CORAL REEFS. 373 



and possibly not less important to the future destinies of 

 mankind. 



During Captain Blackwood's survey of the Great Eeef 

 Channel and the rivers entering it, there was frequent com- 

 munication with native tribes, which Mr. Jukes relates in 

 some detail. Though certain peculiarities of usage are 

 noticed, we find nothing in these relations which differs 

 materially from the description familiar to us in the narratives 

 of former travellers, regarding their intercourse with this 

 people. They seem, as here described, to be a tall and ath- 

 letic race, active and bold in their demeanour and habits ; 

 with an occasional fierceness of temper, of which a melancholy 

 proof occurred in the death of one of the seamen of the ex- 

 pedition, struck by a native spear. In describing the feelings 

 excited by this event among the others of the party (making 

 them reluctant to leave the coast without some opportunity 

 of revenging their comrade's death) our author explains 

 the source of many of those unhappy atrocities which still 

 occasionally deface our intercourse with the native Austra- 

 lians, despite the higher and better views now governing our 

 colonial system. On the outskirts of the settlements such 

 occurrences have always been more frequent, from obvious 

 causes in the character and habits both of the white and 

 native border population. And we cannot but fear that the 

 spread of colonisation in the N.E. portion of Australia 

 certain eventually to occur may involve a repetition of 

 such calamities, seeing the masculine character of many of 

 the native tribes on this part of the coast. Time will in 

 the end put a stop to all these things ; but it can happen 

 only through that extinction of the native population, 

 which, by a strange and sad destiny the ineluctabile fatum 

 of what we call savage life seems always to occur sooner 

 or later where Europeans have trodden upon new lands thus 

 primitively peopled. 



