316 NEW SOUTH WALES. [CHAP. xix. 



set of harmless savages wandering about without knowing where they 

 shall sleep at night, and gaining their livelihood by hunting in the 

 woods. As the white man has travelled onwards, he has spread over 

 the country belonging to several tribes. These, although thus enclosed 

 by one common people, keep up their ancient distinctions, and some- 

 times go to war with each other. In an engagement which took place 

 lately, the two parties most singularly chose the centre of the village 

 of Bathurst for the field of battle. This was of service to the defeated 

 side, for the runaway warriors took refuge in the barracks. 



The number of aborigines is rapidly decreasing. In my whole ride, 

 with the exception of some boys brought up by Englishmen, I saw 

 only one other party. This decrease, no doubt, must be partly owing 

 to the introduction of spirits, to European diseases (even the milder 

 ones of which, such as measles,* prove very destructive), and to the 

 gradual extinction of the wild animals. It is said that numbers of their 

 children invariably perish in very early infancy from the effects of 

 their wandering life ; and as the difficulty of procuring food increases, 

 so must their wandering habits increase ; and hence the population, 

 without any apparent deaths from famine, is repressed in a manner 

 extremely sudden compared to what happens in civilized countries, 

 where the father, though in adding to his labour he may injure himself, 

 does not destroy his offspring. 



Besides these several evident causes of destruction, there appears to 

 be some more mysterious agency generally at work. Wherever the 

 European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal. We may 

 look to the wide extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good 

 Hope, and Australia, and we find the same result. Nor is it the white 

 man alone that thus acts the destroyer; the Polynesian of Malay 

 extraction has in parts of the East Indian Archipelago, thus driven 

 before him the dark-coloured native. The varieties of man seem to 

 act on each other in the same way as different species of animals the 

 stronger always extirpating the weaker. It was melancholy at New 

 Zealand to hear the fine energetic natives saying, that they knew the 

 land was doomed to pass from their children. Every one has heard of 

 the inexplicable reduction of the population in the beautiful and healthy 

 island of Tahiti since the date of Captain Cook's voyages : although in 

 that case we might have expected that it would have been increased ; 

 for infanticide, which formerly prevailed to so extraordinary a degree, 

 has ceased, profligacy has greatly diminished, and the murderous wars 

 become less frequent. 



The Rev. J. Williams, in his interesting work.t says, that the first 

 intercourse between natives, and Europeans, " is invariably attended with 



* It is remarkable how the same disease is modified in different climates 

 At the little island of St. Helena, the introduction of scarlet-fever is dreaded 

 as a plague. In some countries, foreigners and natives are as differently 

 affected by certain contagious disorders, as if they had been different 

 animals ; of which fact some instances have occurred in Chile ; and, accord- 

 ing to Humboldt, in Mexico. (" Polit. Essay," New Spain, vol. iv.) 



f "Narrative of Missionary Enterprise," p. 282. 



