kay,) 
 
 But on the Natives of that Land misused, 
 
 Not long the silence of amazement hung, 
 Nor brooked they long their friendly faith abused ; 
 
 For, with a common shriek, the general tongue 
 Exclaimed, ' To arms ' — and fast to arms they sprung. 
 
 Sir W. Scott's Vision of Don Roderick. 
 
 In the long contention between black and white, that followed 
 their first rencontre at Bisdon, on the 3rd of May, 1804, down to 
 the submission of the last of the tribes to Mr. Robinson, 28th 
 December, 1834, the worst disasters that our opponents suffered, 
 were inflicted on them on the north-east coast of Tasmania, where 
 (and where onli/) they had the worst of the fight. 
 
 These disasters were occasioned them by certain men of our 
 own race, almost as savage as themselves, who occupied some of 
 the islands of the straits, and were known in early history as the 
 sealers of Banks' Straits, (that is that portion of Bass' Straits 
 that lay between Flinders Island and the mainland, about Cape 
 Portland). Of these men, of whom there were not thirty families 
 or single individuals, very little intelligence has been preserved 
 — at least in print — and of their many tights with the blacks, for 
 the possession of their women, nothing that I know of has been 
 communicated to the public except a few general remarks, 
 written by myself, for the Ai(Stralasian newspaper, about two 
 years ago, which I collected from certain old M.S. documents 
 that are preserved in the Colonial Secretary's office. But even 
 these old papers contain few or no details of the many skirmishes 
 that were fought out on the North East Coast between the sealers 
 and the blacks, during the last 10 or 20 years of the existence of 
 the native tribes at large, in which many lives were sacrificed on 
 both sides. These fights ended mostly, but by no means always, 
 to the disadvantage of the black race, who, in everything con- 
 nected with bush fighting, were a very formidable foe. 
 
90 WAKS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 The followiug iucicleuts of tlio war, ns it was carried on, on 
 tlio North East Coast, are offered as illuatratioua of the many 
 savage but iiurocorded cuconuters that took place in the Cape 
 Porthmd districts about 50 years ago, between the straitsmen 
 and blacks, and may be relied on as perfectly authentic 
 narratives : — 
 
 In about 182G, there were living on Guncarriage, now Van- 
 sittart Island, Bass' Straits, a number of sealers, that is to say 
 several parties of them, who workod in gangs of fours or fives. 
 Each party was furnished with a first class boat, suitable for the 
 perilous enterjirises they were so often engaged in on the rocks 
 of the Straits, (then much resorted to by the beautifiil fur-seal;, 
 often requiring them to undertake long boat voyages from group 
 to group, during the breeding season ; or to the mainlands of 
 Australia or Tasmania as kangaroo hunters, which occupation, 
 after the seals left our coasts, they followed as a branch of their 
 calling. 
 
 Of these parties one was headed by a man named Duncan, 
 who was the owner of one of these cliiDiaing boats. This person 
 had formerly been the mate of a ship, and the crew he now worked 
 with consisted of himself — two men who were natives of Sydney 
 — and one other named Thomas Tucker, the last named jDersou 
 taking chief jjart in the transactions that I am about to give an 
 account of. 
 
 Of this man Tucker, however it may have happened that he 
 now followed the half savage life of a sealer in Bass' Straits, (a 
 quarter then too often the refugium of men of bad character and 
 l^ractises,) was a gentleman by birth, education, &c , and had 
 once held a commission in the Koyal Navy ; and in writing of 
 times when Tasmania was a convict colony, it may be as well to 
 say, that he was always a free person. A love of perilous enter- 
 prise and wild adventure, I presume it was, that threw him 
 amongst the sealers of Bass' Straits. 
 
 He is descril)ed to me as a rather extraordinary person, of 
 great natural talents, and accjuired endowments, having had an 
 excellent education and careful home training in youth. He was 
 a very ingenious fellow, who could turn his hand to anything, 
 and was therefore perfectly self-reliaiit, and it is believed that 
 up to the ijrenent time his moral character was not a bad one. 
 
 He was the most daring, active and servicable man in the 
 Straits ; and it has to be said to his credit, that he made a better 
 use of the good training he himself had received, than almost 
 any other pt'rsun Avould voluntarily have done, in educating 
 gratuitously the sealers' children, during such periods of leisure 
 s he could snatch from his adventurous calling. 
 
OF THK NATIVE TBIBES OP TASMANIA^ Ul 
 
 Sucia of tlie sealers, however, who had families, of whom 
 Duncan was one, were not married to tlie women to Avhom they 
 had united themselves. Their women wt re of the savage races of 
 Australia or Tasmania, either iinrchased or stolen from the 
 mainland tribes, but chiefly from those of this island, from which 
 connexions the half-caste race now found on the islands has 
 825rung. 
 
 Captains Kelly antl Hobbs, who visited the Islands, very 
 many years ago, and who saw a good deal of the old race of 
 sealers, say that these poor women were mostly purchased of their 
 parents, either for the carcasses of the seal, or for hunting dogs. 
 But quarrels springing up between the two races, in which 
 several of each side were killed, the natives grew chary of inter- 
 course with the whites, and this species of barter was so much 
 interrupted, that at last women could only be obtained by force. 
 
 Many skirmishes took place, particularly on our own coasts, 
 for the women, the sealers making free use of their firearms, and 
 the others spearing their oi^ponents whenever they got a chance. 
 The sealers had the best of the fight, and the north coast is the 
 only part of the colony where for a Avhile the whites really beat 
 the blacks, many idle stories to the contrary, notwithstanding. 
 
 Captain Kelly, who was emjiloyed in 1815 and '16 on the 
 pacific mission of making the circuit of this island, was himself 
 nearly cut off by the blacks on several occasions. They were 
 then very|numeroiis, and he could scarcely ever go ashore without 
 being attacked by them. 
 
 Having just mentioned Diiucan's party at the outset, I found 
 it necessary betore proceeding to elescribe its movements, to say 
 the little I have done about the principal actor of this tale, and 
 also to describe in as few words as I could use, the cause that led 
 to the long misunderstanding between sealer and black, I must 
 now return to Guncarriage Island, Avhere Duncan's people had 
 their head quarters. 
 
 Of the four persons of whom Duncan's party consisted 
 namely, himself. Tucker, and two young men of Sydney, the 
 three last named were all single men, and they now sailed for tha 
 mainland of Tasmania, to secure, either by purchase or surpi'ise, 
 as many native girls as they wanted. 
 
 This is the first act of aggression on the liberty of the blacks, 
 in which Tucker is known to have taken any part ; but not so 
 the others, and dearly did the natives make the pay for disturb- 
 ing them in thair hunting grounds. 
 
 The boat sailed accordingly for Cape Portland, carrying 
 beside the party above named, Duncan's tiu.fc, as his woman was 
 styled, and her half-caste son, an infant 2 or 3 years old. They 
 
92 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, <fec,, 
 
 laiulod on one of the boaclics near Cape Poi'tland, on land now 
 the property of Mr. John Foster, of Hobart Town, and ffjrmed 
 their camp under the shelter of one of the low hummocks that lie 
 alonp; the slioro-line of this <]narter 
 
 Duncan, who liad been frequently engaged in feuds against 
 the blacks, and hitherto successfully, led the fray ; Tucker 
 remaining in charge of the boat and encami)ment, and Duncan's 
 sou was left in liis care. 
 
 The leader Avas a v(>ry fool-hardy fellow, and some previous 
 successes had inspired him Avith such a contempt of the blacks, 
 that it was his boast to say he Avas a match for any number of 
 them. Taking his Avoman to act as negotiator with them, he 
 stai'ted along Avitli his mates in search of the Cape Portland tribe. 
 Tucker entreated him again and again to arm his party, biit could 
 not prcA-ail on his unreasonable mate to hear of such a thing. 
 What, he asked, did he want with arms against mere naked 
 black-felloAvs ? any numl)er of whom he could beat single-handed, 
 whether armed or not ; and accompanied as he was now by two 
 such men as his Sydney companions, there AA'as nothing to fear 
 from a hundred of them, and at parting, jeeringly told his more 
 prudent counsellor to hiiA^e no fears of him, and that he would be 
 back before night, bringing a dozen girls with him for him to 
 choose from. 
 
 Instances of rashness like Duncan's were not uncommon on 
 the frontier grounds of the colony during the thirty years fight 
 betAveen black and Avliite. Thus Simmonds' Bay (a nook of 
 Barues' Bay, North Bruny) is called after a lime-burner, who 
 sacrificed his life to a senseless feeling of contempt for the 
 courage of the black men. This beautiful cove was great a place of 
 great resort of the Bruny tribe, and their intrusions, as Simmonds 
 thought them, were resented by him, as though they, and not he, 
 were the trespassers on the ground lie occupied, and they were 
 ordered off" whenever they came. Mistaking his commands for 
 requests, they Avere at first complied with. But finding them so 
 frequently repeated, they got tired of them at last. On these 
 occasions, it was his custom to take a stick with him to beat them 
 off if necessary. The last notice that Simmonds gave them to 
 quit was late in NoA'emb«r of 1822 ; but they began to understand 
 him by this time, and laughed in his face for his impertinence, 
 whereon he struck the one nearest him. But this was the last act 
 of his life, for the oflended black tiirned on him like a tiger, drove 
 his spear through hun, and he was a dead man the next moment. 
 
 Duncan's woman soon got traces of the tribe they were in 
 pvirsuit of, and came on their hiits it is believed in the afternoon, 
 or even earlier. The Cape Portland natives hated the sealers, 
 
OF THE NATIVE TK3ES OF TASMANIA. 93 
 
 and none more so than Duncan himself, whom they recognised 
 immediately. Snatching down their spears from the trees in which 
 they customarily stuck them when in repose, they only waited 
 till he was within range ; then, with the fatal aim for which they 
 were so famous, he was struck in nearly all parts of his body at 
 once. He fell of course, death ensuing instantaneously. 
 
 The two Sydney men fled for their lives directly ; and as the 
 blacks did not pursiie them at once, they succeeded in gaining 
 the coast, but at a considerable distance from the caTap before they 
 were overtaken. They plodded on rapidly towards the boat but 
 failed to reach it, the superior agility of the blacks proving too 
 much for them. The particulars of the meeting have been too 
 imperfectly presei'ved for narration, but as their dead bodies were 
 found a few days afterwards in a shockingly mutilated state, no 
 doubt was left about who were the authors of this massacre. 
 
 Duncan's woman remained with her own race. Glad of 
 regaining her liberty, she voluntarily rejoined them ; and without 
 regret, resigned to chance the half-caste offspring of her forced 
 connection with Duncan. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, but vouched for by Mr. G. A. Eobin- 
 son, that the black women though passionately fond of children 
 of their own blood, as a riile detested such as they bore to white 
 men ; and on this occasion Duncan's woman abandoned her only 
 son with perfect unconcern. 
 
 In following the relation that I have received of these 
 transactions, the narrative reconducts me to the sealers camp at 
 Cajje Portland. 
 
 The first and second day of Tucker's solitude closed, but 
 Duncan aud his companions returned not to the boat ; and he 
 grew more aud more uneasy as their absence was prolonged, till a 
 sentiment of fear for their safety overpowered every other feeling. 
 It was in vain that he endeavoured to supjiress the idea that some 
 evil had befallen them, the presentiment that was on him grew the 
 stronger the more he strove to dismiss it from his mind. He tried 
 to believe it possible that they had failed to reach the tribe so soon 
 as they hoped, aud were still in pursuit ; but this hope vanished 
 as he remembered they had made no provision for an absence of 
 more than a few hours, after which they should have returned, 
 they might have lost themselves — but this was most unlikely in 
 a nearly open district, and with a native woman for a guide, who 
 could have retraced their steps one by one to the boat, like a 
 bloodhound ; and his belief settled at last into an immutabe con- 
 viction that they would not come back again. Frequently during 
 the second day, did he fire off his piece to notify the position of 
 the camp in case they might be returning, but] the precaution 
 
94 WABS, KXTIRPATION, HABITS, &0., 
 
 was an nsoloss one, and its crliooo were its sole rosiwnsp. He 
 passed the night in restless anxiety and was abroad at. day dawn- 
 ing of the third morning, watching on the sandliill, but to no 
 purpose. He returned to Ins tent sick at heart and lay down, 
 whilst Duncan's little child amused itself outside as lie best 
 could. Yoi;ng as this infant was, lie had even now a little of the 
 cunning and vigilance of the race he belonged to, by the motlier's 
 side at least, and Tucker, tlu)ugh half wearied out, noticed that 
 he kept running in and out of the tent, Avitli unusual frequency, 
 and an evident desire to communicate something he was too 
 young to explai)!. But the sealer unhappily gave less heed than 
 he ought to the peculiar movements of the child, and he remained 
 "wdthin. 
 
 But at this instant he was effectiially aroused from his 
 inaction by a volley of spears and stones striking tlie tent with 
 uncommon force, accompanied by the shouts of the natives who 
 were now surrounding his domicile. Tucker sprung to his feet, 
 and seizing his two-barrel gun and the child, he got to the top of 
 the sandhill mentioned above, before a second spear was thrown, 
 determined if die he must, there to defend himself as he best 
 could to the last. He had plenty ammunition and was a deadly 
 shot, which latter fact was known to the tribe, but more particularly 
 to at least two of the most forward of those savages, who had 
 been on the Straits islands along with him before this time. 
 Directily he was gone from the tent, the natives took possession 
 of it and of his boat also, which latter they tried to set fire to, but 
 from some unexplained cause, they failed to damage it much. 
 
 Amongst the natives present, he observed Duncan's woman, 
 and the tAvo men spoken of just above, to whom he was knoM'u. 
 These young fellows had been taken in infancy, and were brought 
 up amongst our own people, by whom they were named respec- 
 tively Murray and Jack. Both of them had lived much in Hobart 
 Town, where they earned a living on the water, either as boatmen 
 or sailors, and both had visited the Straits islands in the sealing 
 season, in vessels fitted out for the seal trade, and more than 
 once had worked the seal rookeries in company with Tucker. 
 But as usual with these civilised blacks, as they were called, their 
 natural hankerings for savage life never departed from them, and 
 they were as difficult to tame permanently as wolves or wood 
 pigeons are, unless when taken so young as to retain no remem- 
 brance of the wild life to which they were born ; and there is 
 hardly an instance of their not rejoining their own jieople on 
 reaching manhood, and it was observed of these particular 
 individuals that they were ever afterwards the most forward and 
 mischevious of the tribe, and the directors of their movements iu 
 
OF THE NATIVE TKIBES OF TASMANIA. 95 
 
 their numerous hostile incursions into the settled districts ; and 
 no-w, by Tucker's own account, these two young men, more than 
 any of the rest, evinced the most determined hostility towards 
 him, "and did all they could," says the account I am writing 
 from, " to get at and kill him. " But the well directed piece of 
 this unerring marksman, as they well knew him to be, kept them 
 back. Luckily the great body of them were more intent on 
 plundering his tent and boat, than on murder, or his life was not 
 worth a minute's purchase, for though he might have killed or 
 disabled two or three of them in an united onslaught, they were far 
 too numerous to be kept long at bay in any general attack. 
 Tucker now called out to Duncan's woman to come to him, pro- 
 mising not to fire, if she came alone, and she did so. He then 
 enquired what had become of his companions ; but it was long 
 before he could get at the facts, for she was either afraid or dis- 
 inclined to speak out, and she prevaricated and fenced every 
 question, like an unwilling witness under legal examination. 
 They had gone, she first at pretended, toLaunceston, then some- 
 where else, or were away with some of the tribe hunting, and 
 would soon be back, " but all of which," says M'Kay'a manu- 
 script, " he knew to be wrong." Tucker was a patient fellow, 
 but her evasions wore out even his patience in time, and so 
 annoyed him, that he pointed his piece at her at last, saying 
 unless she let him know what had happened them, he would blow 
 her head oflt" where she stood, when she owned that the natives 
 had killed them all — Duncan certainly, and the others she 
 believed. He next asked her whether she would return to the 
 islands with him, or remain with her tribe ? She chose to stay 
 where she was. 
 
 The day wore on, and Tucker still kept his post on the top 
 of the sand-cone, no one caring to take his first shots. Indeed 
 most of them seemed satisfied with the mischief they had already 
 done, and some of them left with their shares of the plunder of 
 his tent. He observed their indifi'erence, and through Duncan's 
 woman entered into a parley with them, proioosing that they 
 should give him his boat and let him go, promising not to fire ou 
 any one if this were done ; and as night was coming on, and they 
 themselves wished to get back to their camp, his proposal was 
 agreed to, and some women were sent to assist him in launching 
 the boat, Avliich was put into the water, and Tucker went down 
 to the beach to embark, Duncan's boy following closely behind 
 him. But just as he was going to step into her, a native man 
 who was crouching v/ithin some boobialla scrub, siDrung from 
 his hiding place, and snatching up the child, ran oS with it to 
 some rocks, and then giving it a swing over his head, dash ed its 
 
96 WARS, EXTmPATTON, nABITS, &e., 
 
 brains out against them. The sealer instinctively raised his 
 piece for a shot at the munlcrcr, bat remembring his promise 
 not to fire on anyone, and that his own safety depended on his 
 keejDing his word, the man escajDed^for the present. But Tucker 
 marked him. It was Murray. 
 
 The -wind blew off tlie land when he commenced his dreary 
 night's voyage homewards, and he steered for the islands xinder 
 a mizen only, the boat's mainsail and jib, of which his tent was 
 made, being left Avith the natives. The breeze, however, was 
 fresh and fair, and he kept before it all night, and when morning 
 broke was off Preservation Island, on which he soon afterwards 
 landed. 
 
 From this time forward Tucker's whole nature seemed 
 changed. He was perhaps never a good man, but he was not a 
 cruel one. But the loss of his mates, and the dangers he had so 
 lately escaped from, gave rapid expansion to whatever evil there 
 was within him, the latent seeds of which, like the prophets gourd, 
 grew into maturity in a single night, but unlike it withered not 
 away again. He was, moreover, as we have seen, fond of child- 
 ren, and the horrid death of one he had charge of only yesterday, 
 gi5ve intensity to a passion for revenge which now began to 
 dominate over his reason. 
 
 Several other sealers to wliom he was known were stajdng on 
 Preservation Island, and to them he told the disastrous story of 
 the death of his mates, and easily engaged them to assist in 
 avenging it,'; and so as soon as the wind served, they sailed for 
 Cape Portland, well armed and equipped for a murderous fight 
 with tlie blackfellows, 
 
 Cai^e Portland is more properly a point of land than a cape. 
 The shore hereabouts is almost everywhere low, and presents 
 many points where a landing may be made in moderate weather. 
 The country about it is not a fertile one, the best of it that I now 
 remember, are a few hundred acres, in the midst of which it is 
 that the pleasant homestead of Mr. John Foster, of Hobart Town, 
 is planted. It was not far from here that tlie sealers landed, 
 forming a temporary camp of their sails. Biit the wandering 
 tribe had left tlie neighbourhood for other hunting groiinds by 
 this time, and their search after them, though it broke best part 
 of a week, was an unavailing one, and they returned to the 
 i slands. 
 
 But Tucker never afterwards relinquished the idea of taking 
 a lull revenge on the Cape Portland tribe, wherever he might 
 fall in Avith it ; and above all, to destroy, if i)0ssible, tin; two 
 youtlis. Jack and Murray. He made no secret of his intentions, 
 and all the sealing community knew them ; and as the sympathies 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 97 
 
 of the large majority of these half lawless men were with Tucker, 
 they quite approved his determination. 
 
 There was, however, one party of them who took no part in 
 the many contentions that occurred at this time, now 1827, 
 between sealer and black, but who managed to keep on good 
 terms with the latter throughout, and there was perfect confidence 
 between them and the tribes of the north-east coast of the colony. 
 The leader of this party, as he was styled, from being the owner 
 of their boat, was named Thompson. The natives knew his boat 
 and never retreated when they saw it apjiroaching the mainland, 
 or took any i^recaution if they found that he was m her. All the 
 sealers resorted to the mainland at times to take kangaroos, the 
 skins of which have been in demand in this market, time out of 
 mind. But Thompson's crew was the only one with whom 
 the natives now held friendly intercourse, and when they met, 
 many kind offices v/ere done on both sides. Did Thompson's 
 people want help to beach or unbeach their boat, the blacks 
 were ready to lend a hand, or they would bring wood or Avater to 
 his camj) ; whilst he on his part would cross them to the oft'-lylng 
 rocks during the egging season, and recross them to the main 
 afterwards ; give them seal carcasses, &c., &c. 
 
 It is said by Robinson in one of his many reports on the 
 condition of the blacks (January 24th, 1831), that none of the 
 natives of the North or East Coasts had the least idea of making 
 or using a catamaran, like those dwelling on the South and West 
 Coast districts had. Indeed, the configuration of the shores he 
 is speaking of, which are not much broken into bays, gave them 
 little occasion to trust themselves afloat ; and as no Tasmanian 
 native ever gave himself the smallest unnecessary trouble, these 
 •' machines," as Eobinson calls them, were never constructed by 
 them ; so if the North or East Coast tribes desired to visit any of 
 the bird rocks that were not within swimming distance, they had 
 no means of doing so unless a friendly boatman were at hand, to 
 cross and recross them. Thompson, when he had leisure, never 
 refused them this service, thus enabling them in egging time to 
 add largely to their food siipplies. 
 
 The tribes who formerly roamed about Cape Portland had 
 now no other white associates excepting Thompson and his crew ; 
 and he took advantage of a visit from the horde, whom Tucker 
 and others had lately tried to surprise, to put them on their 
 guard against the designs of this man, and more partic^^larly 
 told them of the certain doom of Murray and Jack, if they gave 
 him the chance of a shot at them. 
 
 The sealing season of 1827 was approaching ; and of the 
 
98 WABS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &€., 
 
 boftts thftt took part in it, one -was from Hobart Town. Ou its 
 passage to the straits, the crew put in for one night at the Eddy- 
 stone boat harbour, at a moment when the Cape Porthiud tribe 
 were hunting there. The boat's crew, as too usual with sailors, 
 were a careless set of fellows, and not thinking in the least of 
 danger, kept no lookout for squalls of any kind when ashore ; 
 and after forming a rude shelter for the night, retired within to 
 refresh, a good while before dusk, leaving their boat at anchor, 
 but with the stern-fast ashore. The men of the Cape Portland 
 tribe were just the reverse of our sailors, that is, they were ever 
 on the watch, either to do mischief to others or avoid danger, 
 and had no difficulty in surprising the strangers, who, all at once, 
 found their jDlace of refuge encircled by a cordon of ai'med savages. 
 Our sailors tired a random shot or two, and then ran to their boat, 
 amidst such a whizzing of spears, as they had not dreamed of 
 hearing when they landed. Luckily for them it had grown pretty 
 dark by this time, and the usually fine aim of the black was not 
 very true. The crew reached the boat and got off, but some of 
 them were very badly wounded. 
 
 Many boats and scores of homesteads were thus surprised 
 every year by " the poor benighted down. trodden savages," as it 
 was the fasion of silly desjjatch -writers and sentimental pamph- 
 leteers to style this clever but sanguinai\y race of men, who were 
 the aggressors in nearly every skirmish, who for many years 
 kept the colony in a greater state of alarm than the bushrangers 
 did, and whose final extinction was far more due to a combination 
 of disastrous natural causes converging simultaneously on their 
 camps, than to the bullet of the white settler, or even the extraordi- 
 nary daring and judgment of Mr. Robinson. 
 
 After the above described specimen of native subtlety, the 
 Hobart Town sealing party stuck to their boat till they reached 
 the straits islands, not again touching the mainland during their 
 voyage. TJiey sldrted along the north eastern shore of Cape 
 Barren Island, and eventually landed on Guncarriage, where 
 Tucker had his home, and where he unhappily was then to receive 
 them. 
 
 He was never slow or chary of giving his assistance to any 
 one visiting his island home, more especially to men in distress 
 like these new arrivals were ; and he now collected a few other 
 fellows to help them unload their boat and beach her, which done, 
 he conducted them to his neat little cottage, that stood near the 
 landing place. 
 
 "What's up with you?" was his first enquiry after the/ 
 were settled down in his cottage, " What's the matter. Som,3 o ' 
 ou seem badly hurt." 
 
OF THE NATIVE TKIBES OP TASMANIA. 99 
 
 " The natives — tlie natives at Eddystone harbor," said one 
 of the wounded men. 
 
 " Those damned Cape PortlanderB, I warrant it," said Tucker 
 with emphasis, " the most bloody tribe on the coast. They hunt 
 there and as far south as George's Bay. It's only the other 
 day like, that they killed three of my own mates, and a boy 
 belonging to one of them ; and now it's not their fault, but your 
 good luck, that they have not killed all of you. But we will talk 
 over the affair after I have stopped the shotholes they have put 
 through you, for I am surgeon and everything at these islands." 
 
 He found that two of the five were laadly hit, and one other 
 more slightly. The two former he thought would not be able to 
 do much diiring the approaching season ; however he was quite 
 surgeon enough to deal with worse cases than these ; he dressed 
 their wounds, and otherwise treated them so professionally, that 
 in about eight weeks the two worst of them were able to resume 
 light work. 
 
 About a week after landing at Guncarriage, the sealing work 
 began ; and Tucker who often worked the rocks on the East 
 Coast, and was still hankering for a brush with the blacks, resolved 
 to commence operations where he would be within reach of the 
 tribe if they came down to the coast during the time he was there. 
 Of the unwounded strangers who joined him for the season, one 
 was — Kogers, and the others Little and Sydney. These three 
 and a native woman called Dumpy, with whom Tucker was now 
 allied, completed the party. 
 
 Tucker said nothing to his new friends about his designs on 
 the natives ; nor had they any suspicion of them through extra 
 preparations being made for the trip in the shape of guns and 
 ammunition ; for as sealing was mostly carried on by shooting 
 from the boat, these articles were necessarily supplied in abun- 
 dance for their legitimate work. 
 
 So soon as the wind served they started for the East Coast, 
 and first worked the George rock, about five miles northerly of 
 Eddystone Point. Here they remained about a couple of nights, 
 and then left for the sealers' refuge, as they called the little boat 
 harbour at Eddystone Point. At this refuge the sealers had a 
 permanent camp consisting of two good huts, that were used in 
 common by the straitsmen as their occasions required, when they 
 were kangaroo hunting on shore. Here they landed with such 
 things as they required. They breakfasted, and then Eogers, 
 Little, and Sydney, who were very tired, went into the hut to 
 rest, leaving Tucker and the woman outside at the fire, and were 
 soon asleep. 
 
 The Cape Portland tribe were still here, though not close to 
 
100 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, ^'C, 
 
 the harbour at this raoinont. But as day advanced Bome indica- 
 tions of their ai^iiroach, wliich no Euroj^eau would observe, 
 reached the cars of the black woman ; but she said nothinpf until 
 better assured of the fact. Tucker and her still sat by the fire, 
 smokinpc their pipes, while their mates slept. The laud all along 
 the north-eastern shores is very open, so that with the commonest 
 vip^ilance there was no danger of any sudden 8ur])rise. All at 
 once, however, the woman started and whispered to Tucker, 
 " here are the blackfellows," pointing at them at the same time. 
 He looked round just in time to seethe head of one of them peer- 
 ing at them over a low rise, which was withdrawn directly, and 
 not a vestige of tlie hundreds who were creej^ing stealthily on 
 them, to surround them, was to be seen. Our natives managed 
 their attacking movements with uncommon skill, and hundreds 
 are the instances of their sorrounding dwellings in perfect swarms 
 without their exciting the smallest suspicion of their being at 
 hand. No more subtle a race could be than the Tasmanian 
 savages. 
 
 Tucker was not an easily alarmed man at any time, and was 
 not much intimidated even now. His double gun, which was 
 loaded and ready for instant work, lay near at hand, and as his 
 mates had their sealing rifles, they were net to be trifled Avith 
 when they were on the look-out. Knowing that the blacks never 
 fought at disadvantage, he judged there would be no immediate 
 attack. He therefort; called out to them, through the woman, to 
 let them know that he saw them, and was ready for them if they 
 meant fighting, but, if not, that he did not wish to hurt them. 
 His tone was friendly, but his words were those of deceit. 
 Several heads were now seen since they discovered that they 
 were observed, on which he invited two or three of them to come 
 over to him, all the rest to keep back. But they hesitated, none 
 relishing an interview with a man whom they had robbed and 
 tr!e<l to kill so very lately, and it was long before he could soothe 
 them into a good humour. 
 
 "What are you afraid of ? " said he, " Come over, but not 
 too many of you ; v/c shan't hurt you. Is Miirrny with you ? 
 Let him and Jack and two or three others come, but not more, 
 and I will give them as much tobacco and other things for all 
 hands as they choose to cany away. " 
 
 Jack and Murray were there, but still held back. 
 
 "We not come," said both the youths together (for they 
 spoke the language very fairly). "Thompson tell us you shoot 
 us." 
 
 "Then Thom])son's a liar," said he, "I would sooner shoot 
 him than you. I never told him so. Not I. I could have shot 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES CF T.iSMAKTA. 101 
 
 you, Murray, if I had chosen, when you killed the child, but I 
 let you go, and will not hurt you now, so either come over to us, 
 or all of you go away." 
 
 His promises of friendship and the presents he would give 
 them, at length reassured them, and four of them came, namely, 
 a young man named Limaganua, a youth of about fourteen, 
 (whom M'Kay says was the handsomest native he ever saw.) 
 besides Jack and Murray. Others would have come, but Tucker 
 motioned them to keep off, the woman telling them he would 
 have no more of them, and cautioned them all to come no nearer, 
 otherwise they would take to their boat. 
 
 Tucker then set them down to breakfast, and whilst they 
 were busy with the good things before them, he rose up quite 
 unconcernedly and went to the hiit where Rogers, Little, and 
 Sydney were still sleeping heavily after tlieir recent fatigue, and 
 the discomforts of the George's rocks, for neither of them were 
 so hardy as Tucker. He woke them quietly, telling them to get 
 u]) directly and bring out their rifles, as the natives were all 
 around them. 
 
 Rogers and the others had had quite enough of the natives 
 when at Eddystone Harbour some days ago, to last them for the 
 rest of their lives and the intelligence that they had got into a second 
 scrape with them in a foi'tnight was disheartening. Suddenly 
 aroused from their heavy sleep, they scarcely knew what they were 
 doing at first, for they were half stupefied, by being thus hastily 
 awoke. Up to this time neither of them knew anything of 
 Tucker's evil designs on the men whom they saw sitting at their 
 fire, to which he had entrapped them ; but thinking of nothing 
 but their own safety, they did as tbey were bid and followed him. 
 
 The fifth and last act of the tragedy, I will give as nearly as 
 I can in M'Kay's own words : — 
 
 " Sydney has told me many a time. ' I took uj:) my gnn as we 
 all did, not knowing what was the matter. When we came out, 
 there were the natives at breakfast. Murray sitting on a water 
 keg, and the rest on the ground. I saw poor Miirray's heart 
 beat again as we approached, guns in hand, to where he sat. His 
 panuican full of tea dropped to the ground as we came near, and 
 he saw Tucker cocking his rifle. In two two stejjs Tucker was 
 beside him, and said to him, "Murray, you have lived long 
 enough," drew the triggers of his double-barrel, and both 
 charges went into his heart. He fell dead directlj. The other 
 natives jump up, and Limaganna ran off, Rogers who was yet 
 hardly awake, presented at Limaganua, when Tucker calls out 
 (pointing to Jack), "Jacky'syour mark— Jacky's your mark." 
 Poor Jack called out "No, no," that is imploring him not to 
 
102 WARS, EXTIKPATION', HABITS, <tc., 
 
 slioot him, fiiiil holJiug botli hands before his face retrciited 
 hfistily back-wards. Rogers fii-ed but missed him, Avheu he turned 
 quickly round, and ran rapidly down to the sea. Sydney neitlier 
 fired nor meant to fire, for by this time he began to think there 
 was something not right. But Tucker's thirst for blood was not 
 yet slaked, and noticing Sydney's he^'tation, and that Jack was 
 escaping, snatched the riile from his hand Taking his usual 
 steady aim at his victim, the bullet jiassed into the Ijack of his 
 head, and he ran no further. 
 
 "Limaganna escaped, but the boy clung to the woman, and 
 implored her not to let him be killed. Tucker, whose vengance 
 was now appeased, looked at him mildly, and by kind words and 
 some presents calmed his fears, and allowed him to rejoin his 
 people, who were withdrawing, and the sealing party left to re- 
 commence work. 
 
 " Sydney was very angry with Tucker for what he had done, 
 and has often told me he was very sorry ever after that lie was 
 accidentally present at these murders, even though he took no 
 part in them. 
 
 "Limaganna, and also a brother of his, were both shot in 
 some farm fight at Break o'Day Plains, in 1830 ; and the next 
 year, the boy now about 15 years of age, was made prisoner by 
 me along with some other natives of Musselrow Eiver, and was 
 sent to the aboriginal establishment in the Straits. 
 
 Mr. Alexander M'Kay, from whom I received the outline 
 sketch of the above narrative, is now a settler at Peppermint 
 Bay, D'Entrecasteux Channel, where he has resided more than 
 30 years. He is about 68 years old, but hale and strong in an 
 uncommon degree, the natural consequence of a life of activity, 
 and a constitution that has never been abused by unhealthy 
 indiilgences. I have known him well for aboxit three and forty 
 years. We are very old bush chums, and have walked some 
 thousands of miles together ; and I can say truly of him that he 
 is the best bush companion I have ever had. Full of anecdote, 
 no one knows more of the old times than he, and as no one has 
 ranged the colony more than M'Kay, (between 1825 and '40) his 
 local knowledge is extensive. He was in early life one of the 
 first employes of the Van Piemen's Land Company, as explorer 
 at one time, and master of one of their crafts at another, for he 
 was a sailor by profession. Fi'om the service of the company he 
 passed into that of the Aboriginal Mission under Kobinson, to 
 whom he rendered important services. But fconceiving himself 
 to [be neglected by his chief, he threw up his eugagemeut. 
 
PI 
 
 OP THE NATIVE TKIBES OF TASMANIA. 103 
 
 Quitting Guucarriage Island, where the captive natives were 
 domiciled before their removal to the establishment which they 
 called Wyba Luma, on Flinders Island, he proceeded to Hobart 
 Town, and Colonel Arthur, who had a very high opinion of him. 
 immediately gave him a command independent of Mr. Eobiuson, 
 in which he soon distinguished himself. 
 
 Before quitting Kobinson, M'Kay had been twenty-three 
 weeks on Guucarriage by himself, in charge of a large body of 
 recently captured blacks, all as wild as wolves ; and it is amongst 
 the chief marvels of his adventurous and really extraordinary 
 career, that he escaped with his life from amongst them. 
 
104 TVARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 THE EARLY YEARS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LAST OF THE TASMANIANS. 
 
 ' ' All perished — I alone am left on earth 
 To whom nor relative nor blood remains, 
 No — not a tiudred drop that nms in human veins." 
 
 Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming. 
 
 The following is M'Kay's account of some passages in the life of 
 this woman — the last of her race — as communicated to him by 
 herself : — 
 
 " On the 16tli or thereabouts, of January, 1830, I first saw 
 Truganini, we took her, also her husband, and two of his boys 
 by a former wife, and two other women, the remains of tlie tribe 
 of Bruny jlsland, when I Avent with Mr. Eobinson round the 
 island. I think she was about 18 years of age, her father was 
 chief of Bruny Island, name Mangana. She had an uncle, I don't 
 know his native name, the white jjeople called him Boomer, he 
 was shot by a soldier. I will now give you some of her own 
 account of what she knew : — We were camped close to Partridge 
 Island when I was a little girl, when a vess(il came to anchor 
 withoiit our knowledge of it, a boat came on shore, and some of 
 the men attacked our camp. We all ran away, but one of them 
 caught my mother, and stabbed her with a knife, and killed her 
 My father grieved much about her death, and used to make a fire 
 at night ))y himself, Avhen my mother would come to him. I had 
 a sister named Moorina ; she was taken away by a sealing boat. 
 I used to go to Birch's Bay ; there was a party of men cutting 
 timber for the Governm 3nt there, the overseer was Mr. Muuro ; 
 while I was there two young men of my tribe came for me, one 
 of them was to have been my husband, his name was Paraweena. 
 Well, two of the sawyers said they would take us in a boat to 
 
OF THE NATIVE TKIBES OF TASMANIA. 105 
 
 Bruuy Island, wliicli we argeed to. Wlieu we got about lialf-way 
 across the Cliauuel, tliey murdered the two natives, and threw 
 them overboard, but one of them held me. Their names were 
 Watkin Lowe and Paddy Newell, this was the account she gave 
 me many times." 
 
 For the use of those who may not be well acquainted with 
 the i^laces named in the previous note ; or whose recollections 
 may not extend back very far, I beg to supply a few particulars : — 
 At the time when M'Kay became acquainted Avith the woman he 
 writes about, the Bruuy Island tribe was rediiced to six persons. 
 It was formerly a very numerous one, and only six mouths before 
 was probably eight or ten times as strong as in January of 1830. 
 Disease, which had been thining our natives for years past, was 
 jjeculiarly fatal at the time M'Kay writes of aud afterwards. 
 According to one of Robinson's reports, dated 23rd of September, 
 1829, no fewer than twenty-two of this tribe had died in the pre- 
 ceding fifteen weeks, or about three a fortnight ; but of those 
 who Avent off between September and January there is no report. 
 
 To most readers residing in the South, I presume it will be 
 known that Partridge Island is in D'Entrecasteaiix Channel, very 
 close to one of the points of South Bruny, and about forty miles 
 from Hobart Town. It was so named by Admiral Bruny D'Entre- 
 casteaux. When I first knew it, 1830, it was generally called 
 Santo's Island, why, I know not. It has now recovered its 
 proi^er name. Birch's Bay is also in this Channel, where there 
 was formerly a large Government sawing establishment. The 
 overseer, as Truganini styles Mr. Peter Munro, who was the 
 superintendent of the establishment, a designation, which in the 
 Governmental service meant something very much above an 
 overseer. I knew him well and a most excellent and gentlemanly 
 person he was. 
 
 M'Kay, who writes but seldom — like most to whom writing 
 is troublesome — is less communicative with his pen than his 
 tongue. I shall therefore siipply anything that he has omitted 
 from his note, from his conversations with me about the savage 
 butchery of these striplings ; to which I shall add what I knew 
 of the vagabond LoAve, who I will venture to say, was the origin- 
 ator of these murders. 
 
 When these men had conveyed the two youths and the girl 
 about half way across the Channel, which may be a mile and a 
 half wide hereabouts, the horrible tragedy commenced by the two 
 boatmen throwing both the young fellows into the water. 
 Du-ectly they were overboard and the girl secured, they took to 
 to their oars, and using all their strength, they pulled away from 
 them, leaving them either to drown or to regain the laud if they 
 
106 WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, S:C., 
 
 could. But tlio young blacks were both fast sTvimmors, and 
 overbaulod the boat before she had miich way on her, and laying 
 hold of the gunwales tried to get in again ; but this was most 
 effectually prevented by one of the boatmen seizing a hatchet and 
 chopping off their hands near the wrist, in which disabled state 
 the poor creatures went down, and the murderers got clear off 
 with their prize — the poor girl — who had just witnessed the 
 shocking massacre of her young companions. 
 
 But as legal punishment never overtook a white man for the 
 murder cf an aboriginal, so these homicides escaped ; neglect, or 
 a combination of lucky circumstances, always interposed to pre- 
 vent enquiry. The girl could not then speak a word of English, 
 and as the murderers kept silence nothing was ever known of this 
 infernal transaction, vmtil she first revealed it to M'Kay, but not 
 until the men had escaped, and could not be brought to trial, if 
 that would have availed anything at the time. 
 
 Newell must have been as depraved a felon as Lowe, but as 
 I knew something of the latter, and not of tlie other, I can only 
 speak decisively of Lowe. He was one of those fellows having 
 no higher asiDirations than to be thought a clever scoundrel, and 
 he gloried in the reputation which his evil deeds had acquired 
 for him. He was a perfect master of villany in whatever shape 
 it was to be achieved, and the practice of knavery was the 
 business of his life. 
 
 It is now more than forty years since I knew him, loafing 
 about a district with not a dozen persons in it, and where it might 
 have been thought there was little oi^ening for the exercise of 
 such talents as his. But he found a way to employ them, and 
 carried desolation to one hearth. His final act in the colony, 
 after becoming free, was quite of a piece with all his antecedent 
 practices. 
 
 At the time I am speaking of, Hobart Town was as much 
 defiled by the presence of a low class of usurers as the holy 
 temple itself eighteen or nineteen centuries before. No risk was 
 too great for these worthies. Money was often obtainable on the 
 most questionable security, but at such an enormous rate of 
 interest as must have contemplated an occasional default. 
 
 Lowe, who had been in every gaol and chain gang of the 
 colony, was heartily sick of Tasmania by tlie lime his original 
 and cumulative sentences had expired, and he longed to return 
 home. But as he had not a shilling some device had to be hit on, 
 whereby money enough could be I'uised to pay his passage, and 
 which a fellow so gifted as he, was not slow to discover. 
 
 Clever and keen as money lenders are reputed to be, it struck 
 Lowe that there must be some way of doing them, and a bright 
 
OP THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. 107 
 
 idea flashed upon him, '' all of a moment," as he afterwards ex- 
 pressed it, that eventually enabled him to pluck one of them 
 qiiite to his mind. 
 
 To this end he either wrote a letter, or got some convict law 
 clerk to do it for him, addressed to himself, purporting to be 
 written by the executors of a lately deceased person. This letter, 
 after acquainting him that a rich uncle of his had given up the 
 ghost, proceeded to congratulate the fortunate Mr. Lowe on his 
 accession to a considerable fortune, and concluded by advising 
 either his immediate return to England with the necessary cre- 
 dentials of identity, or to forward a power of attorney to some 
 friend to act for him, &c. , &c. The letter was entrusted to a sea- 
 man in the plot who was returning to England, by whom it was 
 posted in London, and in due time it reached the hands of the 
 quondam convict, and incredible as it may appear to us now, he 
 actually found someone to advance a good sum on the faith of 
 this letter of advice, and Lowe having given the necessary 
 acknowledgement of indebtedness, took ship to England, and has 
 never been heard of from that day to this. 
 
 Since the foregoing narrative of the early history of the 
 woman Truganiui — the very last of the aboriginal people of Tas- 
 mania — went to the press, she too has " gone to her long home," 
 having died on Tuesday the 8th of May, 1876, at the age of about 
 sixty-four. 
 
 As it will be found in another part of this history of the 
 extermination of the blacks, she was one of those whom Mr Robin- 
 son employed to induce them to surrender, and whom he never 
 could have subdued but for her and a few others of her race. To 
 him it undoubtedly is that the merit belongs of devising and 
 executing the plans that led to their removal from the mainland 
 of Tasmania ; but to others, and chiefly Truganiui, was entrusted 
 the perilous duty of negotiating with the tribes to lay down their 
 arms, and submit themselves to the paternal custody, siich as it 
 pruved to be, of a Government happily long since extinct. 
 
 I hope there are none amongst the readers of this narrative 
 who have not perceived, that in the performance of the task thus 
 assigned her, she was powerless to evade it. Acting under the 
 guidance of a man who, astute as he naturally was, was himself 
 greviously deceived by false representations of the ulterior 
 designs of the Government on the liberties of this people, which 
 were doubtlessly communicated to his employees, she followed 
 his leading almost necessarily. To this it has to be added, that 
 
108 WARS, KXTinPATION, HABITS, &C., 
 
 he hail nequirod an nscomlaiicy so coinplete over those of these 
 simple minded savnpres whom ho had f^ubduod to his service, as 
 to have left them almost literally without the faculty of volition. 
 Hence he often urpfed them on enterprises of danger that they 
 would have willingly evaded, had it been permitted them to 
 consult their o-\vn inclinations. In several of his official reports, 
 he acknowl(>dges engaging them in embassies so fraught with 
 peril, that deatli seemed the certain consequence of their obedience. 
 All his interviews with the still unsubdued tribes, were preceded 
 by negotiations first opened by his " friendly natives," as he 
 calls these humble agents, in which Truganiui took so prominent 
 a part, that it is said when the deluded blacks found themselves 
 prisoners, they often taunted her with being the author of their 
 downfall. (See Ta^maninn TrUninc, 9th of May, 187G). But 
 the poor womaii could have had no idea of the dooin that awaited 
 them. 
 
 To other services this commuuity, and prominently Eobiuson 
 himself, owed this last survivor of a now wholly extinct nation, 
 was his own preservation from death in the miilst of liis useful 
 career ; when she displayed such courage as was creditable to 
 her in a very high degree. The details of this adventure, Avhere 
 these two, after a savage assault on the lives of their party by a 
 horde of infuriated blacks, were sejaarated from the others and 
 driven into the Arthur Eiver, where but for her he must have 
 perished, are given in a former page. In his official reports of 
 this repulse, he does not indicate the woman who preserved him ; 
 but in his private conversations he always named her as the one 
 to whom he owed his escape. Of those to whom he related it 
 some are still in life. 
 
 The age of Truganiui has been recently computed to be 
 Beventy-three ; but this is a mistake for she was not m>arly so old. 
 At the time of her capture, l()th of January, 1830, she was only 
 about eighteen, which fixes he birth, apijroximately, at 1812, 
 Her age was therefore but little over sixty-four. Her birth, it 
 may be presumed, haiii)eued when Colonel Andrew Geils admi- 
 nistered the Government of Tasmania. 
 
 Throughout this history, wherever her name occurs, I have 
 adojited the orthography of Eobinson, namely, Trur/anini. But 
 I have lately been informed by Mr. J. W. Graves, who has paid 
 particular attention to her own pronunciation of it, that it should 
 bo spelled Trucanini, which is the term by which her tribe 
 designated a plant found by the sea side, which we call barilla. 
 
or TEE NATIVE TK3BES OF TASMANIA, 109 
 
 NARRATIVE of a TRIP to OYSTER COVE in 1855. 
 
 The following narrative of a journey I made in April, 1855, from 
 Hobart Town to Oyster Cove, and published at the time in a local 
 newspaper, long since defunct, embodies much information of the 
 condition of these people as I then saw them ; and if I have 
 slightly altered it from the form in which it originally appeared, 
 it has been to incorporate it with this account of our native tribes : — 
 
 Circumstances, the relation of which would in no way interest 
 the reader, required me to make the journey from Kingston (10 
 miles south of Hobart Town) to the neighbourhood of Oyster 
 Cove, the dwelling place of the few remaining aboriginal people 
 of Tasmania, Avhich is distant, overland from Hobart Town, about 
 23 miles. Desirous of preserving some memorial of this excur- 
 sion, I made a few notes as I went along, from which, in an after 
 leisure hour, I have compiled the following narrative for the 
 perusal of such as may take an interest in the subjects it treats of. 
 
 The village of Kingston is an irregiilar straggling country 
 township, a mere assemblage of scattered cottages, situate near 
 to a small stream called Brown's River — a small rill. Several of 
 these buildings are mere huts, but others are good brick 
 residences ; the entire number being aboiit a dozen. 
 
 The morning of my departure was one of sunshine ; and I 
 started with a young companion, who travelled, like myself, a-foot, 
 fresh for the journey, and in such spirits for a walk as fine weather 
 ixsually jirodiices. We took the principal highway, of course, 
 but from which only a Jvery imperfect knowledge of the district 
 it traverses is to be acquired, as it is generally directed across a 
 barren waste ; and the traveller judging of the country from 
 road-side experiences only would form a very erroneous opinion 
 of the District. "With the exception of that part where it crosses 
 the fine estate belonging to Mr. Baynton, he sees little but barren 
 sands, stunted trees, and a herbage indicative of sterility and 
 worthlessness. But this would be an unfair description of this 
 district, which is called Kingborough, where some excellent 
 
110 WAKS, EXTIKPATION, UABITS, &.C., 
 
 farms are to be found, the best soils of which are very little 
 inferior to those of Pittwater. Mr. Bnynton's farm is vci'y prolific, 
 and his house and homestead are excellent though, in strict 
 accordance with the prevailing tastes of Tasmanian farmers, 
 every tree that once stood near it has been carefully rooted 
 out, thus imparting an air of nakc(7ness to the place which 
 is most displeasing. Farmers, like others, must consTilt 
 their own tastes and not those of passers-by, but it has often 
 surprised me to see the indifference with which they throw down 
 all the indigenous forest trees in the neighbourhood of their 
 dwellings, many of which are often exquisitely handsome, and 
 after destroying in a few weeks what a century could not replace, 
 they then often commence planting. But it is not the rejjroach 
 of Mr. Baynton to have done anything to give shelter to his 
 substantial farra-hoixse, or to beautify its neighboiu-hood. 
 
 A short walk from hence and we reach the shores of North 
 West Bay, along which the road leads for a little distance. This 
 is a large arm of the sea, but, being sluit in on all sides by 
 unpicturesque hills, it is not a pleasing place. ApiDroaching 
 North West Bay River, the soil sensibly improves in character, 
 and the coarse grey sands we have passed over are succeeded by 
 a rich red soil of great fertility. The farms hereabouts are small 
 and strictly agricultural, the breeding of stock not being attended 
 to. At this place the stream flows through a rich alluvium, 
 second to nothing in Tasmania. 
 
 The floods of lust year (185-1), having demolished the bridge 
 that used to span this stream (a Government structiu-e and there- 
 uot meant to last), we floundered through it with luckily no more 
 damage than a few contusions, the usual jDcnalty of fording a 
 Tasmanian river, and halted at a road-side inn called the " Half- 
 way House," (half-way to where I was not so fortunate as to dis- 
 cover, as all beyond it is a wilderness of forests). It is kept by 
 a person named Groombridge, whose studious civilities made 
 some slight amends for his rough exterior ; and, that our brief 
 stay at his house might be as j)leasant as possible,he obliged us 
 with his company at breakfast, and gratified us with the details 
 of many local and domestic matters that no one cared anything 
 about but himself. Still had it not been for rather an unpleasant 
 practice he had of now and then blowing his nose in the corner 
 of the tablecloth, he would have passed for a very nice fellow. 
 Near the Half-way House are several cottages, possibly the 
 nucleus of a future town. Two or three of these already assume 
 tlie name, if not the reality, of "general stores," but judging 
 from the wares exhibited in the windows, which are limited to a 
 few boxes of lucifers, pij)e8, and a very small unostentatiouB 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA. Ill 
 
 display of lollipops, it struck even sneli tinobserving travellers 
 as ourselves tliat the desiguatiou, like the name of the hamlet 
 itself, Margate, had been prematurely assumed. 
 
 We resumed our walk. For several miles the road passes a 
 very uninteresting tract of country. The soil is a miserable 
 white loam, producing only stringy-bark trees, derisively called 
 " bull's wool " by bushmen, from the peculiar texture of the bark. 
 They were much scorched by bush fires. At two miles from 
 Margate we crossed a small stream called the Snug River, which 
 discharges its waters into a little inlet, that is so secluded as to 
 have acquired this name. At a short distance from hence are 
 the remains of a once excellent edifice, built originally by the 
 district magistrate, which the destructive bush fires of January, 
 1854, destroyed, the brick walls excepted. It was then an inn ; 
 and at an outhouse, which has since been made habitable, the 
 business has been re-commenced. The landlord, Mr. Haines, 
 had a lamentable tale of misfortune to tell us ; but the burning 
 of his premises and furniture was hardly so distressing as his 
 account of the misconduct of the vagabond sawyers and splitters 
 of the neighbourhood, who, under pretence of giving assistance, 
 robbed him of everything they could rescue from the fire. 
 
 The last four or five miles of the journey, to Oyster Cove we 
 found the road passing over a succession of high and pretty 
 steep hills, from some points of which we caught an occasional 
 view of a very beautiful landscape ; though, from the frequent 
 intervention of trees, it was not seen to the greatest advantage. 
 Now and then only, where an opening occurred, could we get a 
 fair view of it ; but, at th every few points where trees were few, we 
 greatly admired the varied and magnificent picture that lay 
 before us. The dusky eminences of South Bruny, stretched along 
 the horizon, terminating in the south east in the bold and 
 beautiful cliffs of the Fluted Cape. Adventure Bay, on the east 
 of Bruny — the place of anchorage of the famous old navigators 
 Cook, Furneaux, and Bligh, last century— lies fully in view, 
 separated from the nearer waters of D'Entrecasteaux Channel by 
 the long, low, thread-like isthmus^that iinites the two peninsulas 
 of Bruny Island. This singular strip of sand looks more like an 
 artificial embankment, as seen from a distance, than a natural 
 barrier raised to resist the heavy ocean swell of the Pacific. 
 Within the visible horizon of these open spaces, is contained 
 nearly all of Bruny (32 miles long) with its deep and many inlets, 
 and a vast extent of undulating country in the east and north 
 east, fronting on the most varied coast line in the world, forming 
 altogether a picture which well repays the toil of a long journey 
 to see it. 
 
112 ' WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, «S:C., 
 
 But let US push forwnnl, and soon a bend in the ever-winding 
 road places the trnveller in full view of the establishment at which 
 the few remaining descendants of the first inhabitants of Tas- 
 mania are located. At this point, thougli the road has been 
 'gradually falling off for a mile or more, the traveller still finds 
 himself at an elevation much above the level of the glen assigned 
 them for their abidii^g place for the last few years of their still 
 unexpired existence. Occupying now comparatively low ground, 
 the landscape, though still eminently beautiful, is greatly 
 reduced in extent, and most of the scene faintly described 
 above is now shut out by nearer hills that we before stood 
 above and looked over. But if the view were a liundred times 
 more prepossessing than it is, its attr.nctions would be scarcely 
 observed at an instant that jjlaces before us an object, which, 
 though mean and uuimposing, is, on account of its inmates, 
 the only thing the stranger traveller can look at. 
 
 Standing in view of this dreary edifice, rude though it is, 
 and in \i\e contrast with the landscape around, both the eye and 
 mind seem actually to refuse to rest on any other object. How, 
 indeed, should it be otherwise, when we know that within the 
 walls of that desolate-looking shealing are all Avho now remain of 
 a once formidable people, whom a "thirty years war " with our 
 own countrymen have swej^t into captivity, and their relatives to 
 the grave ; a war which, notwithstanding our ultimate success, 
 we derived little credit from. 
 
 The glen in which they vegetate, rather than live, derives its 
 name from the little inlet in front of it. Oyster Cove, a small arm 
 of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, so abounding in mud-flats that a 
 row-boat cannot reach the shore, except at high-tide. Between 
 the beach and the building they occupy is a small salt marsh, 
 but as the ground rises a little it imj)roves in character, changing 
 into a fertile alluvium, but of very limited extent, five or six acres 
 only, all behind it being more barren, if possible, than the sand 
 of the sea shore, jiroducing nothing but useless herbage and 
 forest trees dwarfed into mere bushes by the exceeding infertility 
 of the land. 
 
 The building they inhabit a part of, is a long low narrow 
 range formed of rough slabs, formerly occupied by a large body 
 of convicts, nominally emijloyedin cultivation, but in reality doing 
 next to nothing, and the results of their labours are, therefore 
 not very perceptible. The barrack is an irregular quadrangle, 
 enclosing a space of about half an acre, the walls of which appear 
 to me not more than seven feet high, i)ierced with dimumtive 
 windows that aftbrd little light and less ventilation, and you 
 seem to feel their unwholesomeness the moment you enter them. 
 
OF THE NATIVE TEIBES OF TASMANIA. 113 
 
 and the less I say about the cleanliness of this neglected asylum 
 the better. In fact, the edifice is as badly adapted for the purpose 
 it is used for — a place of shelter for a people whom the viscissi- 
 tudes of war have made us the natural guardians o f — as could 
 have been found. 
 
 In selecting a residence for them, it should have been 
 remembered that they have not been nurtured like ourselves in 
 houses, and the close unwholesome atmosphere of such low- 
 roofed abodes must be peculiarly unsuited to a race of people, 
 who, down to the time of their surrender, lived wholly abroad, 
 breathing only the pure and uninfected air of their own glens. 
 
 This establishment is in a place so secluded, so completely 
 away from all the chief thoroughfares of the island, and so rarely 
 visited except by the inhabitants of the by-district it is placed in, 
 chiefly sawyers and splitters, that I doubt if its very existence is 
 known to the great bulk of the community ; or that on the shores 
 of an unfrequented bay are still to be found the remnants of those 
 men who for so many years successfully held their ground against 
 their powerful invaders, with a pertinacity that will long be 
 remembered by the colonists ; and if it is recorded of them 
 that they committed many acts of aggression on the settlers, it 
 will be at least admitted that it was not by their hands that the 
 first blows were dealt, or the first blood drawn.* These circum- 
 stances, now that the strife, is past, should make them the objects 
 of our peculiar solicitude. Is there, then, nothing that we owe 
 them beyond a naked sustenance and a deserted barrack ? Shoiild 
 we be satisfied with voting them a few Inmdreds annually to pre- 
 vent them dying of want ? or at knuwing they are at liberty to 
 wander where they like in the bush, exposed to the demoralisation 
 inseparable from constant contact with the restless community of 
 bush sawyers, &c., whose acquaintance with the simple-minded 
 women of the blacks is notoriously impure ? or that we pay a 
 non-resident superintendent to jirotect them, who might as well 
 be in Spitzbergen as where he ever is, that is, absent from his 
 post enjoying himself at head quarters ? True, there are some 
 inferior persons here, but whose care for the natives is confined, 
 ■ I believe, to the mere issue of such supplies as the Legislature 
 allows the blacks and their dogs. But if it ever extends beyond 
 this, all I can say is they are a greatly belied class. 
 
 It is a reproach to us that they are under no real'supervision, 
 and that nothing is done to raise them above their original con- 
 dition, or rather that we have allowed them to sink still lower 
 
 * I had not read the Aboriginal Committee's Report when I wrote 
 
 this. 
 
114 WABS, EXTinrATION, HAB ITS, &C. , 
 
 than they wcro -when we first found thorn. Let anyone who 
 doubts this visit the district, and he Avill hear nothing to contro- 
 vert it, or to show that either chastity in the women nor tempe- 
 raucoin either sex are to be regarded as virtues/or that anything is 
 done to arrest their degradation. 
 
 The natives are, at least nominally, Christians, and in the 
 census of the colony are assigned to the Estaljlishcd Church, but 
 it would bo interesting to know when they last received instruc- 
 tion of any sort. In this they are wholly neglected. It is idle 
 excusing ourselves from these duties, by saying that they are 
 intractable and incapable of receiving instruction. On the 
 contrary, I know they are naturally acute, cheerful, and no less 
 intelligent than ourselves. 
 
 At the time of their surrender they numbered about 2o0, of 
 whom about fifteeu-sixteeuths have died in only 20 years a niost 
 f earful mortality. A few births added a trifle to their numbers. 
 There now remain only 1(3 of pure-blood and one half-caste— a 
 female. Of the former there are four men, two boys, and ten 
 women. The boys are about 15 years of age, and must have 
 been born since the surrender of the race. So there [remain, of 
 all that Kobinaon gathered together, only 14. There are now no 
 births, though some of both sexes have not passed the prime of 
 life. 
 
 What a melancholy state of things these facts disclose. But 
 passing these over, it is impossible to help inquiring what causes 
 could have led to the premature decadence of that portion of this 
 people who survived the calamities of war, and Avhat reason can 
 can be assigned for their infertility since falling into our hands. 
 
 To the first of these questions I have often thought it might 
 be replied, forcing on them too suddenly our own habits, as if 
 the savage could at once adapt himself "to the ways of civilised 
 life; in fact, requiring a people whose whole lives had been 
 passed in the open air, to dwell as we dwell, and live as we live. 
 Into this error Eobinson himself fell, for when he first drew the 
 Bruny Islanders together around his dwelling, several died 
 almost directly. * Ho housed, or rather huddled them together 
 in warni rooms, and re(iuiredthem to wear clothing. But doubt- 
 less, this partial confinement in an atmosphere too impure for 
 them, and the too suddon restraint of the free use of their limbs, 
 were wholly uusuited to their habits and constitutions, and, of 
 
 * In the original I said six, which number I took from the grave 
 niomids that I saw in l.s;50. I had not then read llobinson's rei)ort, 
 giving the correct ninaher of deaths, namely, L'2, so tliat many bodies 
 must have been disposed cf in other ways than by burial. 
 
OF THE NATIVE TRIBES OP TASMANIA. 115 
 
 course, wlieu divested of these fatal comforts, colds, and tlie 
 endless train of disorders that spring from tliem, sent them 
 rapidly to the grave. 
 
 That so few births have happened since their captivity com- 
 menced (and even these appear now to have ceased) may perhajis 
 be traced in some measure to the above causes, particularly to 
 the entire change of habits. But if it is true, as I have repeatedly 
 heard, that prostitution is commonly practised by the women, the 
 chief cause of course lies here. 
 
 I have dwelt, j^erhaps, at too great length on the subject 
 under review, but it is difficult to compress the account, of the 
 condition of a peoj)le into a paragraph, and few, I hope, will 
 begrudge the time expended on the perusal of this pajjer, who 
 understand the duties of man to his fellows, and the consequent 
 necessity of atoning for long neglect, even at this late hour, by 
 future attention to their wants ; for we cannot by mere mainten- 
 ance in life rejiay the debt Ave owe a race whom we hare forcibly 
 disjaossessed of everything but mere existence Other duties we 
 are bound to take on ourselves, to improve the condition of the 
 remnant whom time, war, and disease have left to our care, and 
 by careful suijervision to arrest the evils that are fast working 
 out their extinction. 
 
Appendix. 
 
 I HAVE said nothing of Colonel Arthur's project for capturing the 
 aborigines ~a scheme that was devised and attempted in 18P.0 ; and I 
 shall here say as little as I can of this absurd jiassage in the history of 
 the colony. 
 
 The ill advised operations that he then undertook against so clever 
 and crafty a foe, that have received the designation of the "Black 
 War,"' (whereby he thought to enclose them within a moving line, 
 advancing from north to south on a point of the coast, where two large 
 peninsulas are united with the main by a naiTOW isthmus called East 
 Bay Neck) was too chimerical in its concejjtion, too absurd in its pro- 
 gress, and too inconsiderable in its results, to deserve serious notice. 
 A line of troops and ready volunteers and others, nmnbering more than 
 4,000* persons, was stretched across the midland and eastern districts, 
 to advance in thin but regular array. These districts, though open and 
 level in some parts, are, as a whole, woody and very hilly ; and as iin- 
 f avourable for military operations of any kind, unless perhaps defensive 
 ones, as it is possible to imagine. No such line could possibly move in 
 such a country, with any degree of regularity ; nor could the necessary 
 communications be kept up. Some of the many intervening eminences 
 have more the aspect and general character of mountains than of ordi- 
 nai'y hills, and here and there are so covered vnth underwood that a rat 
 could hardly creep through ; others are precipitous, and most of them 
 very steep. The late Captain Vicary, of the G3rd, told me that in 
 crossing a very rugged eminence, called the Blue-hill, between the 
 Clyde and Shannon liivers, with his company, each man marching as 
 usaal a few yards apart, the regularity of their advance was wholly 
 broken in ten minutes, and to use his own expression, ''The devil a 
 Jian of them did he see the whole of the rest of the day ; " and this was 
 
 * See Melville's " Vaa Diemen's Land Annual" (1833) page 94, 
 
ii A])i)enclix, 
 
 dnily the cnse with umiiy other pnrticH. Such a liue was of coui'se uo 
 line at nil; and though for some weeks there were a tribe or two iu its 
 front, directly the acut(! savage understood the nature of the game that 
 was going on, he burst through it and escaped, "leaving hirdly a 
 wreck Ijehind." Two men were, however, taken, and two others shot, 
 by a party led \)y a gentleman named Walpole (report, li'.itli October, 
 1H;!(), Walpole's). This i)rize, such as it was, cost about £30, 000. The 
 men belonged to the Big liiver and Oyster I3ay tribes, who were then 
 united, as Robinson found them at the end of the next year. They 
 now consisted of 41 individuals, who, as we have precediugly seen, 
 weic reduced to 2(i when caught. The plan of oi^eratious — conceived 
 in ignorance of the difficulty of its execution — uecessarily ended 
 in faihire. 
 
 Jiidged of by European standards of beauty, our natives were not 
 gencrallj' a good looking race. But then the custom of both sexes to 
 disfigure,themselves — the men by smearing their heads with a compound 
 of grease and ochre, and the women by shaving the head, so as to 
 produce the ajipearance of absolute baldness — gave a repulsiveness of 
 look to them that was not natural Some of the youths of both sexes 
 were passable enough, and one woman, whom I remember, who 
 attracted crowds to see her when llobiuson brought in the tribe she 
 belonged to, was rertiarkably handsome. Some of the men, too, 
 though very savage looking fellows, were, in most respects, iu no way 
 the inferior of the Eurojiean. A native of one of the West Coast tribes, 
 called Pen-ne-me-ric, whese portrait was jiainted with i)hothogra2)liic 
 exactness by an artizan of this town for transmission to Enrope, pos- 
 sessed as fine and thoughtful features as anyone would desire *o look 
 upon. No fair judgment of them is to be formed, either from the 
 paintings of Duttereau, or the few weird-looking old creatures that 
 photography has preserved from absolute forgetfuhiess, who seem to 
 have been selected from the most hideous of them 
 
 From the causes mentioned above, more than from any natural 
 defects, the most of them succeeded in makiug themselves repulsive 
 enough ; but had it been passible to have jilaced them in more favour- 
 able circumstances than those in which we found them, I believe that 
 (colour a^iart) they would not have stood much behind a^iy other race. 
 
 The following extract from a private letter of llobinson's to his 
 friend Mr. George Whitcomb, gives us his opinion of the apperai'nce 
 and j)/iymjue of the Tasmauiau savage in his primitive state, or as he 
 seemed to him to be, immediatelj' after his withdrawel from his native 
 wilds: — 
 
 " The undertaking in which I am engaged," that is against the 
 blacks, " has been ci'owued with complete success. The little colony 
 of blacks on Swan Island are all well and in excellent sjjirits. I feU iu 
 with these near to George's River, and fifteen miles inlaud, and con- 
 ducted them through the forest (a distance of forty-five miles) to Swan 
 Island. On this occasion I was only accompanied by one white man, as 
 servaut, and wiis unarmed The aboriginies ou Swan Island are a fins 
 
Appendix. iii 
 
 race of people, aud not that miserable race that some have represented 
 (or rather misrepresented) the aboriginal of Van Diemen's Land to be. 
 Thoy are equal if not suj^erior to many Europeans. The most fallacious 
 rep jrts have been circulated to the prejudice of these poor benighted 
 creatures. I have not yet in my long walk round the island and 
 through the interior, met with that degenerated race, that some have 
 rep;esented the aboriginal of Van Diemen's Land to be, &c., &c." 
 
 The walk he speaks of, is described in an early part of this volume, 
 viz., the very circuitovis one of a thousand miles, that he travelled on 
 the occasion of visiting the tribes who dwelt in the country that lay 
 between Spring Kiver and Emu Bay. 
 
 Erratum, — At page SI for Jias been named before, read, toill be named 
 presently. 
 
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