of the Aborigines of Australia. 211 



knowledge, minutely observant of transactions, often amazingly 

 shrewd and intelligent, the untutored savage shines with a lustre of 

 his own, which appears in some respects as much superior, as in 

 others it is manifestly inferior in the comparison with the civilised 

 man. The casual observer is perplexed by seeming inconsistencies. 

 But it is here that these two classes of mankind most widely diverge. 

 In answer to a question from the Committee on this subject, the 

 Rev. Mr Schmidt admitted that any high degree of intelligence can- 

 not be communicated to any black in one generation. He regards 

 the aboriginal Australian as the lowest in the scale of the human 

 race that has come under his notice, " They have no idea of a 

 Divine Being ; the impressions which we sometimes thought we had 

 made upon them prove quite transient. Their faculties, especially 

 their memories, are in some respects very good ; but they appear to 

 have no understanding of things they commit to memory- — I mean 

 connected with religion." There is, he continues, either something 

 wanting in their minds that occasions this defect of understanding 

 upon abstract matters, " or it is slumbering so deeply, that nothing 

 but Divine power can awaken it." The testimony of Mr Parker is 

 to a similar effect. The conveyance of truth, says he, to the mind 

 of an Australian savage is attended with formidable, he might al- 

 most say insuperable, difficulties. a What can be done with a 

 people whose language knows no such terms as justice, sin, guilt, 

 &c. ; and to whose minds the -ideas conveyed by such are utterly 

 foreign and inexplicable." 



(To be concluded in next Number.) 



___ — , , j 



On the Geysers of California. 



Professor Forest Shepherd, in a communication published 

 in Silliman's Journal, September 1851, gives an account of 

 some remarkable geysers discovered by him north-west of 

 the Napa Valley, California. Mr Shepherd having noticed, 

 what he conceived to be, a line of thermal action in the Napa 

 Valley, especially near the foot of Mount St Helena, deter- 

 mined to trace it, and find its seat or focus of greatest inten- 

 sity. With this object in view, he travelled, in company with 

 a select party, in a direction north-west of the Napa Valley, 

 and after encamping one or two nights in the rain, and 

 wandering through almost impenetrable thickets, reached the 

 summit of a peak on the morning of the fourth day. The 

 scene presented from this point is described as follows : — 

 " On the north, almost immediately at our feet, there opened 



