INHABITANTS OF AUSTEALIA. 383 



ages particular groups had devoted themselves to some special industry which 

 rendered them necessary to the others. One found within its territory an excellent 

 material for the manufacture of stone hatchets, and thus acquired perfection in that 

 art ; another supplied the best boomerangs, or the finest kangaroo skins, and so on. 



But throughout nearly the whole of the Australian world the history of the 

 aborigines is already a thing of the past. The race itseK is steadily decreasing 

 and dying out. Even the few that still survive are being rapidly transformed by 

 crossings and the adoption of a settled existence. In many districts more than 

 haK of the population has been swept away by the diseases introduced with the 

 Europeans, and especially by small-pox, the invasion of which coincided with the 

 landing of the first convicts at Botany Bay. Besides small-pox, whose ravages were 

 continued down to the year 1840, there are other influences at work, some even 

 within the tribes themselves. Such are the monopoly of the women by the old 

 and rich, infanticide and abortion ; but most of all is the irresistible advance of the 

 European settlers, driving to the background the primitive populations which at 

 first regarded these " white men" as their kinsmen returning from the world of 

 spirits. Thrust back towards the wilderness the natives find themselves deprived 

 of their rich hunting-grounds, and many, conscious of the doom pending over 

 them, give up the struggle for existence, and even refuse to perpetuate their race. 

 How could it be otherwise when certain colonial magistrates declare all those to be 

 marauders and poachers who persist in remaining on the territory of their fore- 

 fathers ? 



The very appearance of European cattle is already the death-knell of the 

 aborigines, for this is followed by the extermination or disappearance of the 

 kangaroo, and the native hunters finding no more game are obliged also to retire 

 or perish of hunger. In sixteen months as many as 220,000 kangaroos were 

 killed in the single Queensland district of Warwick. But a war of extermination 

 is waged not only against the native game, but also against the natives themselves. 

 On the borders of many estates, notably in Queensland, which stretches to the 

 confines of the desert, the sheep farms are guarded by mounted police — Australians, 

 Melanesians, or Kafirs — who are instructed to fire on the independent blacks and 

 thus relieve the peaceful squatters from " these troublesome loafers." 



The island of Tasmania has already been completely " cleared " by the 

 systematic destruction of its primitive inhabitants, who were estimated at about 

 seven thousand on the arrival of the whites, and who were said to be of a remark- 

 ably gentle and kindly disposition. On December 28th, 1834, the last survivors, 

 hounded down like wild beasts, were captured at the extremity of a headland, and 

 this event was celebrated as a signal triumph. The successful hunter, Robinson, 

 received a Government reward of 600 acres and a considerable sum of money, 

 besides a public subscription of about £8,000. 



The captives were at first conveyed from islet to islet, and then confined to the 

 number of two hundred in a marshy valley of Flinders Island, washed by the 

 stormy waters of Bass Strait. They were supplied with provisions and some 

 lessons in the catechism ; their community was even quoted as an example of the 



