more agreeable appearance; a man in the company was tall, and of features so patriarchal and Jewish, as strongly to resemble pictures designed to represent Abraham. He was blind of one eye, which we understood he had lost some years ago, by a shot from a white man.
I am not aware of any custom of the Aborigines of V. D. Land, common with the Jews, except it be of not eating fat. This they so much abhor as even to reject bread, cut with a buttery knife. On my companion offering some soup to a poor emaciated woman, on board the cutter, who had a baby that looked half-starved, she tried to take it, seeing it was offered in good will; but having a little fat upon it, she recoiled from it with nausea. John R. Bateman, master of the brig Tamar, once had some soup made for a party of these people, whom he was taking to Flinders Island: they looked upon it complacently, skimmed off the floating fat with their hands, and smeared their hair with it, but would not drink the soup!
The wind being unfavourable, we anchored at the mouth of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, where the Government brig Isabella, with English emigrants for Launceston, and the Adelaide, a vessel in the Sperm Whale fishery, were lying.—A great number of emigrants have lately arrived from England. Many of them are mechanics, who cannot find employment in Hobart Town, in consequence of the number that have preceded them. As this class of emigrants is wanted in Launceston, the Government has undertaken to convey them thither. Persons wanting places as clerks, find great difficulty in obtaining situations in new colonies.—We went on shore at Kelleys Farm, on Bruny Island; where vessels are frequently furnished with potatoes, eggs, fowls, &c. The land is of fair quality, but the adjacent hills are sandy, and thin of soil and herbage. This island is nearly covered with wood like that of the main land, and has a few Austral Grass-trees interspersed among them.
11th mo. 23rd. Very wet; the wind contrary. The decks were so leaky that it was difficult to find a dry place to sit in, in the cabin; happily, no wet of any consequence came into our berths. The poor Aborigines had to sleep under a tent,
