Page:Admiral Phillip.djvu/87

 promising task of tutoring the native savages, either as a relaxation, or because he really believed that the blacks could be taught to work, and so add to the wealth of his poor territory; for either or both of these reasons, there was nothing in which the first Governor of Australia took a greater, or more intelligent interest.

A great number of people, many of whom have never met him or who have only made his acquaintance through the medium of a bottle of rum, have asserted that the Australian aboriginal belongs to the lowest type of humanity, and his warmest admirers will admit that he is a long way below the American Indian, the African negro, or the Polynesian.

But even in recent times the Australian blacks, as the rank and file in exploring expeditions, as trackers in the police force, or as ordinary day-labourers on cattle and sheep stations, have earned from their masters the best of characters. However, in this book we have no concern with the present day blacks—the civilising process has well nigh got rid of them, and the majority of the few that remain, have either become good Christians, regularly under the missionary influence, or are cheerfully drinking themselves to death.

Phillip's first meeting with the natives was at Botany Bay, and he wrote of them as follows:—

'With respect to the natives, it was my determination from my first landing that nothing less than the