The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-02-06
CENTRAL AUSTRALIA.

or. The less game, the fewer natives;
and without water, neither. Through
out Central Australia natives wander
hundreds of miles, from one well in
sand-hills to another, from one dried
up water-hole to another, brackish and
salt. Ons small party is enough for
any one camp; and the camps are too
far apart for any gathering or increase
into what can be called tribe. They !
ar here miserable, weak race strug- |
Cling hard for existence in dry seasons, |
and camping EstIessly upon the lakes |
and lagoons and marshes of wet sea- !
SONS. They eat more rats than kanga- |
roos in the plains, and more frogs than |
fish on the river banks but upon the |
downs, or inland slopes, of the margin |
of the great plain, they are better off
and are better men. They have some
constant streams, some game in any
season and, if the seasons limi their
numbers, dearth and famine are rarely
before them. On the coast country
they are most numerous. The greatest
friend to the savage is the sea; all
lands, however rich the interior may be
in game, carry more population on the
seaboard than in any other tract And
the estimates of travellers, particularly
navigators, as to the population of is
lands, is almost invariably exaggerated,
for the reas IN that they see upon the
shores an extensive proportion, perhaps
nearly all, of the whole people.
The distribution of the indigenous
population is illustrated by the number
of dialects. In the interior, one dialect
is known over an immense area. It is
spoken from the Murray, or, at least,
the lower Darling: far up into Queens
land, and westward into south Austria
la it is said to be common language
to many inland tribes, who may have
each separate dialects of their own and
it will assist the traveller over a thou
sand miles of country. But, upon the
eastern margin, different from all the
other edges of the great plain, where
many rivers drain the rich western slopes
of the Cordillera, most OF the rivers
have separate tribe and distinct dia-
lect. In the interior the tribes or fam
lilies may meet; they will rarely fight
their necessity compels them to COM
municate with each other. But upon
the better country and the more boun-
teous rivers they may meet, with their
waters, but not to join they may fight,
but they are not compelled to have
so numerous are the tribes and dialects,
particularly in the tropics, that ship
wrecked seaman, who had lived seven
teen years with the natives upon the
Queensland coast before it was settled,
could not, when he returned to civiliza-
ton, interpret for tribes O hundred
miles from his recent home. He said
the tribe he lived with never went be-
You'd rsdius of fifty or sixty miles,
yet every headland and bay and island
shows signs of native life. There are
many people on the coasts, particularly
in the tropical islands, but so very few
in the interior that it might be called
almost uninhabited. And this paucity
of population contrasts strangely with
other lands. No equal tract of country
in almost any climate supports so few
men. The so-called deserts of Africa
are richer in all life, vegetable, animal,
and human, beyond all comparison; and
how widely different was America when
first opened up! The first explorers, or,
as they call themselves. the pnquerors,
of Florida, came to a great river in the
interior; and found countless villages
along both banks, at short distances
apart some camps could muster thou
sand warriors; and this dense popula-
ton lived by the chase and by the
river, with the little maize their women
grew. Well might the pioneers, baff1ed
in their search for gold and silver, re-
fleet, on their return. that the land and
the climate of this afther of rivers was
a greater treasure than the plumber they
had hoped for.
But the inferiority of the aboriginal
race is shown more by its extremely low
standard of intellect than by its numer-
zeal weakness. The race is without Wig
or, much less ferocity or warlike energy;
it is listless, by no means aggressive;
it is held down by the continual strug-
gle with nature, and only survives as
wretched speciu en- of humanity. Some
races are conquered or spoiled by the
luxuriant kindness of nature, as in trop-
ical gardens and others are overcome
in the fight against starvation, as in the
polar wastes. But here we have race
first enervated by a mild temperate eli
mate, which has no winter nor a regu-
larity of season, and then subjected to
uncertain extremes of drouth and fam
inc. The coolest season in Australia,
except upon the highest southern ran
ges, cannot be called winter it re-
quires no provision to be made against
it, so the people have no thought of to-
morrow; they are utterly improvident.
The dryest and the wettost season can
not be foretold; they occur at ever-va-
rying intervals, not of months, but of
years they cannot be anticipated, so
the people are careless, listless, and
hopeless in calamity. The struggles re-
we're, buG the mild climate never braces
hoT Obi IroT hoE or 10 Int
lectually, as physically, the race is poor
and weak. I norant beyond compari-
son, they are abiectly subject to terror,
yet have not acquired mythology, nor
any one general superstition. In dark
est forest, beneath the highest m oun-
tains, by the dreary, silent lakes of the
southern highlands, they have ret ined
tradition of some animal, probably II
inland seal, which is now extinct. They
have, in their ignorance, learned to
dread the temperance of this animal,
andhave some common feeling approach
ing superstition regarding it. White
men came, and spoke of a devil. Now
the step is short from their =" anyip"
to this "devil ;" so they learned SUI
perstition. But it is not indigenous
Where there is no tradition of an tx
tinct animal, as in the north of the con-
tinent, there is neither banyip nor devil;
few aboriginals have any such idea,
even from white men. It has been sta
ted that they have an idea of the Su-
preme Being, and of the transmigration
of souls but he who has been CONVEX
SAINT with untutored black-fellows,
he who has spent weeks and months
with his black boy, riding alongside
daily, and camping at the same fire
nightly, and who has thoroughly sur
veyed this savage's u entail range, knows
well that there is not only no glimmer-
ing such conceptions in that mind,
but that these are quite beyond the
grasp of such a weak intelligence.
Natz and StT-a churo