200 AGE OF NATIVES. 



struck down in an instant to a mutilated and helpless 

 condition -. he who before, perhaps, towered above his 

 fellows, now moves below the smallest, he who was 

 the ready protector of the weak, now blesses a fragile 

 woman for assistance. Only blindness equals so 

 sad a condition — that is helplessness indeed. The 

 man whose sad story I have just related, was among 

 the finest of the natives, he had evidently been very 

 tall, had a handsome, rather intellectual face, and 

 was still quite young, perhaps not more than thirty. 



It was quite impossible to arrive at any conclusion 

 respecting the ages of these people, or their average 

 term of existence ; the age to which they might 

 arrive it is of course quite useless to seek, as the 

 thread is cut short in so reckless a manner, but I 

 have no doubt that they reach an advanced period 

 of life, and that a hundred years would not be too 

 extended a limit to assign them. An old woman 

 at Wootair had lost every particle of hair, was utterly 

 blind, nearly toothless, and a very atomy for 

 emaciation ; this poor old creature, shrivelled and 

 sightless, must have been very aged, and the only 

 wonder is that she had been so long permitted to 

 live, for although we were only made acquainted 

 with one instance of matricide, the utter apathy with 

 which the deed was done and the tidings communi- 



