102 HOEATIO HALE ON LANGUAGE 



sentatives of primeval man, prove to be the oflTspriug of one of the most highly endowed 

 races of Southern Asia. Their present low condition — in which, however, the degrada- 

 tion is more apparent than real — is simply the result of hard surroundings, against which, 

 in their situation, the greatest force of intellect could not successfully contend. Their 

 history has exactly reversed that of the Tinneh tribes. The latter, a naturally intelligent 

 race, depressed to seeming stupidity in the frozen north, develop speedily in the sunny 

 and fertile south iuto the quick-witted Hupas aad Nava,jos. The intelligent and versatile 

 Dravidian emigrants, scattered over the sterile plains of Australia, without domestic ani- 

 mals and with no plants fit for cultivation, sink into a mental torpor almost though not 

 quite as deep as that of the northern Tinneh. In both cases the intellectual faculties, 

 though held in restraint by the harsh environment, remain merely torpid and not seri- 

 ously weakened, as is shown by the clear evidence of the languages which they speak, 

 and by the remarkable proficiency evinced by some of their children at school, as already 

 noted.' 



There is, as has been stated, good reason for supposing that the Southern Tinneh 

 have not occupied their present abodes much more than seven hundred years, and some 

 of them not more than five hundred years. It would be a matter of interest to determine, 

 if possible, how long the Dravidian colonists have occupied Australia. There is always 

 a disposition to imagine that the so-called aborigines who are found inhabiting any ter- 

 ritory have possessed it from a very remote period. Less than fifty years ago the Poly- 

 nesian islanders were supposed by some ethnologists of high rank, including an authority 

 no less distinguished than Broca, to be the remnants of the population of a vast continent, 

 which in some former geological era had sunk beneath the waters of the Pacific, leaving 

 only its mountain tops and loftier plateaux, from Hawaii to New Zealand, to be the 

 refuges of the few survivors of its population. It is now admitted on all hands, through 

 the ample proofs furnished by tradition and language, that the islanders are the offspring 

 of comparatively recent emigrations from the Malaisiau archipelago, the earliest arrival 

 from that quarter dating not much more than two thousand years back ; and several of 

 the islands, notably New Zealand and Easter Island, having been peopled within the last 

 five hundred years." 



Not much, perhaps, is to be learned from the legends of the wandering Australians. 

 Yet their traditions seem to show that their ancestors entered the island by way of the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria, and spread first southward along the eastern coast, and thence 

 inland, along the rivers and across the arid plains, to the western coast. They found, it 



' While the proof-sheets of this essay are under correction, V Anthropologie, the valuable periodical of MM. 

 Cartaillac, Hamy and Topinard, in ils number for December, 1891, brings us an important piece of evidence, show- 

 ing how promptly and strongly the natural intelligence of these members of the Dravidian stock manifests itself, 

 with merely the advantages of good instruction and a settled life: — "There are few persons, even among those 

 who deny all aptitude for intellectual progress to the black races, who are aware of the existence of a native settle- 

 ment of Western Australians, called New Nur.sia, situated about seventy miles from the town of Perth, the capital 

 of West Australia. This settlement, established in 1846 by two Spanish Benedictines, Fathers Serra and Salvado, 

 comprises at present a convent, a church, a school, and a village of fifty cabins, occupied by native Christians, 

 employed in agriculture and in various trade?. One of the young girls educated in the settlement now liold.s an 

 office in the postal and telegraph service of the West Australian Government. The boys develop well; they com- 

 prehend quickly what they are taught, and become good workmen, as capable as tlie ivhites." 



^ See " Les Polynésiens et leurs Migrations," Ijy A. de Quatrefages, and Peschel's " Baces of Man," American 

 edit, p. 349. 



