_Commandant's Office, Flinders' Island._

1836-- DEATHS:

December 24.--The native youth, George.
30.--The native man, Nimrod.
1837--
January 28.--The native man, Columbus.
29.--The native woman, Pupedar.
February 5.--Of acute pneumonia, the native man Samuel.
20.--Of chronic visceral inflammation, the native man, Algernon.
25.--Of the same, the native man, Matthew.
26.--Of the same, native man, Omega.
29.--Of the same, native woman, Truedeberrie.
March 16.--The native woman, Tyree.
21.--The native woman, Queen Charlotte.
30.--The native woman, Manoon, ditto Maria, and an infant.

J. ALLEN, _Surgeon_.

June 3.--Of extreme debility, Daniel.
20.--Of inflammation in the intestines, the aboriginal native, King
William.

A. AUSTIN, _Medical Attendant_.

--_Parliamentary Papers_.]

SECTION X.

_Origin._--The traditions of the natives afford no clue to their origin.
They are, perhaps, a branch of the Australasian family settled in New
Holland(?). _Mocha_, is the name for water among the western tribe of
this island: it is known by the same sound at Cape Leeuwin, on the
continent. Though boats were not employed, they constructed a catamaran
of bark, or decayed wood, of the specific gravity of cork: these
materials, tied together, enabled them to pass to the islands of the
Straits.

Lieutenant Gunn found at Maria Island, and preserved for several months,
a catamaran, sufficiently tight and strong to drift for sixteen or
twenty miles: each would convey from four to seven persons. The
catamaran described by the French naturalist, found in Adventure Bay,
was made of pieces of bark, and held together by cords made of grass,
and assumed the appearance of meshes worked in the form of a _pentagon_.
Mr. Taw, the pilot of Macquarie Harbour, saw the natives cross the
river: on this occasion, a man swam on either side of the raft--formed
of the bark of the "swamp tree." The distance between the islets is not
sufficient to shut us up to the notion of a local creation.[28] A New
Holland woman, taken to Flinders', remembered a tradition, that her
ancestors had driven out the original inhabitants--the fathers, it is
_conjectured_, of the Tasmanian race. History carries us back to the
year 1642, and it is in vain to seek authentic information from a people
destitute of records, and perpetually wandering. The time between the
first visit a