The aborigines of Tasmania / by H. Ling Roth ; assisted by Marion E. Butler and Jas. Backhouse Walker ; with a chapter on the osteology by J.G. Garson.

  • Henry Ling Roth
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The aborigines of Tasmania / by H. Ling Roth ; assisted by Marion E. Butler and Jas. Backhouse Walker ; with a chapter on the osteology by J.G. Garson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    had been closed and fastened, the chimney had not and up it the dark lady had gone.” This is, however, not so difficult an operation as appears at first sight. In the old bush hut, even now common, there was a wide fire-place, with a wide chimney of rough stones or perhaps of bark or split palings; the whole chimney was perhaps ten feet in height. On an earlier occasion La Billardiere (II. pp. 39-40) found himself watched from an unexpected quarter, thus: “ I had not perceived the young girls for some time; . . but, happening to look behind me, I saw, with sur- prise, seven who had perched themselves on a stout limb of a tree, more than three yards from the ground, whence they attentively watched our slightest movements.” Bad Habits.—Of one habit among one lot of men La Billardiere (II. p. 72) says: “We were much surprised to see most of them holding the extremity of the prepuce with the left hand, no doubt from a bad habit, for we did not observe anything of the kind among some others who soon afterwards joined them.” This habit may have been common, as Peron gives an illustration of a group in which one man is drawn with the left hand in the position named. We cannot perhaps close this chapter better than with Count Strelecki’s summary of their motions (p. 336): “ Compared with the negro, he is swifter in his movements, and in his gait more graceful. His agility, adroitness, and flexibility, when running, climbing, or stalking his prey, are more fully displayed; and when beheld in the posture of striking, or throwing his spear, his attitude leaves nothing to be desired in point of manly grace.” Of the first tribe Ross met, in 1823, he tells us, “ We could not help admiring their upright and even elegant gait, which would be a pattern to any Bond Street lounger. Their air of independence was quite charming (Bonwick p. 100). Pathology. Marion, who was in Tasmania in the middle of summer, found the climate very cold, and as he says (p. 34): “We could not understand how the natives could live there in their naked state.” La Billardiere was also astonished that the natives could live in such a climate without clothing: his words are (II. ch. x. p. 34): “It appeared to us very astonishing, that in so high a latitude, where, at a period of the year so little advanced as the present, we already experienced the cold at night to be pretty severe, these people did not feel the necessity of clothing themselves. Even the women were for the most part entirely naked, as well as the men.” The same writer bears witness to the good general health enjoyed by these savages. Thus (II. ch. x. p 47): “I imagined that these people passing most of their nights in the open air, in a climate of which the temperature is so variable, must have been subject to violent inflammations of the eyes; yet all of them appeared to have their sight very good except one who had a cataraift.” and (ch. xi. p. 77), “We did not see a single person who had the least trace of any disease of the skin.” If the state of a person’s teeth may be taken as a standard of health, then La Billardiere’s evidence is still more emphatic. “ We did not see one among them [forty-two natives] in whom a single tooth of the upper jaw