FOR how many thousands of years the beautiful island of Tasmania had remained secluded from the rest of the world like a lost or an undiscovered paradise; and at what remote epoch the first human beings drifted across the Straits, to find themselves the sole possessors of a realm more fair and fertile than that from which they had been wafted by accident or design; or whether, as there is good reason to conclude, the progenitors of the dark race which is now utterly extinct were of mixed negro origin, and arrived by a more direct method from the African continent or from India, can only be matter for speculation and conjecture. But the imagination dwells willingly, if not eagerly, upon that far-off time when this "gem set in a silver sea" was an unpeopled solitude which had never echoed to the voice of man and where the only sounds that invaded its silence were the roar of the southern gale over the tops of the mountain forests, and "the league-long roller thundering on the reef." And then the dusky strangers came, and finding abundance of food in the fauna of the island, its kangaroos, opossums, wombats, birds, lizards, snakes, and grubs; in the shell-fish on its shores; in the wild honey, the manna, and the truffles of its woods; and in the native potato and the roasted roots of the bulrush, the orchid, and the fern: they increased and multiplied, subject to the restraints imposed upon the growth of population by internecine wars, by the practice of infanticide, by epidemics, and by marriage usages and social customs inimical to the growth and nurture of a healthy offspring. For generation after generation the dark -people of the pleasant island lying to the south-eastward of the great continent which had been discovered early in the sixteenth century, remained undisturbed in their barbarism and isolation. But, early on the morning of November 24th, 1642, the blacks encamped by the side of he fresh water lagoons in the neighbourhood of Point Hibbs beheld an apparition which must have filled them with awe and wonder. Two enormous birds with dark bodies and huge white wings appeared above the line of the western horizon where the glowing sky touched the deep blue sea, and came floating land-ward with majestic motion and ever enlarging bulk. The terrified natives fled inland, and kindled fires by way of warning and alarm. These skimmers of the ocean were the "Heemskirk" and the "Zeehan," small Dutch vessels, commanded by brave Abel Jansz Tasman, and his brother Gerritt. The former had been commissioned by General Anthony Van Diemen, Governor of Batavia, to explore the coast of the Great South Land; and the discoverer of what was then believed to be a prolongation of the continent, named it Van Diemen’s Land in honour of that functionary. Tasman rounded the whole of the southern coast until he reached Storm Bay, and on December 1st he cast anchor in the inlet known as Fredrik Hendrik Bay, where he landed next day, and hoisted a flag upon a post upon which he and his companions carved their names. Putting to sea again, he skirted Cape Pillar, ran up the east coast as far as St. Patrick’s Head, discovering and naming Maria and Schouten Islands on the way, and then stretched across to New Zealand, the honour of the discovery of which also belongs to this adventurous and successful navigator.

At that time both Cape Pillar and Cape Raoul —which form the southern extremities of the peninsula upon which the intrepid navigator bestowed his name, and are the eastern and western limits of a beautiful bay, which ultimately narrows into the still more lovely estuary known as Port Arthur —must have been much more imposing in appearance than they are to-day. For even within the memory of persons now living, some thirty or forty of the basaltic pillars which constitute the remarkable headland known as Cape Raoul have entirely vanished —have been eaten away by the corroding action of the sea. Those which still remain rise to a height —in some instances at least —of seven hundred and fifty-six feet; but are being gradually diminished and attenuated by the incessant operation of wind and wave; the latter gnawing at their feet, the former flinging itself —when unchained by tempests from the South Pacific —with irresistible force at their slender summits, which are overthrown to aggrandise the reef below. Mrs. Charles Meredith, who has done so much by her graceful pen and skilful pencil to make the island of Tasmania better known to the outside world, has pictured its discoverer as coming on deck by moonlight, as his vessel approached this portion of the coast, and as

"Casting around a startled look
Up to those marv’llous towers, murm’ring in doubt—
‘What air-hung minarets and spires are they
Which thus from Ocean’s mystic depths arise,
Greeting with Eastern form our wond’ring eyes?’"

And the impression produced upon the mind of the early voyager by the imposing mass of Cape Pillar, eight hundred and ninety-two feet in height, as he rounded it on his way northward, must have been equally vivid and enduring.

Upwards of a century rolled by, and the appearance and disappearance of the huge sea-birds must have become a dim tradition in the minds of the natives of Van Diemen’s Land, when two French vessels —the "Mascarin" and the "Castries," commanded by Captain M. du Fresne —entered and anchored in the identical harbour in which Tasman, a hundred and thirty years previously, had found welcome rest and quiet shelter. The natives came down to look at the white strangers, but after some friendly intercourse a misunderstanding arose, and the French fired upon the blacks in self-defence. Du Fresne remained in the bay for six days, and then departed for New Zealand, where he perished by the hands of the Maories. Next year Captain Furneaux, whose vessel, the "Adventure," had been separated from that of Captain Cook, ran into the entrance of Storm Bay, and anchored in that indentation of the island of Bruni which has received the name of his ship. In 1777 Captain Cook, in the "Discovery," anchored in the same place, landed there, and held friendly parley with some of the natives. It was not until 1788 that Van Diemen’s. Land again received a visit from an English vessel, the "Bounty," commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh, who had served under Cook in the "Endeavour," and reached Adventure Bay on August 19th. He planted some apple and plantain trees, vines, Indian corn, and vegetables upon the south side of the island, and then sailed for Otaheite. Next came Captain J. H. Cox in the brig "Mercury," who ran up the eastern coast between the mainland and Maria and Schouten Islands in the month of July, 1789, and was the discoverer of what is now known by the name of Oyster Bay.

When Rear-Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux and Captain Huon de Kermandée were sent out by the French Government in the "Recherche" and the "Esperance" to obtain some tidings of the unfortunate La Pérouse, the expedition entered Storm Bay on April 21st, 1792, and remained there until May 16th, surveying and naming the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, the entrance to the Huon and the Derwent, Brunt island, Port Esperance, and Recherche Bay, all of which, with the exception of the Derwent —originally named the Riviere du Nord —still retain the appellations then bestowed upon them by their remarkably skilful surveyors. D’Entrecasteaux quitted his anchorage a month later, but returned to it in the following January for the purpose of completing his charts. Two years later Captain Hayes, in command of the "Duke and Duchess," entered the river Derwent and gave it the name it bears.

In the meanwhile, a settlement had been founded in New South Wales. Surgeon Bass had discovered good reasons for believing in the existence of a strait between the mainland and Van Diemen, Land, and the "Norfolk," Captain Hibbs, with Lieutenant Minders and Mr. Bass on board, entered the Tamar in the first week of November, 1798, named its estuary Port Dalrymple, ascended the stream to a point not far from the site of Launceston, and did not quit the port until the twentieth of the same month. Then, sailing westward, they discovered the promontory they designated Circular Head, which they aptly described as "a cliffy round lump, in form much resembling a Christmas cake, joined to the mainland by a low sandy isthmus," and very soon determined the insularity of the supposititious peninsula by rounding Cape Grim, so named on account of its austere character, an running down the west coast of the island. On their way they passed the broad estuary which has since received the name of Port Davey, and is believed to have been first entered by Tasman, who anchored in a bay which is supposed to be that now known as Frederick Bay, lying nearly two degrees to the eastward. He gave its latitude as forty-three degrees ten minutes south, and its longitude as one hundred and sixty-seven degrees fifty-five minutes east. But the latter was calculated, as Mr. William Howitt has pointed out, according to the method then in vogue. By the modern system of calculation, which takes Greenwich as its meridian, Tasman must have put into Port Davey, one of two remarkably spacious and well protected bays on the west coast of the island; the other being Macquarie Harbour. If, as appears probable, the Dutchman entered the former, to Captain Kelly belongs the honour of having been the first to discover its great extent, and to make a systematic exploration of it. To him is also due the credit of having been the earliest navigator to discern and enter the narrow opening into Macquarie Harbour, and to sail into that broad expanse of water running inland in a south-easterly direction for a distance of twenty miles, and maintaining an average breadth of five, widening out at each extremity to ten. But while this resembles a land-locked lake, Port Davey may be described as a cluster of estuaries, into which upwards of a dozen rivers, streams, or creeks, rising in the north, south, and east, pour their generally abundant waters, gathered from the neighbouring or distant ranges. Port Davey branches off into Hannart Inlet and Bathurst Harbour, to the eastward, the first of these running southerly, while the second runs into Bramble Cove, Long Bay, Big Bay, Moulter’s Bay, and a basin at the end of new Harbour Creek, with Harry’s Bluff and the Bathurst Range as its magnificent background. Port Davey is dotted with islands, and the shores encompassing its northern arm are indented by a succession of picturesque bays, framed in foliage for the most part, and presenting the same unbroken solitude and virgin beauty which they must have offered to the earliest explorer of their secluded charms. Ascending this gulf, which is five in miles wide at its entrance, and runs inland nearly twenty miles to the mouth of the Davey River, taking its rise in the Frankland Range, and fed by many tributaries, Captain Kelly found himself confronted by a deep gorge, bearing a certain resemblance to one of the canons of Colorado, and to the Iron Gates on the Danube. Frowning masses of precipitous rock, casting their shadows on a river which eddied and swirled in gloom below, suggested to the discoverer that he was approaching the avenues of the infernal regions, and so he bestowed upon the dark ravine the sinister epithet by which it is still known.

Returning for a moment, however, to the "Norfolk," the account of the expedition of Captain Hobbs, Lieutenant Flinders, and Surgeon Bass will be completed by the statement that their gallant little vessel reached the River Derwent on the 18th, and quitted it on December 31st, 1798, after having circumnavigated Van Diemen’s Land, and thus successfully solved an important problem in Australian geography. The "Norfolk" returned with the good news to Port Jackson on January 12th, 1799.

A scientific expedition —fitted out by the French Government, and consisting of the ships "Geographe" and "Naturaliste," with the corvette "Casuarina," under the command of Commodore Baudin —anchored off Port Cygnet on January 13th, 1802, and proceeded to explore and survey the southern and eastern coasts and harbours of the island. M. Péron accompanied the expedition as its naturalist; and there were twenty-two other gentlemen of scientific attainments attached to it. Of these no less than twenty died before the end of the voyage, including the surgeon, M. Monge, whose remains were buried on Maria Island, and whose name has been perpetuated by that of bay between Forestier’s and Tasman’s Peninsulas. An excellent survey of the East Coast was made by Commander Baudin, who conferred the name of a lieutenant on board the "Geographe" upon Freycinet’s Peninsula. The memory of other members of the expedition is still preserved by such names as Thouin Bay, Cape Péron, Cape Tourville, Cape Boulanger, etc.; and it is only right to add that Commodore Baudin, as Lieutenant Flinders had done before him, cars ample and generous testimony to the perfection of the geographical and hydrographic surveys made by Rear Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux, along the southern coast of this island. In connection with the strange fatality which attended this expedition, and as illustrating the too frequent historical fact that men who have deserved well reap only misfortune, it is painful to add that Flinders was taken prisoner by the French on his passage home to England, and spent six years and a half in confinement at the Mauritius; and that Bass is believed to have ended his days in slavery in one of the Spanish silver mines in South America.

THE first occupation of Van Diemen’s Land as a British settlement dates from June 13th, 1802, when Lieutenant John Bowen, of H.M.S. "Glatton," was instructed by the Governor of New South Wales to proceed thither from Sydney, in order "to establish His Majesty’s right" to the island. The penal establishment which the Imperial Government had constructed on the shores of Port Jackson was full to overflow, and the no less enchanting shores of the Derwent were destined to receive some of its scum and sediment. A mere handful of convicts, guarded by a few soldiers, constituted the vanguard of the great army of criminals which was to follow. They landed and encamped at a place called Risdon or Restdown, four miles above the site of Hobart, and on the opposite side of the river. They were subsequently reinforced by the arrival of a small party of free settlers, with their wives and children, and nearly three hundred male convicts, with their guards under the command of Lieutenant Collins, who had made an unsuccessful attempt to found a settlement on the shores of Port Phillip, as related in an earlier chapter of this work. The "Ocean," with the first division of the party, which numbered four hundred and two in all, anchored in the Derwent on January 30th, and the second detachment in the "Lady Nelson" on February 16th, 1804. Collins landed on the spot where the City of Hobart now stands, selected it as the site of the future capital, and named it after the then Secretary of State for the colonies. In obedience to the orders of Governor-General King the captain of the "Lady Nelson" repaired to the Tamar, and finding the country eligible for settlement, reported accordingly to Sydney, whence Colonel Patterson was thereupon sent with a small party of prisoners, reaching the entrance of the river in October, 1804. York Town and George Town were successively chosen as the sites of a convict station, but were relinquished two years afterwards in favour of Launceston, which received its name after Governor King’s birthplace in Cornwall, while the river obtained its appellation from the picturesque stream which flows past that ancient town.

Collins was appointed lieutenant-governor of the southern settlement, and Patterson was entrusted with the control of the northern one, subject to the general authority of the King’s representative in Sydney. Between the two settlements there was for some time no overland communication, and its pioneer, Lieutenant Laycock, spent nine weary days in prosecuting his arduous journey from Launceston to Hobart Town. In the year 1805, Van Diemen’s Land received an accession of population from Norfolk Island, which had been settled in 1788-9 from New South Wales, but was required for other uses in 1805. Its inhabitants received liberal grant of land in the southern part of the island, but added very little to its industrial development. The early years of Van Diemen’s Land were years of trial, vicissitude, and privation. Dependent at first upon the mother colony for the supplies of food, the failure of the crops in New South Wales brought the islanders to the verge of starvation. The provisions of the settlement, which had been stored in a government depot, were all but exhausted, and the convicts were enfranchised for a time in order to enable them to procure from the wild animals in the bush the food which the authorities were unable to provide for them; and it was only by the timely arrival of a cargo of wheat from India in 1810, that an end was put to a period of rigorous scarcity which had lasted for upwards of two years, and entailed such privations on the community.

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