Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/108

 borne by wind and current from Sumbawa, Timor, or the Coral Sea. Thus also, by repeated additions of fresh families, would the language and physical appearance of the Australians be modified; but the structure of the language in New Guinea differed so essentially, in the use of prefixes, from the suffix forms of Australia, as to show that it was not by the Papuan race that Australia was peopled. More than one race has, however, been ascertained to exist in New Guinea.

The time is passing away in which observers can see the Australian natives as they were "when wild in woods the noble savage ran." It is interesting, therefore, to record the testimony of Dr. Pickering, a member of a scientific expedition fitted out by the United States of America. He reduced the remarkable races of mankind to eleven, of which the Australian was one.

After "surveying mankind from China to Peru," he wrote—"Strange as it may appear, I would refer to an Australian as the finest model of the human proportions I have ever met with; in muscular development combining perfect symmetry, activity, and strength, while his head might have compared with the antique bust of a philosopher."

To many who have lived for years in Australia such a statement would still seem strange, for there are hundreds of thousands of colonists to whom the disinherited race is known only by report, or by the sight of a ragged, despised lingerer asking, in the gibberish which has been taught him as English, for a coin which he may spend upon drink to rouse some animal excitement within him. But when the tribe was counted by hundreds, when with lordly port the warriors strode through the woods, unawed and undecimated by firearms, Dr. Pickering's description as regards the physical frame and development of the finest Australians might, except as to their countenances, often be thought true, so graceful in symmetry, so hardened by exercise and activity were the forms of many. As a rule, however, the muscular development of the legs was deficient.