foot upon the island, from the dawn of creation until then, commenced the humble offering of prayer and praise to that creation's Lord. . . . . These simple half-castes, the last relics of the union of aboriginal women with the sealers, had taken the Prayer-book as their guide, and did not set up their own rebellious wills against its plain injunctions. They were not too proud to kneel; their psalmody, too, was correct, and touching in its expressiveness. There was a deep earnestness with which my half-caste congregation joined in the several parts of the service, that I should be glad to witness in the more educated and polished gatherings of Christian worshippers."
Visiting their simple burial-ground with gratification, he observes: "I endeavoured, and I hope not without success, to impress upon them the true Christian reason for this feeling; reminding them, that as the body is the temple of the Holy Ghosts so each corpse must be reverently handled and dealt with, as a something which God himself has vouchsafed to honour and to sanctify for his own dwelling."
Quite another scene is now presented by his pen: "I united an old sealer, named Edward Mansell, to Judy Thomas, an aboriginal woman. Upon investigating the facts of the case, I was glad to find that the best motives induced the man to repair past sin and folly by a union with this woman, aged as she was. She, poor creature, could with difficulty repeat the necessary words of the service. Indeed, her English, if such it might be called, was such as to elicit a violent explosion of mirth on the part of the bridegroom, an unseemliness which was promptly repressed and rebuked by Captain King, who acted as father upon the occasion."
Some of the half-castes have been noticed as possessing uncommon beauty, and travellers, like Lieutenant Jeffreys and Captain Stokes, have been eloquent in their praises. The distinction between them and the real aboriginal girls has been thus indicated by the latter: "One was half European and half Tasmanian, and by no means ill-looking. She spoke very good English, and appeared to take more care of her person than her two companions, who were Aborigines of pure blood. A few wild flowers were tastefully entwined with her hair, which was dressed with some pretensions to elegance." The very beauty of the little things has, without doubt, been the means of sparing their
