1836.] DECREASE OF THE ABORIGINES. 417 



their remarks which manifested considerable acuteness. They will 

 not, however, cultivate the ground, or build houses and remain 

 stationary, or even take the trouble of tending a flock of sheep 

 when given to them. On the whole they appear to me to stand 

 some few degrees higher in the scale of civilization than the 

 Fuegians. 



It is very curious thus to see iu the midst of a civilized people, 

 a 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 sometimes 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 the 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 

 difficx;lty 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 w r hat 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 



* 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, according to Humboldt, in Mexico (Polit. Essay, New Spain, vol. iv.). 



2 E 



