Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/143

 marrying within a prohibited section. Can popes or kings allege an equal conformity to their codes?

The aborigines of Tasmania have been a stumbling-block to theorists. Their coarse, short hair differed from that of Australians; they had neither the marvellous boomerang nor the forceful wommerah: and yet unless they could be proved to have migrated from Australia, it seemed necessary to admit that they sprang from Tasmanian soil, and such an evolution seemed to imply that every island could generate its own race; in which case so many independent races and languages ought to have existed as would have defied computation, and were clearly incompatible with the proofs furnished by comparative philology. One learned writer surmised that the Tasmanians sailed or rowed round the continent; another rejected the theory because the skill in navigation required for such a feat could not have been subsequently lost. Others have deduced them from the Africans, and supposed that at one time land extended, and man roamed, from Australia to Madagascar.

Yet, different as to stature and hair, the islanders were in some points like the Australians. Like them they raised cicatrices to adorn their bodies. Like them they venerated stones of rock-crystal; like them they initiated young men in tribal mysteries; like them at those mysteries they used among other symbols which women and children might not see, an oblong piece of wood which, swung by a string in swift circles, caused a booming sound. At those mysteries also, on island and continent, there were observances which might seem derived from the Dionysiac orgies which had their counterpart in Hindostan, as well as among the islands of the Pacific, but were screened from the public gaze in Australia. Australian and Tasmanian men at their dances, by simultaneous hissing and rapid vibration of the lips, made a fierce sound, quite unlike the quivering roar produced by the Maoris in their war-dance.

There was no wild dog in Tasmania, but his presence on the mainland was easy to account for on the supposition that the wandering Malays, who frequented the northern coasts for many centuries, had left dogs on shore. On the other hand, the Thylacinus cynocephalus and the Sarcophilus ursinus, though both marsupial, were not found on the