Ill THE LAKE DISTRICT 95 



I actually visited the west coast and made myself 

 more familiar with its splendid scenery and unique 

 vegetation, but that first glimpse from the top 

 of Pine Tier impressed me with all the grandeur 

 of untouched nature. We could not reach Lake 

 St. Clair that evening, so we stopped the night 

 with a shepherd, named David Temple, who made 

 us very comfortable in his wooden cottage. This 

 little cottage, with currant bushes and a few 

 English flowers in the garden, nestling in an 

 Alpine valley and surrounded by the silent gum 

 forests, appeared to me an idyllic place, but the 

 shepherd, who had lived there with his wife for 

 about thirty years, complained of its loneliness, 

 the nearest small township being more than 

 twenty miles away along that fearful Linda track. 

 He told me many stories of the Thylacine or 

 Native Tiger, which is more abundant here than 

 in any other part of the island, and takes a con- 

 siderable yearly toll from the flocks of sheep. 

 Since this carnivorous Marsupial is regularly 

 hunted and trapped by the shepherds, and since 

 it occurs only in the little island of Tasmania, it 

 will not be very long before it becomes extinct, 

 so that I was careful to gain any information 

 I could with regard to its habits. 



The animal, which has something the appear- 

 ance of a wolf (Fig. 23), though much thinner in 

 the body, has a rather poor fur of a yellowish- 

 brown colour with a number of transverse black 

 stripes on the back and flanks, from which it gets 



