or two of their myths, bear a resemblance to those of the Australians. Some kinds of food were prohibited; they had a strong objection to eating fat; they carried about with them the bones of deceased relatives; and they believed in and practised sorcery.
Their ornaments and their utensils, though few in number, were not inferior to those of the people of the mainland.
They were not altogether destitute of the power of invention. They produced fire by twirling the upright stick; and they constructed rude vessels, in which they could cross rivers and arms of the sea.
Whether Australia was once peopled by a race of which the Tasmanians were a remnant will probably never be known. Their stone implements, the only material evidences we could have of their presence, are of such a character as to be easily overlooked if found. They would be regarded, probably by even the skilful, as mere accidental fragments of rock. They differ but slightly from the implements of the West Australians; and these no one would recognise as the work of men's hands.
Mr. R. H. Davies thinks that there can be no doubt as to the origin of the Tasmanians. He believes that they were scions of the continental tribes; and he points to their habits and their weapons as proofs. He considers that the chain of islands extending across the extremity of Bass's Straits forms a comparatively easy means of communication. From the circumstance, however, of the name for water amongst the western tribes being similar to that used by the natives near Cape Leeuwin, it is, in his opinion, extremely probable that the latter furnished the first inhabitants for the western portion of Van Diemen's Land. And this, he adds, is rendered the more likely from the peculiar form of the south-western coast of New Holland, as a canoe driven to sea from the vicinity of King George's Sound would, from the prevailing winds and currents, be apt to reach the western part of Van Diemen's Land.
There is another theory propounded by one of the most distinguished of living philologists:—
Speaking of the vocabulary of the Louisiade, as compiled by Macgillivray, and its collation with lists of words from the Solomon Isles, Mallicollo, Tanna, Erromanga, and Annatom, and Cook and La Billardière's vocabularies of New Caledonia, Dr. Latham says that the latter, as far as the very scanty data go, supply the closest resemblance to the Louisiade dialects from the two New Caledonian vocabularies; and he adds, "New Caledonia was noticed in the Appendix to the Voyage of the Fly as apparently having closer philological affinities with Van Diemen's Land than that country had with Australia; an apparent fact which induced me to write as follows:—'A proposition concerning the Tasmanian language exhibits an impression rather than a deliberate opinion. Should it, however, be confirmed by future researches, it will at once explain the points of physical contrast between the Tasmanian tribes and those of Australia that have so often been insisted on. It is this—that the affinities of language between the Tasmanian and the New Caledonian are stronger than those between the Australian and Tasmanian. This indicates that the stream of population for Van Diemen's Land ran round Australia
