Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/29

Rh shade altogether the official bulletins of such men as Napoleon, Wellington, and others; still they contain much little known information on very interesting subjects. In his ordinary demeanour he was more patronising than courteous; and somewhat offensively polite, rather than civil. For a long time he quite failed of conciliating the colonists as he had done the savages, and was at first looked on by them as nothing but an impostor; and the flaming descriptions he gave everybody of his friendly interviews with the blacks, which at first had no visible results, were as generally as unjustly discredited.

His first care after taking charge of the new establishment on Bruny Island, was to learn the language and various dialects of the natives; and being a man of excellent natural abilities, he soon mastered this part of his self-imposed work, and thus had a great advantage over all others, as no one but himself knew a word of it; and in a few months afterwards he reports that he had so far got over this difficulty as to be able to converse with them, and that he had commenced the compilation of a vocabulary, which, in the end, must have been a pretty complete dictionary; but I believe he never gave it up to the Government. The language of the tribes seems to have been simple enough, consisting chiefly of verbs, adjectives, and substantives; and from the few authentic translations that have reached us of conversations, &c., a good deal must have been left to the understanding of the person addressed. A couple of examples taken from one of Robinson's long letters will illustrate my meaning. Thus a man whose wife was dying, and to whom he offered food for her, said, "Tea-noailly—parmatter—panmerlia—linener, noailllynoailly [sic]," which he translates, "Tea, no good—potatoes—bread—water, no good; meaning," says Robinson, "that his wife had no wish for food of any kind." He gives a portion of a Sunday address that he made to them (for he was an occassionaloccasional [sic] preacher), as follows:—"Matty nyrae Parlerdee, Matty nyrae Parlerdee. Parleevar nyrae, parleevar loggernu taggeerer lowway waeranggelly. Parlerdee lowway. Nyrae raegee merrydy nueberrae. Parlerdee waeranggelly. Kannernu Parlerdee. Nyrae Parlerdee neuberrae nyrae raegee timene merrydy. No ailly parlevar loggernu tageerer toogunner. Raegorropper, tienee maggerer. Parleevar tyrer, tyrer, tyrer. Nyrae parleevar maggerer. Parlerdee waeranggelly timene merrydy, timene taggathe." Which he translates thus:—

"One good God. One good God. Native good. Native dead, go up sky. God up. Good white man sick looks God sky; speaks (or prays) God. Good God sees good white man no sick. Bad native dead goes down, evil spirit (or devil) fire stops.