Aborigines of Tasmania . 251 
associated in tlieir minds witli an excursion to the 
bush. 
Their geographical knowledge of the country in which 
they lived is remarkably accurate and minute. The 
relative bearings and distances of its more prominent 
headlands, bays, mountains, lakes, and rivers, are 
distinctly impressed on their minds. When at any time 
a chart of Tasmania is presented to them, it seems, at 
least in the case of the older and more intelligent Abo¬ 
rigines, only to embody the picture of its form and 
dimensions which their own fancy had enabled them to 
sketch. 
The contiguous islands of the Straits were frequently 
visited by the tribes located on the northern coasts of 
Tasmania. A species of bark or decayed wood, whose 
specific gravity appears to be similar to that of cork, 
provided them with the means of constructing canoes. 
The beams or logs were fastened together by the help 
of rushes or thongs of skin. These canoes resembled, 
both in shape and in the mode by which they were 
impelled and steered, the more elegant models in use 
among the Indians of America. Their peculiar buoyancy 
secured them effectually against the usual hazards of the 
sea. 
Beyond the construction of these rude canoes, their 
ingenuity was rarely exercised in devices of a useful or 
ornamental kind. Of a sluggish and phlegmatic tem¬ 
perament, they were aroused to action only by the 
pressure of want, or by the joyousness which nature has 
connected with muscular play. The craving which is 
planted in our breasts after excitement, was supplied in 
tlieir case by the exercise of hunting, and by the feats 
of agility and strength which the yells of the corrobcry 
were designed to stimulate and applaud. 
The spears and waddies, which served them as the 
