Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/39

Rh the most degraded of the human family, and possessed of inferior intelligence only. But facts quite disprove this idea, and show that they were naturally very intellectual, highly susceptible of culture, and above all, most desirous of receiving instruction, which is fatal to the dogma of their incapacity for civilisation. Reasoning from such facts as that they went perfectly naked, were unacquainted with the simplest arts, were even ignorant of any method of procuring fire, and erroneously thought to have no idea of a Supreme Being or future condition, they were almost held to be the link that connected man with the brutes of the field and forest.

The aboriginal's wants were indeed so few, and the country in which it had pleased the Almighty to place him supplied them all in such lavish abundance that he was not called on for the exercise of much skill or labour in satisfying his requirements. He had no inducement to work, and (like all others who are so situated) he did not very greatly exert himself. Necessity, said to be the parent of invention, was known to him only in a limited degree; and his ingenuity was seldom brought into exercise. His faculties were dormant from the mere bounty of providence. The game of the country and its vegetable productions would have amply supported a native population ten or a dozen times larger than it ever was. Kangaroos, opossums, wombats, birds, shell-fish, were plentiful, far in excess of his wants. Of fruits there are indeed none worthy the name. But in the vast forests of the country are to be found very many vegetables which, though quite disregarded by Europeans, were relished by the savage; and Robinson in one of his letters speaks of his resorting to their practice of using certain edible ferns, which are so abundant in many districts that credulity could hardly believe it. How they prepared them, or what species they used, he does not say. Indeed the subject of their customs and peaceful pursuits does not seem to have been a favourite study of his, and except their practice of lacerating the sick and burning their dead, which he has been at the pains to describe, we gather very little knowledge of their habits from his letters, except from scattered incidental remarks.

His country lying a little north of a line, mid-distant from the pole and equator, the climate of its low-lying lands is necessarily mild and very agreeable, so that bodily covering of any kind, though prized after habituation to it, was easily dispensed with, and the skin of the kangaroo, so fastened over one shoulder as not to impede the free use of the arms, was enough for the female and her infant, the adult male going generally quite naked. That he was ignorant of any artificial means of procuring fire may