Page:Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies.djvu/217

1833.] further up the tree.—By this means a woman will ascend a lofty tree with a smooth trunk, almost as quickly as a man would go up a ladder. Should a piece of loose bark impede the ascent of the rope, the portion of the rope held in the right hand, is taken between the teeth, or swung behind the right leg, and caught between the great and the fore toe, and fixed against the tree. One hand is thus freed, to take the hatchet from the head, and with it to dislodge the loose bark.—On arriving at a large limb, the middle of the rope is also secured in the left hand, and the loose end is thrown over the limb by the right hand, by which also the end is caught, and the middle grasped, till the left hand is cleared. This is then wrapped into the middle of the rope, and the feet are brought up to the wrinkles of the bark, which exist below the large limbs. One end of the rope is then pulled downward, and this causes the other to ascend, so that, by an effort of the feet, the body is turned on to the upper side of the limb of the tree.—In descending, the woman places one arm on each side of the limb of the tree, and swings the rope with one hand till she catches it with the other: she then turns off the limb, and swings underneath it, till she succeeds in steadying herself with her feet against the trunk, around which she then throws the loose end of the rope. Having secured this, she lets go the portion by which she was suspended under the limb, and descends in the manner in which she ascended.—Although this is done with ease by women in vigour, one who had been out of health, but seemed recovered, could not get many steps off the ground, so that not only skill, but a considerable measure of strength, appears necessary to ascend the gigantic gum-trees.

After having seen something of the natives of V. D. Land, the conviction was forced upon my mind, that they exceeded Europeans in skill, in those things to which their attention had been directed from childhood, just as much as Europeans exceeded them, in the points to which the attention of the former had been turned, under the culture of civilization. There is similar variety of talent and of temper among the Tasmanian Aborigines, to what is to be