STONE AGE BASIS FOR ORIENTAL STUDY. 705 



bark. They were string-makers, good plaiters, and basket-makers, 

 and it is noticed that some of their stitches and phiits are familiar in 

 our own basket-work and point lace. They made fire with the ordinary 

 fire-drill. Their wandering life accounts for the rudeness of their sim- 

 ple huts and wind-shelters of boughs and bark. Mentally, they have 

 been well defined in the following words: '^ Their intellectual character 

 is low, yet not so inferior as often described. They appeared stupid 

 when addressed on subjects which had no relation to their mode of 

 life, but they were quick and cunning within their own sphere." 



Morally, it is not difficult to understand how two kinds of state- 

 ments are made about them, which seem incompatible, but are not 

 really so. Their inofi'ensiveness when not ill treated or alarmed or hos- 

 tile, gave place to sly and rancorous cruelty toward those they regarded 

 as enemies. Their nomad life brought with it the ancient savage cus- 

 tom of abandoning the sick and aged. As nomad hunters they had 

 but the first rudiments of government by the strong man of the tribe; 

 but as usual among such tribes, when war broke out, the authority of 

 a leader or Mar chief was recognized. The two great tests, language 

 and religion, hardly place the Tasmaniaus below recognized savage 

 levels. Enough of their language is preserved to show it as simj)le 

 and scanty, of an agglutinating type, mi-na=I, mi-to = to me; pugga-na= 

 man, Z(>HYt-»a=woman; timy=r\o; lugga-na=foot; compounds of these 

 latter, loica-fimy (woman-no) =bachelor; piigga-Juf/ga-na (black) =man's 

 footstep. The numerals do not go far, but reach to pugga-na mara=5, 

 verbally man-one (obviously he held out one hand). There is a propor- 

 tion of emotional and imitative words, and no doubt it is true, as 

 described, that their sentences depended much on tone and gesture. 

 It would have been most instructive to have had examples of how this 

 was managed, but, unfortunately, here the information fails. The Tas- 

 manian is distinctly a low orga'jized language, but not at all a language 

 belonging to man in what is called " a state of nature." Still less is 

 this the case with the Tasmanian religion, which is a well-marked 

 animism, extending about as high in its development as among other 

 savages. The accounts given by a number of Europeans, of whom 

 some confused white man's ideas with native, require criticism ; but 

 the mistakes generally disappear on comparison, and the vocabularies, 

 which show what religious ideas the natives had words for, are an 

 excellent test. It is quite clear that the word icarraica=shndow 

 served them to describe the souls of the dead, who became guardian 

 spirits of their friends and hostile, ghosts to their enemies, so feared 

 that men would not willingly go out at night; that there was a good 

 land of the dead, with life like this continuing, or that this land came 

 to be identified with England, whence the dead came back as white 

 men ; that demon spirits could i)ossess men with epilepsy and other 

 spirits could expel them; that the laud and forest swarmed with spirits, 

 among whom is especially mentioned the echo, which tlrey called 

 SM 93 45 



