THE ABORIGINES AND THEIR TREATMENT 219 



tectors, has given his opinion that fully one-half of the tribes 

 inhabiting the Counties of Bourke, Evelyn and Mornington perished 

 in fighting the Gipps Land and Omeo natives, about the time of 

 the first settlement His information was, of course, to a large 

 extent legendary, and it is more than probable that the natives 

 exaggerated the fatalities. 



The universal practice of infanticide was yet another factor. 

 All children who were deformed, or in any way physically imperfect, 

 were promptly destroyed ; and a very large number of children 

 were deliberately killed, with the formal sanction of the tribe, if the 

 surroundings indicated that they were likely to be a burden upon 

 the means of subsistence. Such drastic measures necessarily re- 

 tarded increase, and when the diseases introduced by the white 

 man began to take effect the rate of decadence soon became very 

 pronounced. 



Native traditions and the experience of the earlier settlers 

 combine to confirm the belief that prior to the arrival of Europeans 

 the aborigines were a typically healthy people, hardy and long 

 lived. That their vitality was strong is evidenced by the rapidity 

 with which they recovered from wounds that would have been fatal 

 to a white man. It was like a reversion to the age of miracles to 

 see a man with a skull fractured like a broken cocoa-nut recovering 

 his senses without trephining or any other attention : or another 

 walking about for days with the point of a spear head, which had 

 passed through his body, protruding from his breast, calmly wait- 

 ing until suppuration should have sufficiently broken down the 

 surrounding tissues to render its extraction easy. And such cases 

 are recorded on undeniable authority. 



In their normal condition the natives had, of course, in common 

 with all mankind, some of the ills to which the flesh is heir, but 

 apparently they did not suffer from those forms of epidemic disease 

 which kill off large numbers. Dysentery, inflammation of the 

 bowels and hydatid tumours were common complaints, aggravated 

 by, if not due to, the gorging voracity with which they compensated 

 their appetites for periods of enforced abstinence, and by their 

 indifference to the presence of dirt in their cooking, or of disease in 

 the viands. Ophthalmia was very common in the northern districts 



