ehind us,
but the Bass Strait which separates that land from Tasmania is evidently
of modern formation. The similarity of the vegetation, minerals, animal,
and vegetable life 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, 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. So late as 1828 there
were a few of the Tasmanian aborigines still alive, but to-day there is
not a representative of the race in existence.

When the country cast off the disgrace of being a penal colony, the name
it bore was very judiciously changed from Van Dieman's Land to that of
Tasmania, in honor of its first discoverer, Abel Janssen Tasman, the
famous Dutch navigator of the seventeenth century. We should perhaps
qualify the words "first discoverer." Tasman was the first accredited
discoverer, but he was less entitled to impart his name to this
beautiful island than were others. Captain Cook, with characteristic
zeal and sagacity, explored, surveyed, and described it, whereas Tasman
scarcely more than sighted it. However, any name was preferable to that
of Van Dieman's Land, which had become the synonyme for a penal
station, and with which is associated the memory of some of the most
outrageous and murderous acts of cruelty for which a civilized
government was ever responsible.

The whole island has now a population of about one hundred and thirty
thousand, and a total area of over twenty-four thousand square miles. It
is not quite so large as Ireland. Lying nearer to the Antarctic Circle
it is of course cooler than the continent, but the influence of the sea,
which completely surrounds it, renders the climate more equable. The
general aspect of the country is that of being occupied by thrifty
farmers of advanced ideas, such as carry on their calling
understandingly, and more like well-populated America than
spa