and then called for
the purpose.

'I had never judged it my business,' Sir George spoke of this matter, 'to
interfere with those sealers. They kept the peace among themselves, and
did not come into contact with the settlement at Adelaide. Indeed, they
had some form of justice, under which a member who did anything wrong,
was transported for a time to a smaller neighbouring island. There he
could live on oysters of a sort, and on fish caught with lines supplied
to him. It was being sent to Coventry, new style, including oysters,
which, like all delicacies, will, I suppose, cause surfeit.

'The chief of this settlement, as he might be termed, had brought a
native woman with him from Van Diemen's Land. He was fairly educated, not
without considerable power of reasoning, and I had repeated talks with
him. Most of his companions had Australian black women living with them,
and there was a story that these had been taken by force from the
mainland. The natives of Van Diemen's Land were entirely distinct from
the natives of Australia, and the differences have been much debated. The
hair of a Van Diemen's Land woman was curly and woolly, Kaffir like; that
of the Australian woman long and straight.

'Very well, I was anxious to obtain a genuine specimen of the Tasmanian
female's hair. It would, I believed, be valuable to posterity, as bearing
upon the divergencies of two neighbouring races. Of course, the
Tasmanians have now been extinct for years, and their disappearance was
then rapidly approaching. It was best, to prevent any doubt, that I
should myself cut the tress of hair from the woman's head. The chief of
the colony, in response to my request, said he was quite willing that she
should visit Adelaide for this purpose. She was agreeable herself;
curious as to the scenes, strange to her, which she might witness in
Adelaide. As we are all born hungry, so we are all born curious; merely
we differ in degree. In due time she arrived, and I secured the necessary
sample of her hair, which remains, probably, in the Auckland Museum.

'Delighted with a new stock of clothes, the woman left Adelaide on her
return to the island, this also having been arranged. She was to light a
fire on a crag of the mainland, at which signal her lord and master would
put over with his boat to fetch her. Now recur my conversations with him,
which included the question, "Is it not rather bad that you should all be
living here with these native women