THE DA WN OF MINI). 143 



let him begin with a cruise in the Malay Archipelago 

 or in the Coral Seas of the Southern Pacific. lie may 

 find himself there even yet on spots on which no 

 white foot has ever trod, on islands where unknown 

 races have worked out their destiny for untold cent- 

 uries, whose teeming peoples have no name, and 

 whose habits and mode of life are only known to the 

 outer world through a ship's telescope. As he coasts 

 along, he will see the dusky figures steal like shades 

 among the trees, or hurry past in their bark canoes, 

 or crouch in fear upon the coral sand. lie can watch 

 them gather the bread-fruit from the tree and pull 

 the cocoa-nut from the palm and root out the taro 

 for a meal which, all the year round and all the 

 centuries through, has never changed. In an hour 

 or two he can compass almost the whole round of 

 their simple life, and realize the gulf between himself 

 and them in at least one way in the utter im- 

 possibility of framing to himself an image of the 

 mental world of men and women whose only world 

 is this. 



Let him pass on to the coast of Northern Queens- 

 land, and, landing where fear of the white man makes 

 landing possible, penetrate the Australian bush. 

 Though the settlements of the European have been 

 there for a generation, he will find the child of 

 Nature still untouched, and neither by intercourse 

 nor imitation removed by one degree from the lowest 

 savage state. These aboriginal peoples know neither 

 house nor home. They neither sow nor reap. Their 

 weapons are those of Nature, a pointed stick 

 and a knotted club. They live like wild things on 

 roots and berries and birds and wallabies, and 



