Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/34

But of all created animals, the untaught savage is the most imprudent; and he often kept his prize no longer than it suited the idle habits of the wanderer to carry it. Hence, he was wrapped up like a mummy one week, and was as naked as a newly-born infant the next. The climate of Tasmania is also a variable one. True, there is hardly such a thing known as extreme heat or cold, but there are very rapid changes of temperature, from moderate heat to coolness. Cold, in the Englishman's sense of the word, is unknown, except in the high lands of the country, where for five months of the year it is bitter enough, and something like a seventh or eighth of its area, is over 2,000 ft. high; and no little part of these high-lying lands is double that elevation, and a good deal more, and, therefore, both chilly and humid. The surface is quite as varying as the climate, hence the general beauty of the scenery. Now any person, whether savage or civilised, who wraps up at one time and goes perfectly naked at another, exposed to very frequent changes of temperature, is certainly not likely to keep long in health, but is assuredly laying the foundation of fatal consumptive complaints, from which (such was the peculiar constitution of the Tasmanian savage) almost immediate death was certain, and whenever he took cold it seems to have settled on his lungs from the first. Speaking of the many deaths occurring amongst this people from this cause, Robinson says, "they are universally susceptible of colds, and unless the utmost providence is taken to check its progress at an early period, it fixes itself on the lungs, and gradually assumes the complaint spoken of, i.e., Catarrhal Fever." (Report, May 24, 1831). Again speaking of the tribes inhabiting the Western districts, he says, "the number of aboriginals along the Western Coast has been considerably reduced since the time of my first visit," that is, at the beginning of 1830, "a mortality has raged amongst them, which, together with the severity of the season and other causes, has rendered their numbers very inconsiderable." (July 29, 1832). I am little versed in the science that treats of epidemic diseases, and cannot therefore explain the processes by which they are spread through entire communities with something like telegraphic rapidity, but it is visible to us all, and therefore requires no verbal proof; and the savage of Tasmania was more than ordinarily liable to its attacks, which, unlike the European, he knew no remedy for, and sought only to relieve his pain by a process far more likely to be injurious than beneficial, namely, the excessive laceration of his body with flint, or glass if he could get it, which, by producing weakness, made death only the more speedy and certain. He had none of the appliances or comforts of civilised life, and succumbed at once. Colds, settling almost