different manner wished to make themselves merry at the expense of the rest, when they asserted that the age of this woman was no security for her against the attempts of some of the sailors; however, she was still young enough to make her escape."
It was upon other occasions that the intercourse became more intimate. M. Peron was daubed with charcoal by some of the sable fair, to add to his enchantment. Some of the young damsels, though unwilling to wear the garments of civilization, were induced by the gay Frenchmen to run races for them. A child, crying at the sight of a white ogre, was quieted by its smiling mother placing her hands over his eyes. The barbarous people exhibited great politeness, even carefully removing obstructive branches in the way of the foreign Bush explorers. Of course a French sailor tried to initiate a Native into the first principles of civilization by presenting some grog. The Tasmanian spat out the nauseous stuff with unmistakeable signs of disgust. Some of the stories told by M. Labillardière do credit to the kind nature of that man of science, especially in relation to his gallantry for the softer sex, whose cause he so nobly espouses:—
"At noon we saw them prepare their repast. Hitherto we had but a faint idea of the pains the women take to procure the food requisite for the subsistence of their families. They each took a basket, and were followed by their daughters, who did the same. Getting on the rocks that projected into the sea, they plunged from them to the bottom in search of shell-fish. When they had been down some time, we became very uneasy on their account; for where they had dived were sea-weeds of great length, among which we observed the Fucus pyriferus, and we feared they might have been entangled in these, so as to be unable to regain the surface. At length, however, they appeared, and convinced us that they were capable of remaining under water twice as long as our ablest divers. An instant was sufficient for them to take breath, and then they dived again. This they did repeatedly, till their baskets were nearly full. Most of them were provided with a little bit of wood, cut in the shape of a spatula, of which I spake before; and with these they separated from beneath the rocks, at great depths, very large sea-ears. Perhaps they chose the biggest, for all they
