458 convicts' story. 



The most remarkable coast-feature, between 

 Waterhouse Island and the Tamar, is Stony Head, 

 a bluff three hundred feet hifjh.* Ivintjf twelve miles 

 from Port Dalrymple. A small sandy bay separates 

 it from a point to the westward, and it is the nearest 

 part of the main to Tenth Island. In the neigh- 

 bourhood of this headland I was induced to enter a 

 hut at a sheep-station, by seeing stuck round a 

 fence a number of the heads of an animal called by 

 the colonists an hyaena, from the resemblance it 

 bears in shape and colour, though not in ferocity, to 

 that beast-t My object was to obtain a few of these 

 heads, which the hut-keeper, who was the only 

 inmate, instantly gave, along with an unsolicited 

 history of his own life. In the early part we 

 instantly discovered that this loquacious personage 

 was, what he afterwards mildly confessed to be, " a 

 government man," in other words a convict, sent 

 out of course, according to the usual story, through 

 mistake. It appears that he had been a drover, 

 and that a few beasts were one morning found 



* Of basaltic formation ; whilst the rocks that prevail to the 

 eastward are of primary character. But as Strzelecki has written 

 so largely on the geology of Tasmania, it will be needless for me 

 to enter further into the subject, except to say, that the raised 

 beaches found on the western side of Flinders, are evidences of 

 an upheaval having recently taken place. 



f This is the only animal the Tasmanian sheep-farmer is an- 

 noyed with ; and from its paucity, they have not, as in New 

 South Wales, the trouble of securing their flocks in yards or folds 

 every night. 



