Transcription

[Page 183] 

A PARTING WORD FOR THE RACE OF MURRI.

THE recent history of the race into whose life and thoughts some glimpses are offered in the preceding pages is so entwined with that of the progress of the British people in Australia that is should not be difficult to awaken an interest in their behalf.

It has been the misfortune of the Murri and kindred tribes, as it was of the Carribee, the Delaware, and the Hottentot, to be found in the way of European colonization; and the Murri have not seen the white man take possession of their territory without many an attempt (by deeds of cunning and of blood) to stop the invasion and to avenge the injury. It would be easy to gather from the records of British colonization in Australia many instances of horrid crimes to committed by the Aborigines. They are, in fact, partakers of the worst passions of human nature. But it must not be forgotten that among the people of British origin who have come to settle upon the land formerly occupied by Murri alone, have been some whose crimes against the Aborigines were at least equal to atrocity to theirs. In short, there has been war, and along certain lines of Australian territory there is still war, between the Colonists and the Aborigines. In this warfare cunning and ferocity have been developed; and the remembrance of what cunning and ferocity have done tends to make the Colonists slow to recognize any characteristics of an opposite kind in the blacks. There has been a tendency to seek reasons for believing that these people are not of the same species as ourselves. And even in a volume of Gospel Sermons the assertion has been, somewhat oracularly, published to the world, that for the Aborigines there is no immortality, that they have no idea of God, no devout feeling, nor any capacity for such thoughts and feelings.

It has, however been shown, in this book, out of their own mouths, from their songs and their cherished traditions, that they are by no means destitute of some qualities in which civilized men glory–such as the power of inventing tragic and sarcastic fiction, te thirst for religious mystery, stoical contempt of pain, and reverence for departed friends and ancestors. It may even be affirmed, with some reason, that they have handed down with reverential care, through many generations, a fragment of primeval revelation. The manner in which they have displayed these characteristics presents to us such a strange mixture of wisdom and folly, of elevating and degrading thoughts, of interesting and of repulsive traditions, of pathetic and grotesque observances,–that in order to account for that apparent contradictions, we must have recourse to the supposition of an ancient civilization from which this race has fallen, but of which they have retained some memorials.

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