Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/31

I conclusion that the Tasmanians were more closely related to the Andaman Islanders than to any other race.

Mr. R. Brough Smyth, in the introduction to his work on The Aborigines of Victoria, published in 1878, says that it is difficult to believe the Tasmanians were scions of the continental tribes, and that if Tasmania was peopled from Australia it was at a time when the latter supported a race that in feature, character, and language was Tasmanian.

As to the Australians, he says that they may have landed from Timor, but that it is doubtful if a canoeful of natives landed anywhere upon the coast of Australia could find subsistence. Yet he speaks of one stream of migration coming from the north-east, one branch of which following the coast southwards ultimately reached Gippsland; of the other which again dividing at the south-eastern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria, one section took a course along the coast westward and southward to Western Australia, and the other followed the course of the rivers that flow southwards into Cooper's Creek and the Darling.

In The Australian Race, published in 1886, Mr. E. M. Curr formulated a theory which may be condensed as follows, leaving those who desire to do so to peruse the reasons which are advanced in its support.

All tribes of Australia are descendants from one source, probably, indeed, from a shipload or canoeful of persons who originally found their way to these shores. According to the agreement between custom and language, they were negroes from Africa. These ancestors of the Australian race landed on the north-west coast many ages back, and their descendants spread themselves over the continent by travelling along the north, west, and east coasts, and also through the interior.

The Rev. John Mathew, who has had opportunities of becoming personally acquainted with many examples of the aborigines, published an elaborate paper on that subject. He