" And make ye marriages 



with us and give your daughters 



us and take our daughters 



; unto you and ye shall dwell wit 



Had this overture not mis 



.carried, two families might have 



gan.ated and become " o] 



ae people " as was proposed, emb 



cross-marriages would have begun by compact not by capture, and 

 subsequent historians or ethnologists might have accounted for 

 the rise of the classes by a supernatural wisdom like that which 

 characterizes the Murdoo legend. 



Messrs. Fison and Howitt obliterate the Australian individual 

 in the distant past, regarding him as merged in his class. The 

 class is an entity of which one person is only a fragment and all 

 the members of a class have marital rights over all the members 

 of the class or classes with which they may intermarry. This is 

 the hypothesis founded upon an incomplete induction from several 

 practices now extant. It is impossible hereto traverse the whole 

 question, but having carefully weighed the arguments in favour of 

 group marriage while admitting that there is a good deal in them 

 to point to it, I fail to see that communal marriage has been proven 

 to exist in the past and it certainly does not occur in Australia 

 now, on the contrary, tlie conclusion contains much more than 

 there is in the premises. A good deal of weight is attached by 

 Mr. Fison to the story of Mr. Bridgeman's native servant, who 

 boasted that in going a journey of a thousand miles he could get 

 a wife every night all along his route. To most Australian bush- 

 men, who are well aware that when a blackfellow crosses the 

 boundary line of his own territory he takes his life in his hand, 

 unless he be on special business for his tribe or under the protec- 

 will 



story c 



3 the scrupulously fenced 



group-marnage, 



iiong the Kabi, and so fir is T know not hitherto ob^ened else- 

 Australia, \\hi(h m IV lie used to suppoit the theor)- of 

 ■"■■ ^ 1 itlie. nidicate the assertion of a right 



powerful passion with iiio>,t \ 



