In their way up, a human voice saluted them from the hills; on which they landed, carrying with them one of several swans which they had just shot.  Having nearly reached the summit, two females, with a short covering hanging loose from their shoulders, suddenly appeared at some little distance before them, snatched up each a small basket, and scampered off.  A man then presented himself, and suffered them to approach him without any signs of fear or distrust.  He received the swan joyfully, seeming to esteem it a treasure.

His language was unintelligible to them, as was theirs to him, although they addressed him in several of the dialects of New South Wales, and some few of the most common words of the South Sea islands.  With some difficulty they made him comprehend their wish to see his place of residence.  He pointed over the hills, and proceeded onwards; but his pace was slow and wandering, and he often stopped under pretence of having lost the track; which led them to suspect that his only aim was to amuse and tire them out.  Judging, then, that in persisting to follow him they must lose the remaining part of the flood tide, which was much more valuable to them than the sight of his hut could be, they parted from him in great friendship.

The most probable reason of his unwillingness to be their guide seemed, his not having a male companion near him; and his fearing that if he took them to his women, their charms might induce them to run off with them—­a jealousy very common with the natives of the continent.

He was a short, slight made man of a middle age, with a countenance more expressive of benignity and intelligence than of that ferocity or stupidity which generally characterised the other natives; and his features were less flattened, or negro-like, than theirs.  His face was blackened, and the top of his head was plastered with red earth.  His hair was either naturally short and close, or had been rendered so by burning, and, although short and stiffly curled, they did not think it woolly.* He was armed with two ill made spears of solid wood.

[* Mr. Raven, on his return to England in the Buffalo, putting into Adventure Bay, close by where this man was seen, cut off some undoubted wool from the head of a native that he fell in with there.  This circumstance was unknown to Mr. Bass.]

No part of their dress attracted his attention, except the red silk handkerchief round their necks.  Their fire arms were to him objects neither of curiosity nor fear.

This was the first man they had spoken with in Van Diemen’s land, and his frank and open deportment led them not only to form a favourable opinion of the disposition of its inhabitants, but to conjecture that if the country was peopled in the usual numbers, he would not have been the only one whom they would have met.  A circumstance which corroborated this supposition was, that in the excursions made by Mr. Bass into the country, having seldom any other society than his two dogs, he could have been no great object of dread to a people ignorant of the effects of fire arms, and would certainly have been hailed by any one who might have seen him.