CHAPTER XI.
From Australia to Tasmania.—The River Tamar.—Bird Life.—City of Launceston.— Aborigines of the Island.—Tattooing.—Van Diemen's Land.—A Beautiful Country.—Rich Mines.—Mount Bischoff.—Down in a Gold Mine.—From Launceston to Hobart.—Rural Aspects.—Capital of Tasmania.—Street Scenes.—A Former Penal Depot.—Mount Wellington.—Personal Beauty.—An Unbecoming Fashion.
From Adelaide and Perth let us turn our steps toward another of this group of British colonies in the South Sea. To reach Tasmania one takes a coasting steamer at Melbourne, passing down the river Yarra-Yarra, the muddiest of water-ways, until Bass Strait is reached, across which the course is due south for a hundred and twenty miles. This is a reach of ocean-travel which for boisterousness and discomfort can be said to rival the English Channel. As the coast of Tasmania is approached, a tall light-house, one hundred and forty feet in height, first attracts the attention,—designating the mouth of the Tamar River. The land formed a lee for the steamer as we approached it, giving us smooth water at last, whereupon the strained muscles of the body gradually relaxed, and it was delightful to be once more upon an even keel. At sea the human body is constantly struggling in the vain effort to preserve its equilibrium. During our short but tumultuous voyage across Bass Strait our steamer was often surrounded by a great variety of sea-birds,—among which were the Cape-pigeon, the stormy petrel, and the gannet, which last is the largest of ocean birds next to the albatross. On drawing still nearer to the shore flocks of pelicans were observed upon the rocks, and that most awkward of birds, the penguin, was seen in idle groups. The penguin is a good swimmer, but his apologetic wings are not intended for flying. As these birds stand upright, they always suggest the unpleasant idea of men with arms amputated above the elbows.
The winding Tamar with its tree-covered islands, green headlands, and bold background of undulating hills affords a varied and beautiful picture. Beyond the nearest range of hills was seen a second and much higher series, whose tops were covered with snow. Our passage of the Strait had been partly made in the night, and as we entered the mouth of the river the sun rose, turning these frosty peaks into sparkling crowns. The rise and fall of the tide in the Tamar is quite remarkable, being characterized by a difference of some fourteen feet.
It is singular that no enthusiastic traveller has written of the great beauty of this river of Tasmania, which deserves the highest appreciation for its natural loveliness and interesting variety of scenery. True, it has the disadvantage of extreme tides, which at one hour of the day expand it into broad, lake-like proportions, and at another reduce it to a narrow, intricate channel, disfigured by unsightly mud-banks and half-submerged ledges; but nevertheless, for a large portion of the twenty-four hours it is a scene of diversified beauty. Even when the receding tide has left so much of rock and soil uncovered, one is rendered picturesque by varied birdlife, and the other by large reaches of bright-green sea-vegetation. Here and there isolated houses dot the shore, surrounded by well-cultivated fields,—not temporary cabins, such as prevail through the inland districts of Australia, but neat and permanent structures, consisting of comfortable dwellings and large barns, with other appropriate buildings. These barns signify the necessity in Tasmania of affording a shelter in winter for domestic animals, while at the north we had not seen such a structure in the entire country from Brisbane to Adelaide.
We pass up the Tamar River through its winding channel for a distance of forty miles before coming in sight of the harbor and town of Launceston. The many tall, smoking chimney-shafts which meet the eye indicate that the town is busy smelting ores dug from the contiguous mineral hills and valleys. Approaching it in the same manner in which we first came to Parametta, at the head of river navigation, it was natural to compare the aspect of that drowsy though picturesque place with this vigorous, wide-awake community. Launceston is no Sleepy Hollow, but is a pleasant and thrifty little city, slightly addicted to earthquakes and their attendant inconveniencies. The place is named for a town in Cornwall, England, and the Tamar from a river of the same name also in that country. At our hotel numerous cracks in the walls and ceilings were silent but significant tokens of what might be expected to occur at almost any moment; but it was observed that the residents do not give this subject a second thought.
We have left Australia proper far behind, but the Bass Strait which separates that country from Tasmania is evidently of comparatively modern formation. The similarity of the vegetation, minerals, fauna, and flora of the two countries shows that this island must at some time in the long-past ages have been connected with the mainland. And yet the aborigines of Tasmania were a race quite distinct from those of Australia,—so different, indeed, as only to resemble them in color. They were a well-formed, athletic people, with brilliant eyes, curly hair, flat noses, and elaborately tattooed bodies. This ingenious and barbaric ornamentation of the body, practised by isolated savage races, seems to have been universal among the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, though the great distances which separate them, as well as the lack of all ordinary means of intercommunication, would lead to the belief that they could not have borrowed the idea from one another. We are also reminded that singularly enough the rite of circumcision has been found to exist among some of the most completely isolated tribes of the Pacific, which causes the ethnologist to exclaim in wonder whence these savages could have got the idea. The isolation of the Samoans is so complete that one is half inclined to believe their own tradition that they originally sprang from the sea; and yet this people are even more elaborately tattooed than the natives of the Feejee Islands.
The Tasmanian aborigines "wore no clothing whatever when first discovered, leaving even those parts of the person exposed which an innate sense of decency causes most savages to conceal. They hunted the kangaroo with spears, and brought down birds with a heavy whirling stick," says an old chronicler; but whether he means by "a heavy whirling stick" to indicate the boomerang, we cannot say. If these savages possessed that ingenious instrument, it would show that they must have been more or less intimate with the Australian aborigines, who doubtless invented it. They are said to have been low in the scale of barbarism; but they were not stupid, lighting fires by the friction of two pieces of dry wood, and roasting their fowls, fish, and prisoners of war before eating them. They were openly addicted to cannibalism to the very last, until association with the whites gradually ended this barbarism. They however secretly practised infanticide until formally interfered with by the laws of the white invaders.