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earth produced spontaneously, and traversing its vast forests, without any settled habitation, in search of game.* Some benefactor of his species, however, whose name, unfortunately, has not descended to posterity, hit upon the happy expedient of taming the wild sheep, the wild cow, and the wild horse, and subjecting these animals, in a domesticated state, to the uses of man. The painted savage then made himself a movable tent to live in, covered with the skins of his sheep and goats; removing it, successively, from one Squatting Station to another, according as the grass or the water failed, and traversing the open country with his flocks and herds, like those ancient Squatters, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, of happy memory. The earth was then a vast common, to which no man pretended to have any other right than the right of temporary occupation, which was supposed to cease and determine the moment he struck his tent and removed his flocks and herds to a different run. There were no cities or towns at this period, and no such division of labour as we have now; every Squatter being shoemaker and tailor, house-carpenter and weaver, butcher and baker, in short, a perfect jack-of-all-trades, for himself. This, moreover, was the golden age of the world-at least the poets have told us so, and the philosophers do not

"The discoveries of ancient and modern navigation, and the domestic history or traditions of the most enlightened nations, represent the human savage naked both in mind and body, and destitute of laws, of arts, of ideas, and almost of language. From this abject condition, perhaps the primitive and universal state of man, he has gradually risen to command the animals, to fertilize the earth, to traverse the ocean, and to measure the heavens."-GIBBON.

There is not even the shadow either of evidence or of probability for the allegation that the savage state was the primitive and universal state of man. The voice of history, both sacred and profane, proclaims the contrary. Nay, there is not even the shadow of evidence to prove that in any one instance in the history of man, a people in such a state as the eloquent historian describes, has raised itself, by its own inherent energies, to a state of civilization.

contradict them-peace and harmony reigned everywhere, and uninterrupted felicity. It is somewhat unfortunate, indeed, for this theory, that so early in the history of Squatting as the era of the patriarch Isaac -of whom we are divinely told that "the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very GREAT, for he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants;" the items constituting his greatness being thus precisely those that constitute the greatness of an Australian Squatter—it is peculiarly unfortunate for the theory in question, that so early as the era of Isaac there were exactly the same quarrels and contentions between rival Squatters about their wells, or "water-holes," whether the latter were natural or artificial, as still occur occasionally in New South Wales: and the case of the sons of Jacob kidnapping their own brother, and selling him for a slave, not to mention that of Simeon and Levi and their stockmen sacking a whole town, is rather unfortunate for the character of this golden age; for we have no reason to suppose that the shepherds of Arcadia were a whit better than those of Syria and Palestine.

The next step in human progression was the conversion of the Squatter into an agriculturist, or tiller of the ground; on which occasion, we are told, he converted his tent into a permanent dwelling-house, and his right of occupancy into a fee-simple, just as the Squatters of New South Wales have been anxious to do for years past, by means of leases for twentyone years; for it is evident and unquestionable to any person at all acquainted with the physical character and circumstances of that country, that if these leases were once granted by Act of Parliament, all the power of Britain would be utterly insufficient to prevent the numerous and powerful corps of Squatters-extending as they will very speedily, from Cape Howe to Cape York, along a tract of country 2000 miles in length, and 500 or 600 in breadth—from converting them into absolute free-holds, long before the twenty-one years

were expired, if they were so inclined, and chose to make common cause against the Imperial authorities.*

Now it would doubtless have been very interesting to the philosophers of last century to have seen their theory so beautifully illustrated as it is unquestionably, to a certain extent, in Australia. In that country, in its natural state, man is exactly in the condition in which he is represented to have been universally in the primitive earth of the philosopher,

"When wild in woods the naked savage ran."

The period of transition, however, arrives with the European Squatter, who takes possession of a large tract of the waste unoccupied country, with his flocks and herds, and calls it his run; getting a license from the Local Government, for which he pays £10 a-year, and which sccures him, for the time being, in the occupation of an extent of perhaps 120 square miles of good natural pasture, and perhaps ordering or hunting off the unfortunate Aborigines-who, in all likelihood, were born upon the spot, and can have no idea either of the nature of the license, or of the paramount authority from which it emanates-from the said run. For it is here that the philosopher's theory altogether fails; the Squatter is not the wild hunter or savage man, elevated, so to speak, by his own native energies, above himself, but a totally different man altogether, who takes possession of the native country of the latter, without permission and without compensation, and calling it his run, orders the native off, because, forsooth, his cattle somehow do not like black men, and start off in a fright at the sight of them! In short, it is scarcely possible to contemplate the natural condition of the Aborigines of Australia, and their universal and determined adherence to their savage mode of life, even after being half a century in close contact with European civilization, without being driven, perforce, to the conclusion,

*Leases of fourteen years have been granted under an Act of Parliament recently passed. The shorter term of the lease will not greatly affect the ultimate issue.

that if the wild hunter or savage state had been the primitive and original state of man, he would have continued a savage to all eternity. Not only is there no instance in any country of the savage ever raising himself, by his own native energies, above his natural condition; he actually resists every effort to effect his elevation in the scale of humanity, when such efforts are made by others. This is doubtless a most important fact in the natural history of man; especially as it demonstrates the utter vanity of that "philosophy falsely so called," which sets itself in opposition to the testimony of God.

From the hints I have just given, two things must be obvious to the reader.-First, that, considering the amazing rapidity with which sheep and cattle increase in all parts of Australia, and the large extent of land occupied by each Squatting Station, the occupation of all the available portion of the vast continental island of New Holland with the flocks and herds of Europeans, will be effected in a comparatively short period of time, under the present Squatting system; and, secondly, that the extension of that system will almost necessarily involve the speedy extinction of the Abo-. riginal race. Even where actual collision does not take place between the white and black races, the latter, like the leaves in autumn, uniformly disappear before the progress of European colonization, at a lamentably rapid rate, which even European vice and European disease are insufficient to account for ;* but when hostile aggression on either side, followed by something like a war of extermination, comes in aid of this natural

This rapid disappearance of the Aboriginal races of all the British Colonies, even in circumstances much more favourable for their preservation than those in which the Squatting System has unfortunately placed the Aborigines of Australia, is a phenomenon in the science of Ethnology equally lamentable and unaccountable. The following is a case remarkably in point, from the Journal of a distinguished traveller, with whose acquaintance I have been honoured :

decay of the feebler race, the process of extinction is fearfully accelerated. It cannot be denied that such aggression is sometimes commenced by the black na

EXTRACT of the Journal of an Expedition from Pirara to the Upper Corentyne, and from thence to Demerara, under the command of SIR ROBERT H. SCHOMBURgk.

"Reluctant as I am to despair, the conviction is forced upon me, that the Indian race is doomed to extermination. Six years have scarcely passed away since I wandered to this spot, on visiting the sources of the Essequibo. We left the settlement

Eischalli Tuna, and passed on our route to the Taruma Indians three villages of Atorais or Atorajas, and one of Taurais, the latter containing the remnant of that sister-tribe of the Atorai nation. The villages have vanished; death has all but extirpated the former inhabitants, and I am informed that of the true Atorais only seven individuals are alive. From the accounts I received in 1837, I estimated the number of Atorais and Taurais at 200, including the descendants of mixed marriages, and of that number about sixty are now left.

"The measles, so fatal to the Indians, has twice decimated the Atorais; and at the commencement of the present year, the small-pox, brought from the colony to Pirara, ravaged from thence to the southward, so far as these poor people. Their belief in the secret influences of the Kanaima, who has only to breathe upon his victim in anger to send him to an untimely grave, operates as banefully as that species of witchcraft called Obiah, practised among negroes, which, acting upon their superstitious fears, is frequently attended with disease and death. Nor is it the Atorais and Taurais alone whose rapid extinction is thus going forward; similar causes are operating over the whole Indian population of the colony. The village of Wapisiana Indians called Eischalli Tuna, from which I started in 1837, is no longer in existence, and of its then inhabitants only one female and three children are now alive. Many of my former acquaintances among the Taruma Indians are now buried, and I have already alluded to the rapid decrease of the Macusis. But the most affecting picture that now presented itself among the many Indians assembled around us, was Miaha, the last remnant of the once powerful tribe of Amaripas. Singled out by destiny to be the sole survivor of a nation, she wanders among the living. Parents, brothers, sisters, husband, children, friends, and acquaintances are all gone down to the silent grave; she alone still lingering, as the last memorial of her tribe, soon to be numbered, judging by her faltering voice and tottering steps, with those of whom tradition alone will record that such a tribe existed. Alas! a similar fate awaits other tribes; they will disappear from those parts of the earth on which Makunaima, the Good Spirit,

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