many; the other is to absolute irreligion, leading them to live entirely without a God and without a religion : and the more spiritual the system of theology and worship under which mankind are placed, the more strongly will the latter of these tendencies be developed.

It appears to me, therefore, that the absence of everything like a religion among the Papuan Aborigines of Australia is a strong presumptive evidence of the extreme antiquity of the race. Had the forefathers of that race not been cut off from the rest of mankind, by their own successive and distant migrations towards the east, before the invention of idols or of any other visible objects of worship, the probability is that they would have carried these idols along with them, and continued to worship them to the present day, "on every high hill and under every green tree." But they simply "forgat God," and lived thenceforth "without God in the world." And the consequence of this forgetfulness of God, combined with their gradual isolation from the rest of mankind, in circumstances that rendered their wide dispersion and their abandonment of everything like the habits of civilization a matter of necessity, as in Australia, was their sinking gradually into their present abject condition of intellectual and moral debasement.

I infer, therefore, from the absence of everything like idolatry, in any of its numerous forms and phases, among the Papuan Aborigines of Australia, in conjunction with the other moral phenomena observable in that singular race, that they were originally a branch of the family of Cuth or Cush, which emigrated to the eastward, from the first settlements of the human race after the deluge, in the very infancy of the postdiluvian world; but not until the peculiar practices and superstitions of the antediluvians in regard to the dead had been revived generally in that family.*

* Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, in his Key to the Apostolical Writings, with a Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle to the Romans, observes, "That in about four hundred years after the flood, the

It is evident from the superstitious practices of the natives already related, that they have some vague and indistinct idea that death is not an entire extinction of our being; and since white men have come among them, they generally allege that after death they go to England and become white men. The origin of this idea, however, is so very obvious, as originating in their mode of disposing of the dead, that but little importance can be attached to it as a cue to the ideas they entertained on the subject previous to their knowledge of the existence of Europeans. In their lamentations over the dead they frequently exclaim, in a melancholy strain-Wounah? Wounah? Where is he? Where is he? And it is evident they imagine that the individual comes in contact with other deceased natives in "the land o' the leal." To these deceased natives also they ascribe the power of exerting a malignant influence of some kind, of which they are greatly afraid.

There are certain traditions among the Aborigines that appear to me to have somewhat of an Asiatic character and aspect. Buddai, or as it is pronounced by the Aborigines towards the mountains in the Moreton Bay district, Budjah, (quasi Buddha,) they regard as the common ancestor of their race, and describe as an old man of great stature, who has been lying asleep for ages, with his head leaning on one arm, and the arm buried deep in the sand. A long time ago Buddai awoke and got up, and the whole country was overflowed with water; and when he awakes and gets up again, he will devour all the black men..

Now this tradition is so remarkably similar to the following, quoted by Bryant, that one is almost necessitated to refer them to a common origin :

"Two temples are taken notice of by Hamelton, near Syrian in Pegu, which he represents as so like in structure, that they

generality of mankind were fallen into idolatry." In all likelihood the Cushite emigration, which gave birth to the Papuan race, and eventually peopled the multitude of the isles, took place during this interval, previous to the death of Noah, who lived four hundred and fifty years after the flood.

seem to be built by the same model. One stood about six miles to the southwards, and was called Kiackiack, or the God of God's Temple. The image of the deity was in a sleeping posture, and sixty feet in length, and was imagined to have lain in that state of repose six thousand years. When he awakes, it is said, the world will be annihilated. As soon as Kiackiack has dissolved the frame and being of the world, Dagon, or Dagun, (the deity of the other temple) will gather up the fragments, and make a new one.

Bryant considers this Eastern tradition to be a remnant of the tradition of the deluge-Dagon being Noah. It is remarkably similar, at all events, to the tradition of the Aborigines of Australia, which is prevalent also among those of the Wellington District; Buddai being there called Piame. Mr. Bryant adds:

"In the account of Sha Rokh's embassy to Cathai, mention is made of a city, Kam-ju; and of a temple whose dimensions were very large. The author says that each side was 500 kes or cubits. In the middle lay an idol, as if it were asleep, which was fifty feet in length. Its hands and feet were three yards long, and the head twenty-one feet in circumference. This great image was gilt all over, and held one hand under its head, and the other was stretched along down its thigh."+

When an eclipse of the moon takes place, the natives think it portends calamity to some distant relative, and make a doleful lamentation. When they rob a wild bees' hive, they generally leave a little of the honey for Buddai. They have no sacred animals; but the coastnatives have a great respect for porpoises, and will not suffer them to be killed, as they are very serviceable to them in driving the fish into shallows, where they take them in their scoop-nets. They have ideas of right and wrong, and know very well that it is wrong to steal, and right for the thief to be punished. And when a white man has been murdered in any vicinity, all the black-fellows in the neighbourhood move off to a different part of the country till they think the murder forgotten.

I am well aware of the imperfections of the preceding attempt to throw some light on so dark and diffi

* New System, &c., by Jacob Bryant, Esq., vol. v. p. 233. + Bryant, ubi supra, p. 246.

cult a subject as the origin and migrations of the Papuan race. Our means of information are as yet too limited to enable us to arrive at satisfactory conclusions on several of the most important of the points discussed in this essay it is to be hoped, however, that some further light may shortly be thrown upon these points, chiefly in regard to the general condition, and the manners, customs, languages, and traditions of the Aborigines of the northern coasts of New Holland, and of the inhabitants of New Guinea, through the proposed establishment of another Penal Colony towards Cape York. The northern coast, towards its eastern extremity, was, in all probability, the first part of that vast Continental Island that was occupied by the Aborigines of Australia, and New Guinea was, in all likelihood, their mother-country. But the latter of these islands, although twelve hundred miles long, and of proportionate breadth, and inhabited by a comparatively dense population, by no means in a state of absolute barbarism-if we can place any reliance on the occasional reports of the South Sea Whalers-is still a terra incognita to Europeans. It is earnestly to be de sired that this reproach to civilization may speedily be wiped away; for if there is any part of that vast portion of the earth's surface which the Papuan race has at one time traversed and occupied exclusively, in which it is likely to have preserved any remains of its ancient civilization, or in which any rational and Christian effort for its intellectual and moral improvement is likely to be successful, it is unquestionably in that large and comparatively fertile isle.

CHAPTER XI.

THE GERMAN MISSION TO THE ABORIGINES AT MORETON BAY.

How shall we tame thee, man of blood?

How shall thy wild Antarctic isle,

Won by philanthropy to God,

With British arts and science smile?

How shall Australia's sons embrace
The habits of a happier race?

"Let agriculture tame the soil,"
Such is the learned sage's creed;
"Let craftsmen ply their useful toil
Along the Richmond and the Tweed;
So shall Australia's sons embrace
The habits of a happier race."
Wisdom, thy name is folly here!

The savage laughs thy plans to scorn.
Each lake supplies him dainty cheer;]
He sates his hunger with the fern,
And contemplates with proud disdain
Thy furrow'd fields and yellow grain.
"Go, preach the Gospel," Christ commands;
And when he spake the sov'reign word,
Australia's dark and savage lands

Lay all outstretch'd before their Lord;
He saw them far across the sea,

Even from the hills of Galilee.

Yes! "Preach the Gospel," Christ commands,

"To every soul, the world around;

In barbarous, as in learned lands,

Still let the Gospel trumpet sound,

Till every dark and savage isle

In Eden's primal beauty smile."

THE only important question that remains for consideration, in regard to the Papuan race, particularly