OF VAN DIEMEN'S LAND. 149 



The same may be said of the use of clothes. In their 

 wild state the blacks had gone entirely naked in all 

 weathers, protecting their bodies against the elements by 

 rubbing them with grease. At the settlement they were 

 compelled to wear clothes, which they threw off when 

 heated or when thev found them troublesome, and when 

 wetted by rain allowed them to dry on their bodies. In 

 the case of the Tasmanians, as with other wild tribes 

 accustomed to go naked, the use of clothes had a most 

 mischievous effect on their health. In their native bush 

 the constant and strenuous exertion which they were 

 compelled to make in hunting wild animals for necessary 

 food kept them hardy and healthy. Cooped up in the 

 settlement and regularly fed, they lost the motive for 

 exertion, and sank into a life of listless inaction, in which 

 they lost their natural vigour, and became an easy prey 

 to any disease that attacked them. 



Mr. R. H. Davies, who has given us one of the most 

 reliable of all the accounts of the aborigines, remarks 

 that in spite of their having been treated with uniform 

 kindness in their captivity, their numbers rapidly de- 

 creased ; the births were very feAv and the deaths 

 numerous. " This," says he, " may have been in great 

 measure owing to their change of living and food, but 

 much more to their banishment from the mainland of 

 Van Diemen's Land, which is visible from Flinders 

 Island ; and the natives have often pointed it out to me 

 with an expression of the deepest sorrow depicted on 

 their countenances." In fact, the unhappy captives 

 pined and died from " home sickness." 



How to treat the poor remnant of the native tribes 

 was a difficulty, perhaps an insoluble problem under the 

 circumstances. If they could have been left in posses- 

 sion of a portion of their ancient hunting-grounds — a 

 reserve to which they could have been confined — they 

 might have lived healthily and even happily for a long 

 period of years, though even that would not have averted 

 the final doom. But the feud between the two races 

 had been too deadly to permit of their being left in 

 proximity, and the seclusion of an island was imperative, 

 as much for the protection of the blacks as for the safety 

 of the whites. 



To the credit of the authorities, it must be said that 

 from the time Lieut. Darling took charge in 1832 every 



