The San Saba news. [volume] (San Saba, Tex.) 1873-1966, 1889-05-10
TASMANIA.
GLIMPsEs OF WILD LIFE IN a
SOUTH SEA PENAL COLONY.
Terrible Adventures of Fugitive
FeIons-Choked by the Impen-
etrable Scrub-Melanchol
Tales of the Aborigines.

A New York Times correspondent
writes an interesting account of Tasma-
MIA, an island lying more than two hum
dred and fifty miles from Australia, ana
known in the Biographies of thirty
years ago as Van Dieman's Land. 1as-
mania once contained a notorious Eng
fish penal settlement. The writer closes
his letter as follows:
The chief employment of the conylcts
was telling the huge forest trees, in which
work many lives were lost. After a
breakfast Of flour and water they started
from their prison on Sarah Island to the
mainland, worked all day without other
food. returned to their chief meal, and
went to rest. Those who were separated
from the others for a punishment more
severe were lodged on rock, to which,
often in chains, they passed, waist deep,
through the surf and lay down without
bedding or fire in their wet clothes to
catch such sleep as they could. ashes
and chains, abuse of inhuman Jallers,
starvation and illness, and abandonment
of hope drove them to the most desperate
efforts to escape-and here nature joined
the cruelty of man, and caught and ex-
hausted them and choked out their life
in the horrible scrub" which is charac'
teristic of Tasmania. The Government
geologist and statistician, Mr.. Robert NJ
Johnston, has graphically described the
terrors and difficulties of progress
through the dense forests of the western
part of the island, which are so thicEzy
set with luxuriant vegetation that it is
impossible to pursue course in one d.
rection for any distance without literally,
ak in hand, cutting track wide enough
to squeeze the body through.
The ''horizontap and ''banera"
shrubs are the chief terror of explorers.
The horizontal is tall shrub, which
sometimes attains a length of sixty feet.
Its peculiar habit-to which it owes its
name-is for the main stem to assume a
horizontal position after reaching the
height of few feet, from which ascend
secondary, and from these tertiary.
branches, which assume the same hori-
zontal direction. All of these interlock
and form with other shrubs an occa-
nonal erect gum tree furnishing pillar
20 strengthen the whole-an absolutely
impervious barrier. The lower labyrinth
is thickly encased with moss, dripping
with moisture, concealing deep holes,
into which when a man drops he is lost
entirely TO sight and often cannot extri-
cate himself without assistance. Many
missing mineral prospectors are thought
to have lost their lives in these traps.
The baners scrub forms a thick and |
springy mass of wiry branches, which |
are too tough and too much moss grown |
TO cut, so that the only way to pass them |
IS to throw ones self upon the soft, |
branching mass and roll over upon the |
other side. Such progression IS ex-
hausting, and is made additionally inter |
ssting by the usual presence in these To-
ealities of venomous snakes. Under
these circumstances it is not strange that |
hardly convict who attempted to make
his way to the settlement was ever seen
alive again.
The only man who made his way
through the scrub was convict named
Pearce, who set out with seven com.
panions. They endured the most fright
full sufIerings, lived on berries and roots,
and finally the stronger murdered the
weaker for food, until only Pearce and
man named Greenhill remained These
continued on with growing weakness IN
til they could 90 no further. Then they
stopped, and for two days and highs
hey watched each otherl Greenhill had
the axe with which the way had ben
cut through the brush aud the others IF
ihe party had been killed inally e.
-5<----rf--1-s.