I INTRODUCTION 35 



originally must have kept the tribes apart. It 

 is, however, doubtful if there were more than 

 2,000 natives when the island was first settled by 

 the English. 



Whilst Robinson was in charge of the Flinders 

 Island Settlement, it seems to have prospered, 

 and the natives showed a teachable disposition, 

 but when Robinson was called away to act as 

 the Protector of the Aborigines in Victoria, the 

 settlement must have fallen into unsympathetic 

 hands, or else the unnatural conditions in which 

 they were forced to live began to tell on the health 

 of the natives. In 1847 their numbers were 

 reduced to forty-four, of whom only ten were 

 young, and the settlement was removed to Oyster 

 Cove on the mainland, where, instead of any 

 improvement, things went from bad to worse, 

 partly owing to the free access of the worst of the 

 white population, and their pernicious liquor. 



Truganini, the last of the pure-blooded Tas- 

 manians, died in 1876. Her mother was murdered 

 by some sailors, her sister carried off by some 

 sealers, and she herself was originally kidnapped 

 and her lover murdered by two sawyers in the 

 Government employ. Her complete skeleton is 

 preserved in the Museum at Hobart, and this has 

 given offence to many to whom the dispassionate 

 inquisitiveness of science is almost as disgusting 

 as the natural inhumanity of the unsophisticated. 



c2 



