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New Foundland has pictured the seal and cod fish, Western Australia the black swan, Liberia the elephant and rhinocerous, and New Zealand the curious bird called the apterix, which is wingless and clothed in hair instead of feathers. Tasmania shows us her animal freak, the platypus paradoxus, the beast with a bill, first cousin to our tailors and butchers, all of whom are beasts with bills.
Think of what prisoners have to suffer here, whose only crime is that they were of the Commune; that they were just a little madder than other Frenchmen." "Pardon me if I say that as brutal things were done by the English in Tasmania." "Think of two hundred and sixty strokes of the 'cat." "You concern yourself too much about these things, I fear."
No man is incapable of improvement, and under a wise systematic discipline most men do improve. A remarkable witness is found in the experience of Dr Browning who was engaged as Surgeon-superintendent of convict ships between 1831 and 1848. Of one voyage from Norfolk Island to Tasmania he was in charge of 346 "old hands."
The settlement had spread only a few miles beyond the spot where Governor Arthur Phillip had resolved to locate his First Fleet company twelve years before. As yet no attempt had been made to occupy Tasmania, which had been determined to be an island only two years previously. New Zealand also was virgin ground for the European colonist. The Maori had it all to himself.
Foveaux, in his turn, was superseded by Colonel Patterson, who came over from Tasmania to take charge of the colony until a new Governor should be sent out from home. Patterson offered Bligh his liberty if he would promise to go straight to England, and not seek to raise a disturbance in the colony.
This simpler process is still in use in Tasmania, Australia, Polynesia, Kamtschatka, Thibet, Mexico, and among the Guanches of the Canary Isles, who are supposed to be the last representatives of the inhabitants of Atlantis, which sank under the waters at the close of the Quaternary epoch.
But the efforts to throw off the taint of convictism were crowned with marked success; and, from being a gaol for the worst of criminals, Tasmania has become one of the most moral and respectable of the colonies. Of late years Tasmania has made great advances.
The greater part of the settlers in New South Wales and Tasmania have been derived from those classes, who, in England, except in the rural districts, have, until recently, been well nigh shut out from their parish churches; and, in many instances, their mode of life here was little likely to lead them to a regular attendance upon the public worship of God, even where there was room for them.
But more than twenty years were to elapse before the discoveries thus made were carried to their completion. Franklin himself, claimed by other duties, was unable to continue his work in the Arctic, and his appointment to the governorship of Tasmania called him for a time to another sphere.
The small black 'possum found in Tasmania and in the mountainous districts is the most valuable, its fur being very close and fine. Dealers in skins will sometimes dye the grey 'possum's skin black and trade it off as Tasmanian 'possum. It is a trick to beware of when buying furs. Bush lads catch the 'possum with snares.
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