168 



varieties — Red Indian, Bushman, Australian, and New 

 Zealander — before the spread of the European. And 

 rapid as this extirpation has been during the last two 

 centuries, it will be greatly accelerated by the new 

 means of intercommunication, the introduction of 

 machinery, and other civilised appliances that mark 

 more especially the progress of the current century. 

 If clothing has already brought disease to the South 

 Sea Islander,* if the social vices of the White man 

 have decimated the Eed, and the cultivation of the 

 wilderness destroyed the buffalo on which he mainly 

 depends, and if neither Indian nor Australian can 

 settle down to habits of peaceful industry ,'f how shall 

 it fare with them when the steam-ship is plying along 



* The South Sea Islanders maintain that colds and conghs were 

 unknown among them till they began to clothe themselves in com- 

 pliance with civilised decoram. 



+ " Maugre some evidence to the contrary," says Captain Bra'ton. 

 in his notes to Marcy's Prairie Traveller, " I still helieve that the 

 North American aborigines, like the Tasmanian and the Australian, 

 is but a temporary denizen of the world, who fails in the iiist 

 struggle vrith nature. He is like a wild animal, to be broken but not 

 to be tamed, as the wolf can be taught to refrain from worrying, 

 but cannot be made to act as a dog. In his wild state the Indian 

 falls before the white man. Settled and civilised, he dies of acute 

 disease. He has virtually disappeared from the wide region east of 

 the Mississippi ; and the same causes, still ceaselessly operating, 

 point to his annihilation when the prairie-lands shall have become 

 the grazing-grouuds of the Western World." 



