MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL aUALlTIES. '109 



almost universally, in disgusting debauchery and sensuality ; 

 and display gross selfishness, indifference to the pains and 

 pleasures of others, insensibility to beauty of form, order, 

 and liarmony, and an almost entire want of what we com- 

 prehend altogether under the expression of elevated senti- 

 ments, manly virtues, and moral feeling. The hideous 

 savages of Van Diemen's Land, of New Holland, New Gui- 

 nea, and some neighbouring islands, the Negroes of Congo 

 and some other parts, exhibit the most disgusting moral as 

 well as physical portrait of man. 



Peron describes the wretched beings, whom he found on 

 the shores of Van Diemen's Island, and of the neighbouring 

 Island Maria, as examples of the rudest barbarism ; " with- 

 out chiefs, properly so called, without laws or any thing 

 like regular government, without arts of any kind, with no 

 idea of agriculture, of the use of metals, or of the services 

 to be derived from animals ; without clothes, or fixed abode, 

 and with no other shelter than a mere shed of bark to keep 

 off the cold south winds ; with no other arms but a club and 

 spear *." 



Although these and the neighbouring New Hollanders are 

 placed in a fine climate and productive soil, they derive no 

 other sustenance from the earth than a few fern-roots and 

 bulbs of orchises ; and are often driven by the failure of their 

 principal resource, fish, to the most revolting food, as frogs, 

 lizards, serpents, spiders, the larvae of insects, and particu- 

 larly a kind of large caterpillar found in groups on the 

 branches of the eucalyptus resinifera. They are sometimes 

 obliged to appease the cravings of hunger by the bark of 

 trees, and by a paste m.ade by pounding together ants, their 

 larvae, and fern-roots f. 



Their remorseless cruelty, their unfeeling barbarity to 

 women and children, their immoderate revenge for the most 

 trivial affronts, their want of natural affection, are hardly 

 redeemed by the slightest traits of goodness. When we add, 



* Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes ; t. i. cha^. 20. 



+ Collins, ^ccouH^ of the English Colony in New South Wales. Appendix. 



See also Turnbull's Voyage round the World; 2d ed. eh. 8. 



