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- Viking
-
 In some ways, he was a Viking, born ten centuries
too late; in other ways he was an adventurer on seas of thought
born too soon….
Whether he rests now in Valhalla or in a Christian paradise
or in any other have of far-faring mariners, he could at least
have the satisfaction of having used his time no earth to the
fullest extent.
Clune, Frank & P.R. Stephensen The Viking
Of Van Diemen's Land: The Stormy Life Of Jorgen Jorgensen Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1954, p. 476
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- Affectations
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Even by the ugler standards of that ugly island, Jorgen
Jorgensen -- in spite of his affectations -- was a miserable looking
piece of pelican shit, all elongated & sharp angles, a coat hanger
of a body trying to remember the coat that years before had fallen
off. Invariably he wore an overly long & rusting sword that trailed
in the dust & mud behind him, with his principal companion --
a mangy three-legged dog he called Elsinor -- hopping along in its
rutted wake.
Richard Flanagan Gould's Book of Fish Sydney:
Picador, 2001, p. 146
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- Walloa
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Had the records of the Colony not been preserved with
fidelity and case, and had the whole generation passed away which
first settled in Van Diemen's Land, it is not improbable that some
future writer might have extolled Walloa, the female native, into
a heroine, as the defender of her native woods against the aggressors
of the British and placed her on a level with the British Queen who,
it is said, resisted the Roman Arms for nine years.
N.J.B. Plomley Jorgen Jorgenson And The Aborigines
Of Van Diemen's Land Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 1991, p. 80
 Magic-
I do not recollect another instance upon record where
a whole nation carrying on for a series of years an interminable warfare
with the inhabitants of a British Colony and then finally, as by magic,
surrendering themselves into the hands of the government.
N.J.B. Plomley Jorgen Jorgenson And The Aborigines
Of Van Diemen's Land Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 1991, p. 47
- Greenlanders
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If it should be our sincere wish to soften the manners
of the latter [aborigines], we must seek them in their forests, we
must accustom them to behold us, and converse with us without restraint:
we must imitate the example of those holy fathers who converted the
Greenlanders and the savage tribes, which subsisted in a manner scarcely
different from that of wild beats, in Siberia, and other parts of
the dominions of the Czars…
The superior should be a man of singular humanity and penetration,
and guided by those nobler considerations which are not common to
ordinary minds. The apparel of the inmates of this remote habitation
should be different from that of other whites ever seen by the natives,
in order to excite veneration, and induce to a belief of peaceable
and friendly intentions toward them. The white men should be taught
to traverse the country without endeavouring too early to promote
any intercourse with the blacks : go to and fro seemingly inattentive
to what was passing around them; avoid all offensive conduct, and
if attempts were made to attack them, they should retreat and not
discharge a shot till it was clearly demonstrable that no other means
were left to escape: even then random shots should be fired; in fact
every thing should be tried to soothe the natives, and to convince
them that from this party they could have nothing to fear….
we should see our black brethren hold out the olive branch to our
view….
What must then be the feelings of our descendents, when reflecting
that they could not hold their possessions but for the fatal policy
which had delivered over to extermination a people who were guilty
of no other crime than accidently coming into contact with strangers
from a far country, and who by no title of law nor justice could exercise
the right of despoiling them of their natural inheritance. Heaven
avert so foul a stain on the British character!
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N.J.B. Plomley Jorgen
Jorgenson And The Aborigines Of Van Diemen's Land Hobart: Blubber
Head Press, 1991, p. 35
- Higher state
It has long been a question of disputation, whether the
untutored savage of the civilised man enjoys the greater share of happiness.
I should not hesitate for one moment to assign the preference to the former,
were it not that, man in a savage state can never attain to those transcendent
virtues and those noble qualities of the mind which alone can be acquired
by superior knowledge derived from proper attention to education; and
which so clearly and forcibly point out to us that we were not born solely
for this world, but with a design to advance ourselves hereafter infinitely
higher in the scale of the creation, than our corporeal shackles will
permit us to do here.
N.J.B. Plomley Jorgen Jorgenson And The Aborigines
Of Van Diemen's Land Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 1991, p. 34
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 Days
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'I have had my full share of days, little is there
in this world to care for. The joys of human life are fleeting and
transicent; they may be likened to two friends meeting each other
on a hasty journey, who ask a few questions, and then part, perhaps
for ever, leaving nothing behind but a tender regret. Such is it with
the joyous hours of our transitory existence.'
Dan Sprod The Usurper: Jorgen Jorgenson And His
Turbulent Life In Iceland And Van Diemen's Land 1780-1841 Hobart:
Blubber Head Press, 2001, p. 612
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