450 THE NATIVE TRIBES OF POLYNESIA. 



assuredly more profound and lasting. I can say now, with the most 

 complete satisfaction, that during the several years in which I have 

 been brought into communication with native races — men and women 

 whom the world calls savages — I have never experienced from them 

 one act of enmity or ill-will, nor any display of feeling which would 

 prevent me from going again among any of the Polynesian tribes with 

 a sense of the most perfect security. 



It is quite true that we hear from time to time of horrible massacres 

 and cruelties perpetrated by Australian natives upon the families of 

 settlers in the far interior. These reports are perfectly correct. But 

 I have had favorable opportunities many times of enquiring into them, 

 and I am quite confident that native attacks upon European settle- 

 ments have never been made without provocation first offered by the 

 colonists. The ill-treatment which the natives are called upon to sub- 

 mit to is oftentimes simply horrible. In Queensland, at this moment, 

 they are being slaughtered indiscriminately and with the most dis- 

 graceful cruelty under the sanction of the government. And although 

 the Australians will endure a great deal and are not easily roused, yet 

 it is unreasonable to suppose that they will bear all kind of oppression 

 with impunity. When they take the resolve, they resent an injury 

 with all the unsparing cruelty of a barbarous race — heedless of age, 

 sex, or innocence — every thing but color. It suiEces them to know 

 that a white man is their mortal enemy; not he alone pays the penalty, 

 but his family, his household, his property, all suffer for the offence. 



It has been supposed by many that no tribes of mankind have been 

 found who were without religion of some kind. But a German mis- 

 sionary who went among the Australians many years ago, said that 

 they had no idea whatever of a supreme being. Mr. Parkes, a member 

 of the New South Wales Legislature, who is also a good authority, 

 draws attention to the fact that there is no word in their language for 

 either justice or sin ; and Dr._,Lang, than whom no one perhaps has 

 had better opportunities for arriving at the truth, although it must be 

 added that his judgments are sometimes prejudiced, said that not only 

 had they no idea of a supreme divinity, " but they had no object of 

 worship, no idols, nor temples, nor sacrifices ; nothing whatever in the 

 •shape of religion to distinguish them from the beasts." I have 

 examined this question with some care and I must say with the same 

 result. I have not succeeded in meeting with any Australian who had 

 a religion, in the strict meaning of the word. They have no belief m 



