State Library of NSW
[Page 43]
to conceive that every separate and distant nation or tribe could have hit, as if by mere accident, on the same mode of producing fire. This would again furnish me with another argument in support of the same common origin of mankind, and that the savages here derived the act of kindling a fire from their primitive ancestors, without any intuitive instruction, - and that the knowledge of this act has been preserved, because it has literally of some importance to the human race that any other. It has happened very frequently that both Whites and blacks have suffered greatly when traversing those parts of the island which are remote from settlement. Muskets and powder very frequently get [indecipherable] in [indecipherable]
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