TASMANIA 



67 



I'/IUtlJ IjlJ J. II. liru/llt\ 



WILLIAM LAN.VEY. 



resist, single-banded, the advance of an exploring party 

 with the greatest intrepidity, though the horses must 

 have seemed to him goblins or devils. Touching the 

 moral feelings of the blacks, writers say little or 

 nothing; but observation has convinced me that they 

 are not without them nevertheless, though they are 

 much blunted from constant repression, and that they 

 discriminate between right and wrong, though unable 

 to formulate the difference. I believe their horror of 

 consanguineous marriages proceeds from a feeling of 

 this sort which they are unable to analyse or explain. 

 I am convinced from personal observation that, after 

 the perpetration of infanticide or massacres, though 

 both are practised without disguise, those engaged in 

 them are subject to remorse and low spirits for some 

 time afterwards." Ratzel speaks of the "soul-depressing 

 misery" that hangs over these people, rendering them 

 unquestionably far inferior to that beau-ideal child of 

 Nature, the wild North American Indian. For this the 

 climate is partly responsible. Rain, which is so essential 



for filling the springs and maintaining both animal and vegetable life, comes so irregularly 

 that droughts are frequent. Certain steppe districts are oppressively hot, and the sudden 

 chill that follows the sunset seems to cause a stupefying effect. Where the land is desert, 

 the inhabitants are few in number and of a miserable appearance; where the laud is good, 

 they are more numerous, better-looking, and more active. The women are not so handsome 

 as the men, and the old women are dreadfully ugly; this is partly due to the very laborious 

 lives they lead, but also to the very poor food vouchsafed to them by their lords and masters. 



Mr. C. S. Wake, who has contributed papers on Australian Aborigines to the Journal of 

 the Anthropological Institute, thus sums up his view of them: "It is evident that these 

 people are, as compared with more advanced races, in the condition of children. Among all 

 the tribes, whether the more hostile ones of the east, or those who in the west appear to 

 give evidence of a milder disposition, there is the same imperfect development of moral ideas. 

 In fact, none of them have any notion of what we 



cull morality, except the simple one of right and f ^^\ 



wrong arising out of questions of property. With this 

 moral imperfection, however, the Australian natives 

 exhibit a degree of mental activity which, at first 

 sight, may be thought inconsistent with the childish 

 position here assigned to them. It is evident, however, 

 that this activity results from the position in which the 

 Australian is placed. Extremely indolent when food is 

 plentiful, when it is scarce the greatest exertions can be 

 made for its acquirement, and the repeated exercise of 

 the mind on the means of accomplishing the all-impor- 

 tant end of obtaining food has led to a development of 

 the lower intellectual faculties somewhat disproportionate 

 to the moral ideas with which they are associated." 



TASMANIA. 



IT is to Van Diemen, governor of the Dutch possessions 

 in the East Indies in the year 1642, who sent Tasniau 



,l. n. iii<inif\ [Safari, 



WILLIAM LA.NXEY. 



