Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/35

I throwing-stick, the boomerang, and a variety of clubs which serve either at close quarters or as missiles, and for defence they have the shield. Their canoes are far in advance of the raft or the bundle of bark of the Tasmanians, and are able if necessary to cross narrow arms of the sea under circumstances where the latter would have been destroyed.

Their stone implements are either ground to an edge or fashioned by chipping, as among tribes living where material for the ground and polished type of hatchet is not procurable. But even in such cases these are obtained by barter from other tribes.

The Australians may therefore be classed as representing hunting tribes of the Neolithic age.

Some of the writers whose opinions I have quoted have either stated in so many words, or have left it to be inferred by their statements, that the Tasmanians reached this continent by canoe or ship.

But there is not a tittle of evidence in support of the belief that the Tasmanians ever were acquainted with the art of constructing a canoe able to cross such a sea strait as that between Tasmania and Australia, much less wider extents of ocean. On the contrary, the whole of their culture was on a par with the rudeness of their bark rafts.

I have long since come to the conclusion that one of the fundamental principles to be adopted in discussing the origin of those savages must be, that they reached Tasmania at a time when there was a land communication between it and Australia.

It is only in the work of Professor Giglioli that I have found this clearly shown, where he says that there is no instance recorded of a people who have lost the art of navigation which they had once acquired.

The Australians have also been credited by most authors with arriving in canoes or ships on the coasts of Australia.

But I am quite unable to understand how, since these authors picture them as settling down upon and then spreading along the coasts, they should have lost the art of constructing sea-going canoes, which would be as necessary