Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/323

AUSTRALIA. are recognized, and perhaps in no place is the feeling of democratic equality and the spirit of hopefulness more widespread. The double ad- vantage is enjoyed of high wages and low or moderate prices for necessaries. Many articles, considered as luxuries in Europe, are of common consumption in Australia. The abundance of the meat products (beef and mutton) makes them the staple food. The annual per capita consumption of meat is 264 pounds, as against 150 for the United States and 109 for Great Bri- tain — two countries that are in the front rank of meat-consuming nations. The per capita ex- penditure is $180, against $160 for the United States. Sixteen out of every 100 people own property, as against only 10 in Great Britain. There are no 'poor rates,' but the Government often finds employment for the able-bodied. Nu- merous hospitals are maintained by the Govern- ment. State aid is given to private philanthropic institutions, and there are a number of charities wholly supported by private philanthropy.

The Australian aborigines, whom some ethnologists would rank as a sepa- rate race of mankind, are over, rather than be- low, the average stature, less strongly and mas- sively built than the European generally, long headed, with depressed nose and wide nostrils, large mouth, thick lips, etc.; features suggest- ing now the Negroid, now the Caucasian type. The color of the skin is dark, running all the way from a yellowish to a pronounced black. The hair, with which the Australians are well pro- vided on body and face, is black and straight or wavy generally, sometimes curly, but never woolly. Beneath an apparent physical unity all over the island lurks considerable variation, which, like the ensemble of the Australians, may in part be due, as Ratzel holds, to poor nutrition (the common condition of man in this habitat), and in part to prehistoric and historic race-inter- mixture with primitive south Asiatics, Malays, Papuans, etc. Caldwell (1856) and Bleek (1872) sought on linguistic grounds (deemed insufficient by Baron F. Müller), to connect the Australian and the Dravidian stocks; while Hale (1891) considers the Australians 'degen- erate Dravidians'; and Brinton (1890) groups Australians and Dravidians as one Australic stock. J. Mathew (1899) believes the Austra- lians to be a composite people of Papuans, Dravidians, and Malays in the order given, the Tasmanians representing best the Papuan sub- stratum. Huxley (1870) believed that one of the earliest races of prehistoric Europe was Aus- traloid in type, and other ethnologists down to Keane (1896), Giuffrida-Ruggeri, and Schoeten- sack (1901) consider the Australians on somatic evidence related to the men of Spy and Neander- thal, in Quaternary Europe.

In an interesting article in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie for 1901 Schoetensack argues that Australia was really the area where the precursor of man first developed the essentially human traits, spreading thence Asiawards over the globe. Linguistically the Australians present great internal variation, with a general unity remarkable in so extensive a habitat. Sociologically, the most noteworthy things are the complicated marriage systems, the numerous and elaborate initiation ceremonies for youth, the corroboree-dance. and the totem system, the recent study of which has shed much light upon primitive religion. Australian mythology, as the two volumes of Legendary Tales (1896-99) by Mrs. Parker prove, is more extensive than formerly supposed, but is now somewhat influenced from white quarters. In the way of inventions, their methods of tree-climbing, the boomerang and the throwing-stick, the waddy (club), their message-sticks (with the beginnings of writing), and shamans' staffs, are to be mentioned. Their ground and tree drawings, rock-pictures, etc., are of great interest. Pottery is unknown, and few of the rudiments of agriculture are present. The case against the Australians as a degenerate race is not made out. By the census of 1891 the Australian aborigines numbered somewhat less than 60,000, a fact which indicates that they are not disappearing so fast as is commonly believed. See.

The fact that the earliest manuscript maps known which give any realistic representation of Australia are the work of French cartographers would suggest that French navigators were the first to visit those coasts. In 1521 there were indications of a southern continent on maps drawn by La Salle and the German Schöner. Ten years later the land mass begins to lake more definite shape on the map of Orontius Finæus, of Provence, and by 1542, on the maps of Jean Rotz, the outline begins to conform distinctly to what we now know as Australia. There are, however, no other surviving records of voyages to that region, and it is practically certain that the Sieur de Gonneville and Capt. Jean Parmentier, the only Frenchmen who are known to have sailed the Eastern seas thus early (1529), did not go beyond Sumatra. It is probable that the maps were drawn from information obtained from Portuguese sources, although the earliest extant account of a voyage which may have reached to Australia, that of the pilot Gaetan, was made in 1545.

The first authenticated voyage to Australia was made by the Dutch in 1606, although there are good reasons for thinking that five years earlier (1601), Manoel Godinho de Eredia, a learned and skillful Portuguese navigator, who had been commissioned by the Viceroy Ayres de Saldanha to verify reports derived" from the Malayans of a large land toward the south, saw the continent. There is, however, no uncertainty about the voyage of the Dutch yacht, the Duyfken or Dove, which sailed from Bantam, in Java, November 18, 1605, and coasted southward from New Guinea along the islands on the west of Torres Strait to a point somewhat west and south of Cape York. As he was back at Banda, in the Moluccas, in June, 1606, the commander of the Duyfken is supposed to have made the first recorded observation of the Australian coast about March of that year. Later in this same year, Luys Vaez de Torres, who commanded one of the ships in a Spanish squadron which had been ordered to make exploration in the Eastern seas, became separated from the other vessels and continued his voyage eastward, touching the eastern end of New Guinea, and then passing through the strait to which his name has been given. He touched the northern coast of Australia at several points, but finding only an unsafe shore and savage natives, he did not follow it far. During the next thirty years the Dutch pursued the exploration of the western coast of