TASMANIA 



7 1 



nets, etc. Dancing was a favourite amusement; and notwithstanding the excessively low grade 

 of their culture, scattered notices of their primitive mode of existence show that life was to 

 them not altogether without its amenities, and even enjoyments. As far as is known, they 

 had no system of caste, and apparently no regular chiefs, either hereditary or elective; but a 

 man of superior power or intelligence would sometimes acquire a temporary leadership of a 

 family or tribe. Monogamy is said to have been the usual rule in their marriages, but very 

 little is really known about their social customs; even the accounts in Bonwick's work are 

 greatly eked out with relations of the manners of the Australians and other kindred races, in 

 such a way that it is often difficult to distinguish what is really authentic with regard to the 

 people of whom he is especially treating. 



The geographical position of these people completely out of all the ordinary tracks of 

 commerce and civilisation isolated them from all the rest of the world. Neither they 

 nor the almost equally barbarous natives of Australia possessed boats by which the straits 

 between Tasmania and the neighbouring mainland could be crossed; and there are no proofs 

 that they had ever been visited by or received any extraneous culture from inhabitants of 

 any of the Pacific islands. It is this long isolation Avhich gives so much interest to the study 

 of the customs, morals, and physical condition of the Tasmanians, as we have to do with a 

 people unaffected by all the complicated ethnological problems arising from the mingled 

 influence of diverse and various races found among the nations of most other parts of the 

 world. Unfortunately the opportunity for a complete investigation of this interesting subject 

 has been allowed to pass away under our very eyes, as it were. The language of the natives 

 is irretrievably lost, only imperfect indications of its structure and a small proportion of its 

 words having been preserved. In the absence of sibilants, and some other features, their 



[Hobart. 



A GROUP OF TASMANIANS. 



