Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/49

Rh carefully swept twice a day. The cleanliness, order, and regularity observed by the inmates of the new cottages in the disposition of their culinary utensils, furniture, bedding, would do credit to many white persons. In sewing, the women have made great proficiency. They make all their dresses. The native women provide fuel for their fires, they also wash their own clothes, bedding, &c. The male aboriginals are equally industrious. A road more than half a mile in length, cut through a dense forest in the rear of my quarters, to the beach, as well as cross roads, have been done by them. Several acres of barley, the first grown upon Flinder's Island, have been reaped by them with the assistance of the civil officers, and the facility with which they executed this branch of husbandry was a matter of surprise to every one. The Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, taken collectively, are the most advanced in civilisation, (these and the Stony Creek tribe were the most ferocious and predatory of all the natives), and the western tribes, who occupied a country far remote from any settlement, and, therefore, could not have acquired any previous knowledge of rural pursuits, were equally as ready at reaping as the others. Indeed, their aptitude to acquire knowledge can scarcely be credited.

"The natives now cook their own meat and bake their own bread. The contrast between their present and past condition in this respect is striking in the extreme. In their primitive state their mode of cooking was to throw the animal upon the fire, and when half warmed through, take out the entrails, and rub the inside over with the paunch. It was then eaten. Their mode of cooking now is widely different. They follow the example of the whites, and adopt their practices in everything.

"Their chief amusement is hunting (and it seems they soon extirpated the game). When at the settlement, they amuse themselves by dancing, bathing, cricket, trap-ball playing, and recently they have constructed swings. But the amusement to which they are most partial is marbles. The women join in the dance, and have lately taken a fancy to play at marbles also. I have given several entertainments in the bush, which the officers have attended. These festivities afforded them much amusement."

He concludes an interesting report by saying he believes they have no desire to return to their old haunts and ways of life, and so long as he was with them to keep their minds and bodies in exercise it is very likely they thought but little on the subject of their former wild existence. But I have been told that their natural longing for their own districts afflicted them greatly after his family left the island, and that they often sat for hours