42 On the Condition and Prospects 



and to the voice of the remaining few : — " Leave us to our habits 

 and customs ; do not embitter the days which are in store for us, 

 by constraining us to obey yours ; nor reproach us with apathy to 

 that civilisation which is not destined for us." 



11. General Review. 



Regard the Aboriginal Australian, as he now appears, surrounded 

 by civilised man. Behold him a wandering outcast ; existing, ap- 

 parently, without motives and without objects ; a burden to himself, 

 a useless cumberer of the ground ! Does he not seem pre-eminently 

 a special mystery in the designs of Providence, an excrescence, as 

 it were, upon the smooth face of nature, which is excused and abated 

 only by the resistless haste with which he disappears from the land 

 of his forefathers ? Barbarous, unreflecting, and superstitious, how 

 strangely contrasted is an object so obnoxious and so useless, with 

 the brightness of a southern sky, and the pastoral beauty of an Aus- 

 tralian landscape. 



Such are the reflections that will naturally occupy the mind of 

 the passing observer, after a cursory glance at the wandering tribes 

 of Australia. But the arrangements of Providence for the benefit 

 of the great and varied family of mankind, should not be studied 

 in accordance with one uniform standard of customs and institu- 

 tions. The instinctive and mental faculties peculiar to each race, 

 though widely different one from another, may yet exist in perfect 

 accordance with the circumstances by which each is surrounded. 

 To the philosophic traveller who beholds the Aboriginal native in 

 his yet uninvaded haunts, and remarks his health, his cheerfulness, 

 his content, his freedom from anxieties and cares, few spectacles can 

 be more gratifying •* and he readily admits that the broad and beaten 

 tract of civilisation is by no means the only road which the Creator 

 has left open to man for the attainment of happiness. 



These mutual relations have been destroyed by the approach of 

 civilised man. In his irresistible progress he has either driven off 

 the Aboriginal tribes, or subdued their native spirit, and subverted 

 their social polity. Their peculiar habits and ideas, the result of 

 physical and psycological laws operating throughout many successive 

 generations, are permanently engrafted in their constitution, and are 

 not to be eradicated without the long continued use of counteracting 

 moral and physical appliances, involving a far greater lapse of time 

 than is usually considered necessary in the estimate of the philan- 

 thropist or the missionary. 



Deeply feeling the alien occupation of their country, yet their 

 savage arts are utterly powerless against the arms and authority of 



* Strzelecki, pp. 338, 342, 343, where he describes the real enjoyment of 

 existence among the Aborigines after their own fashon — now moving about, 

 hunting, fishing, with occasional war, alternated by feasting, and lounging on 

 the spots best adapted to repose. 



