Page:Last of the tasmanians.djvu/426

Rh than black, bright, glossy, and oh! so beautiful! Her features were well chiselled, and singularly regular, while her voice was light, quick, yet sighed like, and somewhat plaintive."

He goes on with his sad narrative. "When Sir John Franklin was ordered home, the Tasmanian beauty did not go with her ladyship. The medical men thought her unfit for the rough English climate. She was left behind. But, strangely enough, instead of her being placed with a household of respectability and virtue, where at least her happiness would have been consulted, she was thrust into the Convict Orphan School, where some black children had been sent to be educated or to suffer and to die."

"Poor Mathinna," adds my friend, "was transferred sobbing and broken-hearted, from the tender care of one who had always proved far more than a mother to her, and the luxury and grandeur of Government House, to a cold stretcher in the dormitory of the Queen's Asylum. She soon fell sick, and took to her bed in the hospital. Poor girl! she had no friends then, save one, who sleeps with her now. All those fawners about Government House who used to say kind things, and pretend to be proud to take her hand in the ball-room because it pleased Lady Franklin, had all disappeared; and, as her wan fingers beat upon the wall, she sighed and thought of days gone by, and of that flock of summer friends who revelled in the sunshine of the hour, but vanished with its splendour."

When the Flinders Island establishment was removed to Oyster Cove, she was ordered thither. The sequel is well told in my friend's sad tale:—

"Too soon, alas! she fell into the habits of the rest; and, as they were permitted to wander about in the Bush in all directions, amongst sawyers, splitters, and characters of the deepest depravity, the reader may guess for himself what my pen refuses to write. One night, however, Mathinna was missing; and, although cooey after cooey resounded from mountain to mountain, and from gully to gully, no tidings were heard of the lost girl. In the morning the search was continued, till at length the wanderer was found. The little wild girl with the shell necklace, and the pet opossum—the scarlet-coated, bare-headed beauty in the carriage—the protégé of the noblewoman—the