cious circumstances, but not enough, at least, for a jury of our times to convict on, or on which a modern judge would condemn. But as it may have been thought necessary to make a few examples he may have been sacrificed to intimidate his surviving brethren into submission to the superior race; and from what I remember of the Governor of the time, of the judge who tried them, and of military juries generally, I don't believe that justice, or anything like it, was always done here fifty years ago.
But whatever was the motive that led to those executions, it quite failed of producing anything but evil, its only effect being to imbue the entire race with a most active spirit of resentment that never died out, so long as they remained at large—about ten years longer; and Colonel Arthur was quickly made to understand by their unceasing hostilities, and most sanguinary aggressions, that a grand mistake had been made, and that he had formed a very false estimate of their real character, if he thought to frighten them into submission by any such examples as these.
Before proceeding further with the few tales or legends of aboriginal existence that I have been able to collect together, I shall say a little of the intellectual endowments and martial character of the extinct Tasmanians, stating here once for all that I derive a very great deal of my information about them from the best living authority, namely, Mr. Alexander McKay, of Peppermint Bay, who knew this people intimately when in their wild state—who passed several years of an useful life, either in pursuit of them, or amongst them at their camp fires, and who did so much to aid their chief captor, Mr. George Augustus Robinson to "bring them in," as to call forth from the Government of the day, a special notice of the great value of his services.
Of the mental qualities of no race of men, has a falser estimate been made by nearly every writer on Tasmania than of the ancient possessors of the land. In consequence of the untrue delineation of the character of our natives, made by Hobart Town writers, and others who have copied from them; who knew nothing of the bush or its wild occupants, an idea prevailed which has not yet died out, that they stood almost on a level with the brutes of the forest.
The usual style of this class of writers may be gathered from the following sample of one of them that I extract from a work published in this very city of ours about forty-two years ago, whilst several tribes were still at large; which work was very extensively read at the time, both here and elsewhere, and has been purloined from often since. This anonymous writer thus expresses himself:—"Perhaps of all creatures that wear the human form, they
