7698 Notices of New Books. 



gone." — (p. 186). Every paragraph tells the same tale, that the mi' 

 settled parts of Australia teem with the most nutritious and wholesome 

 food for man. Here then should be the trust of the explorer ; it argues 

 simply a lack of common sense for a man to encumber himself with 

 provisions, and thus impede his onward progress, when the gun, if 

 even one of the party understood its use, would provision the expe- 

 dition day by day. 



And now let me invite the attention of our philanthropists at home 

 to the state of the Australian native. I will place our author's obser- 

 vations, without note or comment, before my reader, hoping they may 

 attract the attention of some member of some Aborigines' Protection 

 Society, and at least elicit a sigh, if nothing more, for the fate of those 

 human beings whom nominal Christians are harrying to an untimely 

 grave. 



" Of the Australian aborigines I have but little to say. They are a 

 race fast passing away, and the few that we do meet with now about 

 Melbourne — in fact in all the settled districts — are very different men 

 from the real Australian native of the last century. There are only two 

 tribes now in the vicinity of Melbourne, and these are but remnants of 

 what they were when we first took possession of their country. The 

 Yarra Blacks, who camp about the ranges at the head oftheYarra, 

 north-east of Melbourne, and the Bomerang or coast tribe, whose head 

 station is at Mordialloc, and who own — if we can use that term now we 

 have dispossessed them of all their land — the country to the southward 

 down to the heads. These, by constant intercouse with the white man, 

 have learnt much of our language and habits, are on capital terms 

 with us, and there is no more danger in meeting a lot of them in the 

 bush than a gang of gipseys at home. The Gipps land tribe seems to 

 be the most numerous in this part of Port Phillip, and these men seem 

 to be wilder and more ferocious than any I have seen. Wherever 

 Government has taken up their land a Black's reserve of, I believe, a 

 square mile is left, and blankets and rations, provided by Government, 

 are served out to them by the master of the station nearest to their 

 reserve. There is also a protector, or kind of magistrate, appointed 

 to look after their worldly interests, but no one seems to trouble him- 

 self about giving them any religious instruction. It is not within my 

 province to offer any opinion as to whether or not it is our duty to do 

 so, after, as it were, adopting them. There is a great cry at home 

 about sending missionaries into foreign parts of which we know but 

 little, and yet here we have tribes of savage heathens wandering about 

 among Christians, in the close vicinity of a large city in a rising colony, 



