than they were when we first found thorn. Let anyone who doubts this visit the district, and he will hear nothing to controvert it, or to show that either chastity in the women nor temperance in either sex are to be regarded as virtues, or that anything is done to arrest their degradation.
The natives are, at least nominally, Christians, and in the census of the colony are assigned to the Established Church, but it would be interesting to know when they last received instruction of any sort. In this they are wholly neglected. It is idle excusing ourselves from these duties, by saying that they are intractable and incapable of receiving instruction. On the contrary, I know they are naturally acute, cheerful, and no less intelligent than ourselves.
At the time of their surrender they numbered about 250, of whom about fifteen-sixteenths have died in only 20 years, a most fearful mortality. A few births added a trifle to their numbers. There now remain only 16 of pure-blood and one half-caste—a female. Of the former there are four men, two boys, and ten women. The boys are about 15 years of age, and must have been born since the surrender of the race. So there remain, of all that Robinson gathered together, only 14. There are now no births, though some of both sexes have not passed the prime of life.
What a melancholy state of things these facts disclose. But passing these over, it is impossible to help inquiring what causes could have led to the premature decadence of that portion of this people who survived the calamities of war, and what reason can can be assigned for their infertility since falling into our hands.
To the first of these questions I have often thought it might be replied, forcing on them too suddenly our own habits, as if the savage could at once adapt himself to the ways of civilised life; in fact, requiring a people whose whole lives had been passed in the open air, to dwell as we dwell, and live as we live. Into this error Robinson himself fell, for when he first drew the Bruny Islanders together around his dwelling, several died almost directly.[1] He housed, or rather huddled them together in warm rooms, and required them to wear clothing. But doubtless, this partial confinement in an atmosphere too impure for them, and the too sudden restraint of the free use of their limbs, were wholly unsuited to their habits and constitutions, and, of
- ↑ In the original I said six, which number I took from the grave mounds that I saw in 1830. I had not then read Robinson's report, giving the correct number of deaths, namely, 22, so that many bodies must have been disposed of in other ways than by burial.
