168 TILE ABORIGINES 



symptoms as mere indications that life will depart as 

 BOOH as the sun goes down, and until that period they 

 do not treat them as dead." 



Und.r date 9th November, 1832, Mr. Walker 

 writes : — 



kk There are, it is supposed, the remains of only four 

 tribes at large in the island. Three of them frequent 

 ilic coast between Macquarie Harbour and Cape Grim. 

 The fourth tribe frequent the district of Port Davey. 

 It is the opinion of both G. A. Robinson and A. Cottrell 

 that these tribes do not include more than a hundred 

 invividuals, although they are not among those whose 

 numbers have been thinned by coming into hostile col- 

 lision with Europeans, with the exception of one tribe, 

 that has on two or three occasions encountered the Van 

 Diemen's Land Company's servants. Individuals have 

 in these encounters been killed on both sides, but the 

 number is very limited on either. This strongly con- 

 firms the opinion we have for some time entertained, that 

 the number of aborigines in the island has been greatly 

 exaggerated. It does not appear (admitting that there 

 are about a hundred in the four tribes yet in the bush) 

 that the number now in existence in the bush and at 

 the aboriginal settlement exceeds 220 or 230. Allowing 

 that their numbers have been thinned by the warfare 

 that has subsisted between them and the whites, and that 

 disease has also tended to thin their ranks (which 

 appears to have been the case, especially among the 

 Bruny Island natives), it does not seem probable that 

 the whole of the aboriginal population, from the time of 

 the landing of Europeans to the present moment, has 

 ever at one time much exceeded five or six hundred 

 individuals." 



Specimens of the Language spoken by the 

 Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land : — Two 

 Popular Songs. — Translation of Genesis, 

 Chap. I. — Aboriginal Names of Men and 

 Women. 



15 October, 1832. — Several of the aborigines were 

 invited into the Commandant's hut for the purpose of 

 enabling me to take down a few words as specimens of 

 the language. The plan I adoped was to point to 

 different objects, which they named, several repeating 



