249 
Aborigines of Tasmania . 
elicited, to guide his aims, to ensure the enlargement of 
liis conquests, and the increasing worth and beauty of 
the creations of his art. 
The Aborigines of Tasmania have been usually re¬ 
garded as exhibiting the human character in its lowest 
stage of degradation. And if our notice be directed 
only to the meagre sense of accountability which pre¬ 
vailed among them, or rather to the absence of all 
moral views and impressions by which they were dis¬ 
tinguished, this estimate of their condition is undoubtedly 
correct. Every idea bearing on our origin and destination 
as rational beings seems to have been erased from their 
breasts. If we look, however, to the methods which 
they devised of procuring shelter and subsistence in their 
native wilds, to the skill and precision with which they 
tracked the mazes of the bush, and to the force of 
invention and of memory which is displayed in the 
copious vocabulary of their several languages, they claim 
no inconsiderable share of mental power and activity. 
Their migratory habits, growing out of their de¬ 
pendence upon the fruits of the chase, combined with the 
warmth and serenity of their climate, relieved them from 
the necessity of constructing huts of a solid and durable 
kind. In the neighbourhood of the sea, and in the 
mountainous parts of the country, they sought no other 
retreat than the caves and hollows with which nature 
has abundantly supplied them. In more open tracks 
they erected break-winds, which consisted of huge 
branches of trees firmly wedged together and supported 
by means of stakes in the form of a crescent, the convex 
side of which was so placed as to oppose itself to the 
wind. A fire was kept burning in the unenclosed space 
which was left to leeward, so that they were cheered 
and refreshed by its heat without being annoyed by the 
smoke. Rude and cheerless as such structures would 
