inserted in his report, "A visible increase is discerned among the half-breeds" of one tribe, yet the contrary is the rule. In 1858 there were but three half-castes in the powerful tribe of the Ngatowhauroa of New Zealand. Mr. Consul Pritchard deplored the rapid decay of that beautiful race in Samoa and other South Sea Islands, pronouncing their intermarriages as less prolific than the parent stock, and by no means so robust, or so easy to rear.
In Tasmania the half-castes were certainly never numerous under the most favourable circumstances. This induced Dr. Gliddon to announce:—"Even a convict population of athletic and unscrupulous English males failed, in their intercourse with Tasmanian females, not merely to produce an intermediate race, but to leave more than one or two adult specimens of their repugnant unions." The French author Jacquinot wrote:—"When the ancient inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land, reduced to the number of 210, were taken to Flinders Island, not only had the union of the women with the unscrupulous convicts been unable to form a distinct race, but only two adults were found who were the produce of these unions." And yet Mr. Robinson, when depriving the sealers of their black companions, acknowledges that a large number of children remained behind, few coming off with their mothers. One woman had thirteen children by a sealer. Maryann, the wife of King Walter, assured me that her black mother had five by her white father. Captain Stokes counted twenty-five on Preservation Island and neighbourhood. But Dr. Jeanneret reported on Flinders Island, in 1846, forty-seven Natives of pure blood, and five of half-caste.
I have endeavoured to ascertain the number living, both of the first and second degree. The best reply to my inquiries came from Mr. Surveyor-General Calder, of Hobart Town. In November 1868, he sent me word that the total number then amounted to eighty or ninety. "This statement," he adds, "I make upon faith of a letter lately received by me from Captain Malcolm Laing Smith, formerly of the 78th regiment, I think, who interests himself much about them. They are stationed on some of the smaller islands of Furneaux' group, between, or about. Flinders and Cape Barren Islands."
My half-caste friend Maryann gave a pleasing account of her father and mother in their island homestead. Before removal to
