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EFFECTS OF CONTACT 
fate of almost every uncivilized people, whose 
country has been colonized by Europeans. In 
Sydney, which is the longest established of all 
our possessions in New Holland, it is believed 
that not a single native of the original tribes 
belonging to Port Jackson is now left alive.* 
Advancing from thence towards the interior a mi- 
serable family or twx> may be met with, then a few 
detached groups of half-starved wretches, dependant 
upon what they can procure by begging for their daily 
sustenance. Still further, the scattered and diseased 
remnants, f of once powerful, but now decayed tribes 
* “ In the first year of the settlement of New South Wales, 
1788, Governor Phillip caused the amount of the population of 
Port Jackson to be ascertained, by every cove in it being visited 
by different inspectors at the same time. The number of natives 
found in this single harbour was 130, and they had 67 boats. 
At the same time it was known that many were in the woods 
making new canoes. Prom this and other data, Governor Phillip 
estimated the population between Botany Bay and Broken Bay 
inclusive, at 1500.” — Aboriginal Protection Society’s Report, 
May 1839, p. 13. 
In Report of the same Society for July 1839, page 71, Mr. 
Threlkeld says — “Of one large tribe in the interior four years 
ago there were 164 persons — there are now only three indivi- 
duals alive ! !” 
t “The whole eastern country, once thickly peopled, may now 
be said to be entirely abandoned to the whites, with the excep- 
tion of some scattered families in one part, and of a few straggling 
individuals in another ; and these once so high spirited, so jealous 
of their independence and liberty, no w treated with contempt 
and ridicule even by the lowest of the Europeans ; degraded, sub- 
