Captain Stokes, while condemning cruelty in some men, is ready to acknowledge a better feature when it came before him. He met with two women on King's Island, clothed in greatcoats of kangaroo skins, who "seemed quite contented with their condition;" though he affords a sure clue to the motive, in adding, "their offspring appeared sharp and intelligent." Both wives worked the boat for their common lord. He has quite a sailor conception of one scene, when referring to the purchase of three gins by the gift of three fat seals to the tribe near St George's Rocks.
"Man," he affirms, "was never born to be satisfied with his own society; and the Straitsmen, of course, found beauties suitable to their taste in the natives of the shores of Bass's Strait. The sealers took their new-bought sweethearts to an island in Banks' Strait, and there left them to go on another sealing excursion. Returning one day, they were surprised to find their huts well supplied with wallaby by the native women. Interest cemented a love that might otherwise have been temporary. Visions of fortunes accumulated by the sale of wallaby skins flashed across the minds of the sealers; who, however, to their credit be it spoken, generally treated their savage spouses with anything but unkindness."
The history of old Munro, the "King of the Sealers," is a favourable one for the times. For a quarter of a century he lived on Preservation Island, near the main, and in Banks' Strait; it was so called from the preservation of a crew there in a shipwreck. There he held sway over his wild neighbours, who were accustomed to go to the "Governor of the Straits," and refer to his judgment and decision their small subjects of litigation; although an Old Hand declared to me that the secret of his superiority lay less in the strength of his intellect and the astuteness of his counsels, than upon the use of "a lot of crack-jaw dictionary words and wise looks." There he had at one time three female Tasmanians and a half-caste family. This patriarchal group were much esteemed by the sealers, and acknowledged with respect by some of higher pretensions. Yet of this very man, the Quakers, Messrs. Backhouse and Walker, have not a favourable report to make. After talking with Munro about his wives, Jumbo and three others,
