Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/110

105 would most undoubtedly be the case did gradations of rank obtain amongst them, nor do they possess any traditions tending to show that there ever existed a better, or indeed any other, order of architecture than the very primitive style which is now, and, as far as can be ascertained, always has been followed by the whole of the aboriginal tribes of the Australian Continent. They are a people who seem to have come to a standstill in some remote age, and who remain in the same fixed groove, even to the present day, thus positively nullifying the old and accepted axiom, "That which is not moving forwards must necessarily be retrograding."

In the history of the colony so far nothing in the shape of remains have been discovered denoting the former existence of a higher order of men than is seen in the present low type, notwithstanding the wide area of country which has been turned over whilst searching for auriferous deposits. Properly considering this important fact, it is but fair to suppose that these people are descended from a primitive race, and that that race was either a separate creation or a family who, in the long-forgotten past, had been driven away by adverse winds from the coasts of their own country, off which they might have been engaged fishing, when the wind arose which carried them to Australia.

Our inclination certainly tends towards the latter theory, by reason of the stone axes, spear barbs, and kitchen middens of these aborigines being precisely similar to those of the primitive races which flourished in the