2. THE ABORIGINES. The aborigines of Australia are fast dying out slain by civ ilization through interference with the game that they formerly hunted and lived on, added to the influence of the white man's diseases and vices. It has always been impossible to number the aborigines with any certainty on account of the immense territory over which they were scattered, and of the nomadic habits of the people habits which quite unfitted them for any sustained industrial work; but, accord ing to the most trustworthy estimates which can be obtained, only about 80,000 of the blacks (including half-castes) now remain upon a territory of nearly 3,000,000 square miles. Certainly this is nearly four times the number of Maories who are left in New Zealand, but the territorial and other conditions are so es sentially different in the two countries that comparisons are practically valueless. It is assumed that the representatives of the Aus tralian aborigines are distributed in these pro portions in the respective states: Western Australia, 26,000; South Australia and the Northern Territory, 29,896; Queensland, 20,000; New South Wales, 4,716; and Victoria, 269. In Tasmania the last pure-bred aborigine died in 1877; but a few half-castes remain. Even on the Australian continent the sight of a full blooded black near to a centre of settlement is very rare; and probably during the next 20 years the few survivors of the original owners of the soil will be found in only the remote districts.
Treatment of the Although the racial antipathies and collisions due to the seizure by superior races of the lands of in ferior peoples have been at least as marked in Australia as elsewhere, and although the treat ment of the aborigines by many of the pioneer settlers did not err on the side of scrupulous humaneness, the governments, as such, have done a good deal to mitigate the sufferings of the unfortunate people, the dealing with whom was more difficult than it would have been if the vast majority of them had not in hopeless indolence always manifested an unconquerable repugnance to systematic labor or anything like sustained industry. The policy shown toward them might well have reflected and in some cases it Itas done so the fact that the con quest of the natives in Australia has been ex ceedingly easy owing to their utterly disorgan ized condition and their almost complete help lessness. These defects were in contrast to
the valor, the country-love and the mental alert ness of the colored inhabitants whom the early white settlers found in New Zealand. As a rule the Australian aborigine while in good districts physically stalwart and strong was not of a ferocious or blood-thirstily aggressive nature; and in most cases when numbers of them, have attacked a few isolated European settlers or travelers, the cause has been either a lack of firmness or judicious care on the part of the persons molested, or else revenge for wrongs inflicted upon the natives by other white men, mostly in the shape of interference with the black women, or by way of reprisals for the killing of cattle, the intrusion of which upon their former hunting grounds the blacks naturally connected with the gradual disappear ance of the indigenous game.
All the state governments have enacted, and so far as possible enforced, laws for the protec tion of the blacks laws in some instances pro viding for them special reserves within which the Europeans must not kill game or departure stock; prohibiting the supply of intoxicating liquor or opium to the aborigines, and defend ing them against anything like enslavement or other ill-usage. During many years past at least a yearly and in bad seasons a more fre quent distribution of flour, tobacco, blankets and other useful articles has been made by the governments among the natives; and the state aided efforts have been liberally supplemented by the benefactions of private persons and phil anthropic institutions, especially in relation to education, spiritual and otherwise, by mission aries who have established aboriginal stations. In the latest year for which statistics are avail able the purely governmental expenditure amounted annually (with allowances for en dowed lands) to f20,000 in New South Wales, f16,000 in Queensland, including the Northern Territory f14,000 in South Australia, f4,000 in Victoria and £24,000 in Western Australia.