On the whole, it may be more easily credited that the
race of the island once occupied the mainland and was
driven southwards by more warlike or skilful tribes than
that it separately invented similar traditions and observances. To float across Bass's Straits in a canoe might
sometimes be hazardous, but in calm weather was easy.
Many recorded instances of drifting canoes exceed by far
the width of Bass's Straits. The so-called catamaran of
Southern Tasmania, moreover, could not be filled with
water nor upset.
To ascribe the habits of the islanders to chance when they conform to those of the continent would be a wild abandonment of reason, when the similarities are found to be abundant. To account for the dissimilarities is difficult; but on the supposition that frequently in the lapse of ages families would land on the northern coast of the continent, it is highly credible that the intermingling of fresh blood would produce physical differences, and thus the race on the continent might diverge in appearance from that which was isolated in the southern island. Thus also any invention, such as that of the boomerang or the wommeral, would remain unknown in the island, although it would be communicated gradually on the continent.
The number of the islanders at the date of British occupation has been computed at 7000,[1] divided into about a score of tribes, estranged by warfare, and speaking four differing dialects. They roved from place to place within their tribal limits. Like their neighbours on the continent, when they sent out a war-party they composed it of men only. If they apprehended an attack, they sent their women and children to mountain recesses, and watched the object of dread. Thus for days an exploring party led by
- ↑ Mr. J. E. Calder published (Tasmania, 1875) an account of the natives, in compiling which he consulted official documents in Hobart Town. The decrease in the tribes puzzled Mr. Calder. "It was," he said, "assignable to very different causes than the hostility of the whites, to which it has been so much the fashion to ascribe it, for up to the time of their voluntary surrender to the government they not only maintained their ground everywhere (the towns excepted), but had by far the best of the fight: . . . in this unequal contest the musket of the Englishman was far less deadly than the spear of the savage, at least five of the former dying to one of the latter."
