Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/44

36 indulged in this practice, expressed great horror at it. They never named the dead, and certainly never ate them. Large and small game was supplied them so plentifully, that they had no occasion to resort to the revolting custom.

Their mode of ascending trees after opossums, was to cut small notches in the barrel, just large enough to admit the toes. These were cut with a sharp stone. The labour of making these stepping-places with these simple instruments was such as to cause them to cut them at long intervals, which induced the discoverer of the country, Tasman, to believe that they must be of gigantic stature, which I need hardly say they were not. Their condition in a land of plenty rendered an acquaintance with arts of any kind nearly unnecessary. The fabrication of their simple arms, baskets, canoes, string, and necklaces, I believe, exhausts the list of their manufactures.

Their baskets were made of the long leaves of the plant called cutting-grass very neatly woven together; and the necklaces of small, beautiful shells, iridescent, the purple tint predominating. These shells in their natural state have no great beauty, but after removing their outer coating, their appearance is quite altered. This removal they effected with acids, how obtained in their wild state I know not, but I presume from wood. In their captivity at Oyster Cove, where they made them for sale, they used vinegar. I think a moderate heat was necessary in removing this outer covering, for on visiting their huts when they were preparing them, a woman handed me a saucer of them, which she took from the fireplace.

Robinson's reports are so much taken up with his own personal adventures—sufferings from excessive fatigue, his successes and many disappointments, and complaints of the most annoying red-tapeism of the commissariat and port offices, which were then enough to drive one to the mad-house,—that, as I have said before, he does not tell us very much about their customs, which would have relieved the tediousness of his writings. He speaks a little, incidentally, of their internecine strife, and of the ineffaceable hatred of rival tribes, which he takes credit for having entirely allayed, after their removal to Flinders Island, though I shall show he was not quite successful, and that when his back was turned it was very difficult to keep them from coming to blows. Nor does he say one word about their general assemblies of confederated tribes, which they are known to have held, probably to concert measures relating to war. A curious account of one of their places of meeting is preserved in an official letter, written by Mr. W. B. Walker, dated December 24, 1827, from which the following is taken:—