THE NATIVJE TRIBES OF POLYNESIA. 445 



fast fading race. But these conditions were never fulfilled. Mr. Milli- 

 gan's favor with Lady Franklin was great, but his competency as aa 

 ethnologist was infinitesimally small. Perhaps too his salary was too 

 liberal, for he lived at his case in Hobarton and never honored the 

 aborigines with more than an annual visit. He compiled a so-called 

 vocabulary of native words, which I have no hesitation in saying is 

 perfectly worthless to the philologist as well as to the ethnologist, and 

 the very brief notes which he occasionally produced with reference to 

 the general characteristics of the tribes are not one whit more reliable. 

 Thus was lost a splendid opportunity of giving to anthropology a com- 

 plete history of this now extinct race, and, as a result, we really know 

 very little about it. 



It has been supposed that while Australia was peopled direct from 

 the north through the islands of Timor and Rotti, Van Dieman's Land 

 derived its population from the islands of the Pacific. This was Dr. 

 Latham's opinion ; but I have not been able to discover sufficient 

 reason for the supposition, I am more disposed to think that the 

 people originally came across Bass's Strait from the eastern portion of 

 Australia, now known as Gipp's Land, through that chain of islands 

 which connects the line of the Blue Mountains and Australian Alps 

 with the mountains of Tasmania. In my intercourse with the natives 

 of both places, I have found nothing which militates against this view ; 

 neither have I been able to detect any thing which seems to call for 

 the theory that has received the powerful support of Dr. Latham. 



When attention was first given to the natives of Van Dieman's Land, 

 it was found that the tribes on the east differed in some respects from 

 those on the west. They spoke the same language, but in dialects 

 differing so much that the two people could with difficulty understand 

 each other. Their customs were also different in some details. The.se 

 points do not however indicate any difference of origin. The interior 

 of Tasmania is of such a character that it would hardly have been pos- 

 sible — at any rate it was highly improbable — that the tribes on the 

 east coast should have had any intercourse with those of the west. 

 They were separated by an almost impassable barrier of mountain and 

 forest, with an impenetrable undergrowth of scrub ; so that it would 

 have been very remarkable if some distinctive marks had not grown up 

 in a series of generations. These distinctions however were completely 

 lost when the whole aboriginal population was sent to Flinder's Island 

 and, except by their pedigree, it was impossible to ascertain with 



