THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



iii ct water-colour ilTdici 



A YOUNG MAN OF TASMANIA. 



persuaded them by promises of good treatment to sur- 

 render their freedom. In the course of three years 

 they all came in. William Lanney, as he was after- 

 wards called, was one of the last party brought into 

 Hobart Town in 1835. He was the "last man" of this 

 now extinct race; and we reproduce on page 67 his 

 photograph, and on page 68 that of his wife, from 

 lantern-slides kindly lent by the Agent-General for 

 Xew South Wales. 



The blacks were finally settled in Flinders Island, 

 in Bass Strait, their number then scarcely exceeding 

 200. Here they were fed, clothed, and educated at 

 Government expense, but they sadly missed the old 

 freedom and the excitement of the chase or of war, 

 and partly from melancholy and partly from diseases 

 they rapidly died off, until in 1847 their numbers were 

 reduced to forty-four. William Lanuey died in 1869. 

 The last of the native women, Truganina, who, as the 

 faithful companion of Eobinson's conciliatory missions, 

 had played an important role, and on one occasion had 

 been the means of saving his life, survived until 1876. 



The languages of the Tasmanians were soft and musical, and quite unlike those of the 

 Australians. It is said that many of them were really handsome savages. The few photographs 

 still extant suggest quite the reverse, but it is possible that the ugliest and weirdest-looking 

 natives were purposely selected as subjects for the camera. In Cook's time, besides covering 

 their heads with grease and red ochre, the Tasmanians wore bracelets, armlets, and necklaces, 

 also girdles of kangaroo sinews or vegetable fibre, to which shells, bones, or teeth were often 

 attached. They never cultivated the ground, and had no domestic animals, not even dogs. 

 Of the potter's art they were entirely ignorant. No charges of cannibalism have been brought 

 home to them. Although it seems probable that they were acquainted with the art of 

 producing fire, they always took burning torches on their journeys. Their weapons were only 

 two, both made of wood a simple long spear, sharpened at one end and hardened by the 

 action of fire, and the waddy, a short stick, which could be used either as a club or missile. 

 They possessed no bows and arrows, nor did they use the shields, boomerangs, and throwing- 

 sticks of the Australians. Of course metal of any kind was quite unknown. The thin bone 

 of a kangaroo's leg served for needle, awl, or pin; their domestic utensils were stone axes 

 and knives of the very rudest construction; in fact, Professor Tylor shows in a valuable paper 

 read before the Anthropological Institute that these people may be fairly taken as representing 

 the primitive state of the European men of the older Stone Age (or Palaeolithic period), 

 when men hunted the mammoth, reindeer, wild horse, and the primeval bull. The Tasmanians 

 had no seaworthy canoes; they crossed a river or a small arm of the sea on logs, roughly 

 constructed rafts, or bark canoes. 



They were divided into numerous small tribes, each speaking a different dialect, sometimes 

 incomprehensible to each other; and as it not unfrequently happens among rival communities 

 boasting a far higher condition of civilisation, these tribes were often at war with one another; 

 but being by no means of a savage or bloodthirsty disposition, and the weapons, as indicated 

 above, not being of a very destructive nature, their battles were rarely attended with many 

 casualties. The sanguinary side of their disposition was unfortunately developed in the 

 life-and-death struggle with the intruding Europeans. As with most people in a primitive 

 condition of society, the chief occupation of the men was hunting, while the women attended 

 to the concerns of the household (if such a term can be fitly employed for the domestic 

 economy), taking care of the children, searching for roots, shell-fish or eggs, cooking, making 



