During The Execution The Battalion
Of Marines Was Under Arms, And The Whole Of The Convicts Obliged To Be Present.
The two associates of the sufferer were ordered to be kept close prisoners,
until an eligible place to banish them
To could be fixed on; as were also
two more, who on the following day were condemned to die for a similar offence.
Besides the Criminal court, there is an inferior one composed of the
Judge Advocate, and one or more justices of the peace, for the trial
of small misdemeanours. This court is likewise empowered to decide all
law suits, and its verdict is final, except where the sum in dispute amounts
to more than three hundred pounds, in which case an appeal to England
can be made from its decree. Should necessity warrant it, an Admiralty court,
of which Lieutenant Governor Ross is judge, can also be summoned, for the trial
of offences committed on the high seas.
From being unwilling to break the thread of my narrative, I omitted to note
in its proper place the sailing of the 'Supply', Lieut. Ball, on the 15th
of the month, for Norfolk Island, which the Governor had instructions
from the ministry to take possession of. Lieut. King of the Sirius was sent
as superintendent and commandant of this place, and carried with him
a surgeon, a midshipman, a sawyer, a weaver, two marines, and sixteen convicts,
of whom six were women. He was also supplied with a certain number
of live animals to stock the island, besides garden seeds, grain,
and other requisites.
CHAPTER XI
A Description of the Natives of New South Wales,
and our Transactions with them.
I doubt not my readers will be as glad as I feel myself, to conclude
the dull detail of the last chapter. If they please, they may turn from
the subtle intricacies of the law, to contemplate the simple, undisguised
workings of nature, in her most artless colouring.
I have already said, we had been but very few days at Port Jackson, when
an alteration in the behaviour of the natives was perceptible; and I wish
I could add, that a longer residence in their neighbourhood had introduced
a greater degree of cordiality and intermixture between the old, and new,
lords of the soil, than at the day on which this publication is dated subsists.
From their easy reception of us in the beginning, many were induced
to call in question the accounts which Mr. Cook had given of this people.
That celebrated navigator, we were willing believe, had somehow by his conduct
offended them, which prevented the intercourse that would otherwise
have taken place. The result, however, of our repeated endeavours to induce
them to come among us has been such as to confirm me in an opinion, that they
either fear or despise us too much, to be anxious for a closer connection.
And I beg leave at once, to apprize the reader, that all I can here, or in any
future part of this work, relate with fidelity of the natives
of New South Wales, must be made up of detached observations, taken at
different times, and not from a regular series of knowledge of the customs
and manners of a people, with whom opportunities of communication
are so scarce, as to have been seldom obtained.
In their persons, they are far from being a stout race of men, though nimble,
sprightly, and vigorous. The deficiency of one of the fore teeth of the
upper jaw, mentioned by Dampier, we have seen in almost the whole of the men;
but their organs of sight so far from being defective, as that author mentions
those of the inhabitants of the western side of the continent to be,
are remarkably quick and piercing. Their colour, Mr. Cook is inclined to think
rather a deep chocolate, than an absolute black, though he confesses,
they have the appearance of the latter, which he attributes to the greasy filth
their skins are loaded with. Of their want of cleanliness we have had
sufficient proofs, but I am of opinion, all the washing in the world would not
render them two degrees less black than an African negro. At some of our
first interviews, we had several droll instances of their mistaking
the Africans we brought with us for their own countrymen.
Notwithstanding the disregard they have invariably shewn for all the finery
we could deck them with, they are fond of adorning themselves with scars,
which increase their natural hideousness. It is hardly possible to see
any thing in human shape more ugly, than one of these savages thus scarified,
and farther ornamented with a fish bone struck through the gristle of the nose.
The custom of daubing themselves with white earth is also frequent among
both sexes: but, unlike the inhabitants of the Islands in the Pacific Ocean,
they reject the beautiful feathers which the birds of their country afford.
Exclusive of their weapons of offence, and a few stone hatchets very rudely
fashioned, their ingenuity is confined to manufacturing small nets,
in which they put the fish they catch, and to fish-hooks made of bone,
neither of which are unskilfully executed. On many of the rocks are also
to be found delineations of the figures of men and birds, very poorly cut.
Of the use or benefit of cloathing, these people appear to have no
comprehension, though their sufferings from the climate they live in,
strongly point out the necessity of a covering from the rigour of the seasons.
Both sexes, and those of all ages, are invariably found naked. But it must
not be inferred from this, that custom so inures them to the changes
of the elements, as to make them bear with indifference the extremes of heat
and cold; for we have had visible and repeated proofs, that the latter
affects them severely, when they are seen shivering, and huddling themselves up
in heaps in their huts, or the caverns of the rocks, until a fire
can be kindled.
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