Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/42

34 shield of the New Hollander were unknown to him. The only other weapon he used was the waddie. This was made of the same wood as the spear; not two feet long, and thicker at one end than the other. It was held by the thinner end, and was used either as a club or a missile. Used for the latter purpose, it was hurled with awful force and certain aim. When his other weapons failed him he fought with stones, and even with these he was a very formidable opponent. The waddie, however, was chiefly used in the chase.

In fight, the vengeance of the savage was not appeased by the death of an enemy. The mutilation of the body, and particularly of the head, always followed, unless the victor was surprised or apprehended surprise. This was done either by dashing heavy stones at the corpse, or beating it savagely with the waddie. In many of the inquests that I have spoken of in the early part of this paper the deceased were hardly recognisable.

The Tasmanian aboriginal in advancing on an unsuspecting victim whom he meant to kill treacherously, approached, apparently quite unarmed, with his hands clasped and resting on the top of his head, a favourite posture of the black, and with no appearance of a hostile intention. But all the time he was dragging a spear behind him, held between his toes, in a manner that must have taken long to acquire. Then by a motion as unexpected as it was rapid, it was transferred to the hand, and the victim pierced before he could lift a hand or stir a step. This practice and some others of theirs, are, I believe, common in New Holland, and seem to favour the idea of original migration from thence. But they were not of the same stock. There was one very marked difference between the races, the Australian being a straight-haired man, and the Tasmanian a wool-headed.

The hatred of the women for their half-caste offspring has been named beforewill be named presently [sic], and I have been told that the New Holland woman has the same aversion. My informant was a gentleman who had resided long in the wilds of Australia, and said that though children of mixed blood were to be met at the encampments of the blacks, he never saw an adult half caste amongst them, and he believed they destroyed them. There are about a hundred of them now living in the Straits, the results of union between the sealer and the savage, many of whom have not only reached adultness but old age. But here the parents lived together in settled life, and the fathers, bad as they are said to have been, were there to protect their children. No doubt the characters of these men have been taken from the worst and most hardened of them. But in Australia I have heard that the union from which