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 CHAPTER III.

CRUELTIES TO THE BLACKS.

could adequately picture the story of the wrongs of the Tasmanians? We are indignant at the destruction of the Guanches of the Canaries by the Spaniards; we are horrified at the exterminating policy of the Napoleon of the Zulus of Africa; we are awe-struck at the total disappearance of whole nations of antiquity; and should we have no feeling of regret at causes which led to the annihilation of the tribes of Tasmania? They melted not away as the snow of the Alps beneath the soft breath of the Fön from the South, but were stricken down in their might, as the dark firs of the forests by the ruthless avalanche. It was not a contest between rival nations of civilization. No senator uttered a "Carthage must be destroyed" to incite the weakened energies of a struggling people. No Thermopylæ, which witnessed the expiring effort of its sons of freedom, remains in Tasmania's mountain fastnesses. No Kenneth of the South turned, as a hunted beast at bay, and crushed a race that nigh had conquered him. No bard has chronicled the deeds of heroism, no Ossian told of chiefs and daughters fair. It is altogether a petty, an unromantic warfare on the part of the stronger English, with no recognition of either chivalry or sentiment in the weaker barbarians. A long series of cruelties and misfortunes gradually wrought the destruction of the primitive inhabitants.

They would not, could not, be reduced to slavery. They would not, could not, assimilate with the habits of the intruders upon their soil. As their own brilliant Waratah, when torn from the rocky crest of its mountain home, refuses to expand its crimson petals in the artificial bed, and pines to death for the loss of its free and bracing native airs, so could they never assume the