Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/10



this age of enlightened progression and scientific explorations, it is singular that ethnologists have permitted such a fruitful field for research as the colony of Victoria offers, to remain so long unutilised. In this, as in all the other settled sections of Australia, the aborigines are rapidly vanishing from off the face of the land, and although little more than fifty years have passed since the waters of the Yarra were first stirred from their normal placidity by the white man's oar, there is scarcely a single primitive inhabitant, or the descendant of one, to be met with, near any of the metropolitan centres; and ere another cycle has been added to the one now passing away, this primitive race will be extinct, as is that of the Moa—that is to say, unless some prompt remedial measures be adopted, other than those which have hitherto been obtained for their conservation.