Page:Last of the tasmanians.djvu/38

 the ferocity or stupidity which generally characterised the other Natives; and his features were less flattened, or negro-like, than theirs. His face was blackened, and the top of his head was plastered with red earth. His hair was either naturally short and close, or had been rendered so by burning, and, although short and stiffly curled, they did not think it woolly. He was armed with two spears, very ill-made, of solid wood. No part of their dress attracted his attention, except the red silk handkerchiefs round their necks. Their fire-arms were to them neither objects of curiosity nor fear.

"This was the first man they had spoken with in Van Diemen's Land; and his frank and open deportment led them not only to form a favourable opinion of the dispositions of its inhabitants, but to conjecture that if a country was peopled in the usual numbers, he would not have been the only one they should have met. A circumstance which corroborated this supposition was that in the excursions made by Mr. Bass into the country, having seldom any society but his two dogs, he would have been no great object of dread to a people ignorant of the effects of firearms, and would certainly have been hailed by any one who might have seen him."

Captain Collins, in his general account of Van Diemen's Land, in the appendix to his work on New South Wales, published in London, 1803, adds some observations respecting the people. "This country," he asserts, "is inhabited by men. Their extreme shyness, however, prevented any communication. They (Bass and Flinders) never even got sight of them but once, and then at a great distance. The huts, of which seven or eight were generally found together, were wretchedly contrived; and it appears somewhat strange that in the latitude of 41° want should not have sharpened their ideas to the invention of some more convenient habitation, especially since they have been left by nature without the confined dwelling of a hollow tree, or the more agreeable accommodation of a hole under a rock. A canoe was never met with, and concurring circumstances showed that this convenience was unknown here. Hence, from the little that has been seen of the condition of our own species in this place, it appears to be much inferior in some essential points of convenience to that of the despised inhabitants of the continent."