Flinders Island she had resided at Launceston, being conveyed there by her father to the care of a friend. Although she was of superior ability to most white children, and would, if more happily situated, have become a truly distinguished woman, she was thrown by officials among the degraded Blacks of the island, to her own serious moral and intellectual loss. Repelled in cold disdain by her father's blood, she clung to her mother's kind, and ultimately contracted a childless marriage with Walter George Arthur, the most intelligent and educated of the Native race. Her sister Fanny, many years younger than herself, married a European, after some vicissitudes of virtue. After a marriage of five years, she gave birth to a child. The Government had made the pair a grant of one hundred acres of land, though not to be sold. Maryann had, at the time of her conversation with me, recently received a letter from her sister, stating that she was then living perfectly happy with her husband in Hobart Town.
A friend lately gave the melancholy account of a family of half-caste girls, all of whom but one had turned out badly, and died early from dissipation. Another instance was more favourable. A lady had taken a boy and girl under her care. They had not been related, but were ultimately married, went on a farm, and did well. There was lately a Tasmanian half-caste couple living on the Victorian diggings.
Dr. Nixon, first Bishop of Tasmania, undertook a voyage to the islands of the Straits, on an episcopal tour, but with particular reference to the condition of the half-castes there. His notices of them possess much interest. He baptized many of them and their children, besides having the pleasure of uniting some in marriage who had long cohabited unlawfully. Full of sympathy for the mixed race, he was ready to see, if possible, a favourable side to their character, and foster in their minds a love for the truthful and good. In his interesting narrative of "The Cruise of the Beacon," he bestows a compliment upon one whom he describes as "the greatest lady" of his acquaintance. It is another corroborative testimony to the care exerted by some white fathers of this interesting race, who acted as old Adams of the Pitcairn islanders. His lordship says, "Lucy Beadon, a noble-looking half-caste, of some twenty-five years of age, bears the burden of twenty-three stone. Good-humoured, and kind-
