ther than contradicted by the early
colonists. These describe, with exultation, their new acquaintance, when
writing to their friends: how peaceful, light-hearted, and obliging.
They are charmed by their simplicity; they sleep among them without
fear: but these notes soon change; and passing from censure to
hatred, they speak of them as improvident, importunate, and
instrusive; as rapacious and mischievous; then as treacherous and
blood-thirsty--finally, as _devils_, and beasts of prey. Their
appearance is offensive, their proximity obstructive: their presence
renders everything insecure. Thus the muskets of the soldier, and of the
bandit, are equally useful; they clear the land of a detested incubus.

It is not in the nature of civilisation to exalt the savage. Chilled by
the immensity of the distance, he cannot be an equal: his relation to
the white can only be that of an alien, or a slave. By the time
astonishment subsides, the power of civilised men is understood, and
their encroachment is felt. Fine houses garrison his country, enclosures
restrict his chase, and alternately fill him with rage and sadness. He
steals across the land he once held in sovereignty, and sighs for the
freedom and fearlessness of his ancestors: he flies the track of his
invaders, or surprises them with his vengeance;--a savage he was found,
and a savage he perishes!

REMARKS ON THE CAUSES OF THE BURNING OF THE DEAD BY THE VAN DIEMENESE.

[From Peron's Voyage, 1802.]

"On a wide swarth of verdure (at Maria Island), beneath some antique
casuarinae, rose a cone, formed coarsely of the bark of trees inserted at
bottom in the ground, and terminated at top by a large band of similar
materials. Four long poles stuck in the earth, sustained and served for
all the pieces of bark to lean against; these four poles seemed also
calculated to ornament the building; for, instead of uniting all their
upper extremity like the bark, and so forming a simple cone, they
crossed each other about the middle, and then extended without the roof
of the ornament. From this disposition resulted a sort of inverted
tetracdic pyramid in the upper part opposed to the cone below. This
contrast of form in the two parts of the building had a somewhat
graceful effect, which was increased by the following additions:--With
each of the four sides of the pyramid corresponded a wide strip of bark,
the two bent extremities of which were at the bottom bound together by
t