32 A NATURALIST IN TASMANIA ch. 



months ; but he was not only untrained in the 

 scientific study of man, but altogether uneducated, 

 so that his voluminous reports contain very little 

 of value. 



The extracts which we gave from the journals 

 of Captain Cook and the early French explorers, 

 afford distinct evidence that the natural disposition 

 of the Tasmanians was originally by no means 

 fierce or vindictive ; but it was not long after the 

 final advent of the English to the Risdon settle- 

 ment that hostilities broke out which only ended 

 in the practical extermination of the race. The 

 first occasion of strife seems to have been due to 

 a foolish mistake on the part of the English. A 

 large party of blacks, armed only with waddies, 

 with their women and children with them, were 

 seen approaching the Risdon settlement in a half- 

 moon formation, driving a mob of Kangaroos 

 before them. Some of the soldiers in the outlying 

 part of the settlement seem to have taken alarm, 

 and fired their muskets at the inoffensive blacks 

 with fatal results. The blacks withdrew, but 

 seem, not unnaturally, to have nourished the 

 greatest resentment at the treatment they had 

 received, and it was not long before they began 

 to retaliate on the settlers by murdering them 

 whenever they could catch them singly, and by 

 even planning attacks on isolated houses. 



When once the natives had established a repu- 

 tation as murderers, there was no chance of a better 

 feeling between white and black being arrived at. 



