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[Page 271]

reason for their conduct: They give their European protectors to understand their husbands make them carry all their lumber, force them out to hunt, and make them perform all kinds of work; and that they find their situation greatly improved by attaching themselves to the sealing gangs.Those who have united themselves to our Sailors manifested a faithful and affectionate attachment, and are extremely jealous of a rival".

My reasons for introducing the above quotations are obvious; they shew that my observations on the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land are correct, and a more intimate communication with the different tribes for the last few years has enabled me to rectify erroneous notions formed at a time when our intercourse with the Blacks was very limited. I can however not agree with Lieutenant Jeffries in all he states, the aboriginal women who cohabited with European sailors on the coast and islands were generally carried away by force or fraud, and were made to do all kinds of drudgery, and often much more so than with their native masters. They were roughly handled and often cruelly treated by the sealers, and when Mr Robinson removed them from their white paramours, they hailed the event with unfeigned joy being delivered from the oppressions of ignorant and brutal men, who took infinite delight in teaching them the coarsest and most indecent language as well as cursing and swearing.

They may, in their native cunning and fear, have expressed before their white companions that "their situation was greatly improved by attaching themselves to the sealing gangs" but when liberated they held out quite a different language.  When Mr Evans and Lieutenant Jeffries wrote

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