Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/93

Rh gipsy encampment in one corner, not aristocratic gipsies with vans, but dirty little round tents like those that were formerly dotted about the banks of the Thames, near London, in haymaking time, but which have vanished before a too inquisitorial County Council.

This was the native camp we had come to see; it had been a camping-ground for the blacks from time immemorial, and the present owner of the estate leaves it free to those, whose camping-ground was formerly the whole vast continent. There are not very many natives in Australia now; it is supposed by some that they were never very numerous, that the struggle for existence on those arid plains and waterless hills was too severe for these hardy nomads. Be that as it may, they are dwindling, and in contact with the whites they lose the primitive virtues they possess. The natives we saw at the camping-ground near Perth certainly did not appear to have primitive, or any other virtues. They were, it is true, principally half-breeds, and whether regarded from the physiological or moral point of view, they were a depressing spectacle. They were provided with Government blankets, instead of kangaroo skins, and some form of a mission was singing hymns for their edification; but both men and women were a miserable, degenerate,