Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/195

 THE PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MANKIND. 121 The natives also possess weapons which they could not have invented in their present state. The boomerang and throwingstick for the spear are of this kind. The former even suggested a new idea to scientific men when it was first found amongst them. Their spinning of excellent waterproof twine and their netting also point to a time when they possessed a power of invention which they have since lost. And it is noteworthy that those tribes who, to reach their present seats, must have travelled across the country where there was no fish, and consequently no need of nets, Have no idea of making either twine or nets, and cannot learn to do so. These Aborigines are on the shores of the Australian Bight, and in some parts of the south-western corner of the continent, and probably travelled across the centre from Torres Straits to get to the position which they now occupy. But there are also considerations relating to the present state of these Aborigines which bear even more closely than those which have engaged our attention upon the primal state of man. The condition of this people furnishes ample grounds for the position that man in a state of barbarism, so far from rising towards civilisation, inevitably and invariably goes downwards towards extinction. The intelligent amongst the Aborigines always say that their traditions speak of a time when they were more numerous than they are now, and that their numbers had been decreasing long before the white man came into the country. It would appear, then, that the first comers possessed so much of civilisation as to enable them to increase in numbers, but in proportion as they became more numerous they became more barbarous, until the point was reached where the race began to descend towards its present position. Savage life is fatal to the increase of the human family. Man in this condition lives under the power of his carnal nature, and Holy Scripture says, "If ye live after the flesh ye shall die." Never was there a text more strikingly illustrated than this by the condition of uncivilised man. From childhood to old age the gratification of appetite and passion is the whole purpose of life to the savage. He seeks to extract the utmost sweetness from