THE TASMANIAN ABORIGINES. 

 By James Backhouse Walker, F.R.G.S. 



To anthropologists the aborigines of Tasmania pre- 

 sented an exceedingly interesting object of study. Pro- 

 fessor Tylor had remarked that in the tribes of Tasmania, 

 only just extinct, we had men whose condition had 

 changed but little since the early Stone Age, and whose 

 life gave us some idea of the earliest prehistoric tribes of 

 the old world, the Drift and Cave men of Europe. It 

 is therefore much to be regretted that so little informa- 

 tion remains respecting the Tasmanians in their wild 

 state. The early voyagers, especially the French, did 

 their best with the opportunities they had in casual 

 meeting with the aborigines, and have left us exceedingly 

 interesting and valuable accounts of their observations. 

 But their visits were too short and their acquaintance 

 with the natives too superficial to allow them to gain 

 any intimate knowledge of native customs, or ways of 

 life and thought. They could at most note down a few 

 noticeable external characteristics. 



Diu'ing the early years of the Colony, when the blacks 

 were, on the whole, friendly, no one thought it worth 

 while to take the trouble of studying their ways, or of 

 making any attempt to investigate their tribal customs. 

 If they had been as picturesque as the Red Indian or 

 the Maori, we should probably have known a great deal 

 more about them. But the scientific study of anthropo- 

 logy had not then begun, and the blacks were so low in 

 the scale of civilization that they were deemed unworthy 

 of attention. For no one then recognised that it was 

 the very fact of their being at the bottom of the scale 

 that would have made a thorough knowledge of their 

 ideas of such interest and importance, 



