Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/126

ii daily the case with many other parties. Such a line was of course no line at all; and though for some weeks there were a tribe or two in its front, directly the acute savage understood the nature of the game that was going on, he burst through it and escaped, "leaving hardly a wreck behind." Two men were, however, taken, and two others shot, by a party led by a gentleman named Walpole (report, 29th October, 1830, Walpole's). This prize, such as it was, cost about £30,000. The men belonged to the Big River and Oyster Bay 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 precedingly seen, were reduced to 26 when caught. The plan of operations—conceived in ignorance of the difficulty of its execution—necessarily ended in failure.

Judged of by European standards of beauty, our natives were not generally 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 appearance 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 Robinson brought in the tribe she belonged to, was remarkably handsome. Some of the men, too, though very savage looking fellows, were, in most respects, in no way the inferior of the European. A native of one of the West Coast tribes, called Pen-ne-me-ric, whose portrait was painted with photographic exactness by an artizan of this town for transmission to Europe, possessed as fine and thoughtful features as anyone would desire to 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 forgetfulness, 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 making themselves repulsive enough; but had it been passible to have placed them in more favourable circumstances than those in which we found them, I believe that (colour apart) they would not have stood much behind any other race.

The following extract from a private letter of Robinson's to his friend Mr. George Whitcomb, gives us his opinion of the appearance and physique of the Tasmanian savage in his primitive state, or as he seemed to him to be, immediately after his withdrawelwithdrawal [sic] from his native wilds:—

"The undertaking in which I am engaged," that is against the blacks, "has been crowned with complete success. The little colony of blacks on Swan Island are all well and in excellent spirits. I fell in with these near to George's River, and fifteen miles inland, and conducted 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 servant, and was unarmed. The aboriginiesaborigines [sic] of Swan Island are a fine