Greater Britain: a record of travel in English-speaking countries during 1866 and 1867 . bor and Port Arthur, and later of the stillmore frightful massacres of the aboriginal inhabitants of theisle. Van Diemens Land has never been a name of happyomen, and now the island, in changing its title, seems not tohave escaped from the former blight. The poetry of the En-glish village names met with throughout Tasmania vanishesbefore the recollection of the circumstances under which theharsher native terms came to be supplanted. Fifty yearsago our colonists found in Tasmania a powerful and numer-ous th
Greater Britain: a record of travel in English-speaking countries during 1866 and 1867 . bor and Port Arthur, and later of the stillmore frightful massacres of the aboriginal inhabitants of theisle. Van Diemens Land has never been a name of happyomen, and now the island, in changing its title, seems not tohave escaped from the former blight. The poetry of the En-glish village names met with throughout Tasmania vanishesbefore the recollection of the circumstances under which theharsher native terms came to be supplanted. Fifty yearsago our colonists found in Tasmania a powerful and numer-ous though degraded native race. At this moment three oldwomen and a lad who dwell on Gun-carriage Rock, in BasssStraits, are all who remain of the aboriginal population ofthe island. BU Greater Britain. We live in an age of mild liumanity, we are often told;but, whatever the polish of manner and of minds in the OldCountry, in outlying portions of the empire there is no lackof the old savagery of our race. Battues of the natives wereconducted by the military in Tasmania not more than twen-. DAVEYSPROCLAMATION ?^ TO THE ABOR ? / ty years ago, and are not unknown even now among theQueensland settlers. Let it not be thous^ht that Encrlishmengo out to murder natives unprovoked ; they have that prov-ocation for which even the Spaniards in Mexico used to wait,and which the Brazilians wait for now—the provocation of Tasmania. 845 robberies committed in tbe neighborhood by natives un-known. It is not that there is no offense to punish, it is thatthe punishment is indiscriminate, that even when it falls uponthe guilty it visits men who know no better. Where onewretched untaught native pilfers from a sheep-station on theQueensland Downs, a dozen will be shot by the settlers asan example, and the remainder of the tribe brought back tothe district to be fed and kept, until whisky, rum, and otherdevils missionaries have done their work. Nothing will persuade the rougher class of Queen
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade186, booksubjectvoyagesaroundtheworld
