TEANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 7&3 



two thousand years, what can be expected in the case of really savage races ? One 

 can hardly trust one's eyes when one sees the evidence placed before us by men 

 whose good faith cannot be questioned, and who nevertheless contradict each other 

 flatly on the most ordinary subjects. We owe to one of our secretaries, Mr. Ling 

 Roth, a most careful collection of all that has been said on the Tasmanians by eye- 

 witnesses. Not the least valuable part of this collection is that it opens our eyes to 

 the utter untrustworthiuess of the evidence on which the anthropologist has so 

 often had to rely. In an article on Mr. Roth's booh in * Nature,' I tried to show 

 that there is not one essential feature in the religion of the Tasmanians on which 

 different authorities have not made assertions diametrically opposed to each other. 

 Some say that the Tasmanians have no idea of a Supreme Being, no rites or 

 ceremonies; others call their religion Dualism, a worship of good and evil spirits. 

 Some maintain that they had deitied the powers of nature, others that they were 

 Devil-worshippers. Some declare their religion to be pure monotheism, combined 

 with belief in the immortality of the soul, the efficacy of prayers and charms. Nay, 

 even the most recent article of faith, the descent of man from some kind of animal, 

 has received a religious sanction among the Tasmanians. For Mr. Ilorton, who is 

 not given to joking, tells us that they believed ' they were originally formed with 

 tails, and without knee-joints, by a benevolent being, and that another descended 

 from heaven and, compassionating the sufferers, cut off their tails, and with grease 

 softened their knees.' 



I would undertake to show that what applies to the descriptions given us of 

 the now extinct race of the Tasmanians applies with equal force to the descrip- 

 tions of almost all the savage races with whom anthropologists have to deal. In 

 the case of large tribes, such as the inhabitants of Australia, the contradictory 

 evidence may, no doubt, be accounted for by the fact that the observations were 

 made in different localities. But the chief reason is always the same — ignorance of 

 the language, and therefore want of sympathy and impossibility of mutual expla- 

 nation and correction. 



Let me in conclusicn give you one of the most flagrant instances of how a whole 

 race can be totally misrepresented by men ignorant of their language, and how 

 these misrepresentations are at once removed if travellers acquire a knowledge 

 of the language, and thus have not only eyes to see, but ears to hear, tongues to 

 speak, and hearts to feel. 



No race has been so cruelly maligned for centuries as the inhabitants of the 

 Andaman Islands. An Arab writer of the ninth century states that their com- 

 plexion was frightful, their hair frizzled, their countenance and eyes terrible, their 

 feet very large and almost a cubit in length, and that they go quite naked. Marco 

 Polo (about 1285) declared that the inhabitants are no better than wild beasts, and 

 he goes on to say : ' I assure you, all the men of this island of Angamanain have 

 heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise ; in fact, in the face they are just like 

 big mastiff dogs.' 



So long as no one could be found to study their languaa-e there was no ap- 

 peal from these libels. But when, after the Sepoy mutiny in 1857. it was neces- 

 sary to find a habitation for a large number of convicts, the Andaman Islands, 

 which had already served as a penal settlement on a smaller scale, became a large 

 penal colony under English officers. The havoc that was wrought by this sudden 

 contact between the Andaman Islanders and these civilised Indian convicts was 

 terrible, and the end will probably be the same as in Tasmania — the native popula- 

 tion will die out. Fortunately one of the English officers (Mr. Edward Horace 

 Man) did not shrink from the trouble of learning the language spoken by these 

 islanders, and, being a careful observer and perfectly trustworthy, he has given 

 us some accounts of the Andaman aborigines which are real masterpieces of an- 

 thropological research. If these islanders must be swept away from the face of the 

 earth, they will now at all events leave a 'good name behind them. Even their 

 outward appearance seems to become different in the eyes of a sympathising ob- 

 server from what it was to casual travellers. They are, no doubt, a very small 

 race, their average height being 4 ft. lOf in. But this is almost the only 

 charge brought against them which Mr. Man has not been able to rebut. Their 



