Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/111

106  ages. Of course we do not mean to imply that the people from whom these aborigines have descended were driven half way round the globe by adverse winds and currents, until the Australian Continent stayed their further progress. But this we do say, the only arts these Australian aborigines possess, whereby they are enabled to fashion their weapons and other implements, seem to have prevailed in Europe when pre-historic man preyed upon the cave lion, the cave bear, and the woolly rhinoceros; for side by side, with the bones of these primeval artificers, the stone axes, the arrow barbs, and the kitchen middens, have been discovered, thus displaying, if not a decided affinity, a marked similarity, in the long-extinct pre-historic races of Europe, to the existing aboriginal races of Australia; but whether the Australians are actually remnants of the same creation to which the extinct races of Europe belonged, or not, is scarcely in our province to say in any definite manner. We merely place these few analagous points in juxta position, because of the remarkable coincidence thereof. 

CHAPTER XIII.

OF THE HONESTY OF THE ABORIGINES, THEIR FREEDOM FROM HABITS OF PILFERING, &C. OF MURDER, AND ITS PUNISHMENT.

As a rule the habits of the aborigines are so just and upright as regards meum and tuum, at all events, as far as members of their own tribes and their property is 