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Native Tribes of South-East Australia/Chapter 1

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CHAPTER I

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA AND AUSTRALIA

Literature relating to the subject—No evidence that the Tasmanians reached the Island by water—They must have gone when there was land communication with the Australian coast—Literature relating to the Australian coast—The Australian ancestors must also have arrived by land communication—Probably they came from lands lying to the north or north-west of the continent—Physical geography of the northern coasts—Probable route of migration by New Guinea—Evidence of antiquity of man in Australia—Legends of volcanic era in Australia—Evidence of period of subsidence in Victoria—Coastal soundings—The Tasmanians the autochthonous inhabitants of Australia—Mr. Mathew's Malayan hypothesis—Australians belong to Caucasian stock—The connection between the Australians and Dravidians considered—Tasmanians placed among the Oceanic Negritos—The evidence points to vast antiquity of both races in their latest surroundings.

The question of the origin of the Australian and Tasmanian aborigines has engaged the attention of many writers, who have attempted its solution by inferences drawn from language, from custom, from the physical character of those savages, and, while direct evidence is not existent, from what some writers apparently assume to be fact.

Before entering upon the conclusions to which I have been led in this inquiry, it will be well to note in chronological order the views of various authorities, in doing which I have found it necessary to include those dealing with the Tasmanians.

Mr. R. H. Davis[1] considered the Tasmanians to be scions of the Australians, and that their ancestors, being ​driven to sea in a canoe from the vicinity of King George's Sound, would, by the prevailing winds and currents, be apt to reach the western part of Van Diemen's Land, He selected that point of departure apparently for the reason that the word for "water" among the western tribes of Tasmania is similar to that used by the natives of Cape Leeuwen.

In 1839 Captain Robert Fitzroy,[2] in his narrative of the surveying voyages of the Adventure and the Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836, attributes the origin of the aborigines of Tasmania and Australia either to a party of negroes who might have been driven by storms from the coast of Africa, and thus reached New Zealand or Van Diemen's Land, or to negroes escaping or being brought to the northern shores of Tasmania as slaves by "red men."

The conclusions of Dr. Pritchard[3] as to the derivation of the Tasmanians and Australians are noteworthy. They mark the great advance made in ethnology since the year 1847, but they also disclose the germs of those beliefs, as to the primitive races of mankind who inhabited the Australian and Melanesian regions and the Indo-Malayan Archipelago, which are now fairly established and accepted by ethnologists.

He goes back to primitive black tribes inhabiting "Oceania, Oceanic Negritia, or Oceanic Negroland," at a time when the "Malayo-Polynesian" race had not yet entered the Indian Archipelago.

He considered that this Negrito race was spread by way of New Guinea over the adjacent archipelago of islands, and that one branch took a more southerly course by the chain of islands ending at Timor, and lastly entered Australia.

In the same year Dr. Latham[4] stated in the Appendix to the narrative of the surveying voyage of the Fly during the years 1842-1846, that the Tasmanian language had ​affinities with both the Australian and New Caledonian languages, but in a stronger degree with the latter. This, he considered, will at once explain the points of physical contrast between the Tasmanian tribes and those of Australia, and will indicate that the stream of population for Van Diemen's Land ran round Australia rather than across it.

Mr. Edward John Eyre[5] expressed the belief that there were grounds for the opinion that Australia was first peopled on its north-western coast, between the parallels of 12° and 16° South latitude. Thence he surmises that three great divisions branched out from the parent tribe, and from their offsets the whole continent was overspread.

Mr. M'Gillivray,[6] after quoting Eyre, Pritchard, and Latham, says that a common origin is implied by the belief in the unity of the Australian race. That it was not derived from New Guinea can scarcely be doubted, since Cape York and the neighbouring shores of the mainland are occupied by genuine and unmixed Australians, while islands of Torres Strait and the adjacent coast of New Guinea are occupied by equally genuine Papuans. Intermediate in position between the two races, and occupying the point of junction at the Prince of Wales Island, is the Kaurarega tribe (according to M'Gillivray), an Australian tribe altered by contact with the Papuan tribes of the adjacent island so as to resemble the latter in most of their physical, intellectual, and moral characteristics.

Mr. James Bonwick[7] devotes a long chapter to the origin of the Tasmanians. So far as I am able to gather, his views appear to be that at the time when a now sunken continent connected Tasmania with New Zealand on the east, and with Victoria on the west, the Tasmanians migrated therefrom and ranged round the coasts of the continent as the highway between what are now distinct lands.

He considers that the Australians came from the same ​centre as the Tasmanians, namely, the "sunken continent," and therefore, in their emigrations, established themselves directly upon the south-western part of Australia, and possibly after the separation of Tasmania from it.

According to this author, the Tasmanians were then isolated for several or many thousand years from the world's progress, and he feels "wonder that the Tasmanians retained the speech and form of man and the strength of human thought, the power of human love."

Professor Giglioli,[8] in the conclusion to his work on the Tasmanians, regards them as being Australians with the hair of Papuans, retaining, but in a primitive form, the habits and customs of the former, or, to speak more correctly, as being the descendants of an earlier black race with woolly hair who were settled in the continent of New Holland. The Tasmanians were the last remainder of that race, having been preserved through the isolation of their country.

He says, in conclusion, that the Tasmanians were members of the great Papuan family, and owed their inferiority to the complete state of isolation in which they had existed since a very remote epoch.

The Rev. William Ridley[9] appears to have held the view, although he states it with some hesitation, that the Australians passed from New Guinea, from island to island, to Cape York. Having found their way onwards to the south and west, the necessities and jealousies of the numerous families that followed them forbade their return.

Mr. H. Ling Roth,[10] in his most excellent work on The Aborigines of Tasmania, discusses the views of M. Topinard, Professor Huxley, Professor Friedrich Müller, MM. de Quatrefages and Haura, Dr. Garson, Mr. Barnard Davis, and other authorities, as to the origin of the Tasmanians. He says that it is quite impossible to define the race to which they were most closely allied, but that a comparison of their physical and mental characteristics tends to the ​conclusion that the Tasmanians were more closely related to the Andaman Islanders than to any other race.

Mr. R. Brough Smyth,[11] in the introduction to his work on The Aborigines of Victoria, published in 1878, says that it is difficult to believe the Tasmanians were scions of the continental tribes, and that if Tasmania was peopled from Australia it was at a time when the latter supported a race that in feature, character, and language was Tasmanian.

As to the Australians, he says that they may have landed from Timor, but that it is doubtful if a canoeful of natives landed anywhere upon the coast of Australia could find subsistence. Yet he speaks of one stream of migration coming from the north-east, one branch of which following the coast southwards ultimately reached Gippsland; of the other which again dividing at the south-eastern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria, one section took a course along the coast westward and southward to Western Australia, and the other followed the course of the rivers that flow southwards into Cooper's Creek and the Darling.

In The Australian Race, published in 1886, Mr. E. M. Curr[12] formulated a theory which may be condensed as follows, leaving those who desire to do so to peruse the reasons which are advanced in its support.

All tribes of Australia are descendants from one source, probably, indeed, from a shipload or canoeful of persons who originally found their way to these shores. According to the agreement between custom and language, they were negroes from Africa. These ancestors of the Australian race landed on the north-west coast many ages back, and their descendants spread themselves over the continent by travelling along the north, west, and east coasts, and also through the interior.

The Rev. John Mathew,[13] who has had opportunities of becoming personally acquainted with many examples of the aborigines, published an elaborate paper on that subject. He ​considers them with regard to their origin, mythology, and traditions, their implements, customs, language, mental characteristics, food, institutions, and superstitions. He concludes that Australia was first occupied by a purely Papuan people, or possibly by a people produced by a fusion of Papuans and Melanesians sparsely and unevenly distributed over the continent. Taking for granted that the cradle of the human race was in Asia, he derives them from the north by way of New Guinea, and he looks upon the now extinct Tasmanians as the lineal descendants of the original Australians.

He then supposes Australia to be invaded by a more advanced fairer, straight-haired race which, arriving at a very early period of the world's history, perhaps on the north-west coast, poured into Central Australia with a generally south-easterly current. Partly driving before it, partly darkening itself by the tide of life upon which it pressed, the stream inundated the whole country, but not to an equal depth.

Finally, it is supposed that another invasion, apparently of Malays, took place from the north, first with some degree of continuity and then intermittently, winding about here and there, touching the shores at various places, and bending back inwards.

The author then says that upon the Papuan aborigines "the Dravidian influx" made a deep and general impression. The influence of the final arrivals, the Malays, was slighter and more partial.

Mr. R. Etheridge, junior, in a most valuable contribution on this subject, asked the question, "Has man a geological history in Australia?"[14] After reviewing the evidence derived from the discovery of stone axes, bone implements, oven mounds common in parts of Victoria, and the occurrence of a human molar in the Wellington Cave in New South Wales, he reaches the conclusion that the matter cannot be summed up better than by the Scotch verdict "not proven."

As to the Tasmanian aborigines, he remarks that the ​former geological connection of Australia and Tasmania appears to be a generally accepted fact, and that if such be the case, a vast period of time must have elapsed since that connection, allowing for the formation of Bass Strait. He very justly observes that herein lies one of the strongest proofs of man's early existence in the island continent, although trustworthy geological evidence is still wanting as to the approximate date of his first advent in Australia.

Dr. John Fraser has stated his views of the origin of the Australians in the introduction to his work, An Australian Language.[15] He holds that the negroid population of Australia originated in Babylonia, and that it was driven into southern India by the "confusion of tongues" which followed the attempt of Nimrod to establish dominion over his fellows. The overthrow of the Chaldaean monarchy, about 1500 B.C., by Arab tribes drove thousands of Kushites into southern India, where they took refuge in the mountains of the Deccan, and where to the present day there are Dravidian and Kolarian black-skinned and savage races.

The Babylonian Kushites are then supposed to have been driven out of India into the Malay Peninsula, Papua, and Timor by Dravidian tribes who came down from Central Asia. Finally they found their way into Australia.

These conclusions appear to rest mainly, if not altogether, upon philological deductions which also cause the author to argue that the Australians, the Dravidians, Malays, Papuans, Fijians, Samoans, and the New Hebrideans were at one time part of a common stock.

The latest work with which I am acquainted which expresses an opinion as to the derivation of the Australian aborigine is the second edition of Mr. G. W. Rusden's History of Australia.[16]

The author places the original site of the Australian stock among the Deccan tribes of Hindustan, and says that in a prehistoric time some powerful class or race of invaders ​sought to impose the peace of death upon the ancestors of the Australians. Their safety was in flight, and they migrated southwards from island to island until in Australia they marched free from molestation. The Tasmanians, he thinks, once occupied the mainland, and were driven southwards by some warlike or skilful tribes. Although to boat across Bass Strait in a canoe might be sometimes hazardous, yet in calm weather it would be easy, and the so-called catamarans of Southern Australia could not be filled with water or upset.

Such, then, are the views which have been recorded by various writers on the Tasmanian and Australian aborigines.

I shall now proceed to deal with this subject as it presents itself to me when looked at from the standpoint of present knowledge.

The level of culture of the Tasmanians is best indicated, apart from their customs and beliefs, by the primitive character of their weapons and implements. The former were a spear, which was merely a thin pole hardened and pointed in the fire, and a club which was also used as a missile weapon. Flints chipped on one side were used for cutting, scraping, and being held in the hand, without a handle, for chopping.[17]

The only means they had for navigating the waters was a rude raft, or a bundle of bark tied with grass or strips of kangaroo skin into a canoe-like shape, by which a river or a narrow strait of the sea, such as that between Maria Island or Bruni Island and the mainland, could be crossed in calm weather.[18]

Thus, as pointed out by Dr. E. B. Tylor,[19] the Tasmanians were representatives of the stone-age development, in a stage lower than that of the Quaternary period of Europe, and the distinction may be claimed for them of being this lowest of modern nomad tribes. The Australians stand on a somewhat higher level than the Tasmanians. They are better armed, with a formidable reed spear propelled by the ​throwing-stick, the boomerang, and a variety of clubs which serve either at close quarters or as missiles, and for defence they have the shield. Their canoes are far in advance of the raft or the bundle of bark of the Tasmanians, and are able if necessary to cross narrow arms of the sea under circumstances where the latter would have been destroyed.

Their stone implements are either ground to an edge or fashioned by chipping, as among tribes living where material for the ground and polished type of hatchet is not procurable. But even in such cases these are obtained by barter from other tribes.

The Australians may therefore be classed as representing hunting tribes of the Neolithic age.

Some of the writers whose opinions I have quoted have either stated in so many words, or have left it to be inferred by their statements, that the Tasmanians reached this continent by canoe or ship.

But there is not a tittle of evidence in support of the belief that the Tasmanians ever were acquainted with the art of constructing a canoe able to cross such a sea strait as that between Tasmania and Australia, much less wider extents of ocean. On the contrary, the whole of their culture was on a par with the rudeness of their bark rafts.

I have long since come to the conclusion that one of the fundamental principles to be adopted in discussing the origin of those savages must be, that they reached Tasmania at a time when there was a land communication between it and Australia.

It is only in the work of Professor Giglioli that I have found this clearly shown, where he says that there is no instance recorded of a people who have lost the art of navigation which they had once acquired.[20]

The Australians have also been credited by most authors with arriving in canoes or ships on the coasts of Australia.

But I am quite unable to understand how, since these authors picture them as settling down upon and then spreading along the coasts, they should have lost the art of constructing sea-going canoes, which would be as necessary ​to them as to the southern sea-coast tribes of New Guinea or to the islanders of Torres Strait of the present time. There is no evidence of such a degeneration in culture, and before this belief can be accepted as a settled proposition, some evidence in support of it must be forthcoming.

It might, however, be urged that the tribes living on the east coast of Cape York Peninsula and of the Australian coast of Torres Strait, as far as Port Darwin, are acquainted with and use outrigger canoes, and therefore may represent the condition of the first arrivals. As to this, the observations of the earlier navigators, and especially of those engaged in surveying voyages, are much to the point.

Mr. M'Gillivray, speaking of the year 1847,[21] says that the canoes seen in Rockingham Bay were constructed of a single sheet of bark brought together at the ends and secured by stitching. Near Shelbourne Bay, on the east side of Cape York Peninsula, they were constructed of a tree trunk with a double outrigger, "and altogether a poor instance of these used by the islanders of Torres Strait." Further on, when at Cape York, he speaks of the ordinary outrigger canoe of the Straits, and of the friendly intercourse existing between the "natives of the southern portion of Torres Strait and those of the mainland about Cape York."[22]

These observations indicate the distance to which a knowledge of the outrigger canoe, derived from the islanders of the Straits, had passed southward at the time spoken of by Mr. M'Gillivray. To this may be added that according to oral information, for which I am indebted to Dr. R. L. Jack, the use of the outrigger canoe extends now as far southward as Hinchinbrook Island.

As to the knowledge of the outrigger canoe by the Australians on the western part of the shores of Torres Strait, Mr. M'Gillivray also mentions that two years after the founding of the English settlement at Raffles Bay in 1827, the Bugis had taken advantage of the protection afforded to carry on trepang fishing, and that formerly bark canoes had been in general use by the aborigines, but that ​they were then completely superseded by others hollowed out of trees, which they procured ready made from the Malays in exchange for tortoise-shell and in return for assistance in collecting trepang.

Captain Stokes,[23] in speaking of the visits of Malays to Port Essington, also says that the aborigines obtained their canoes chiefly from the Malays, whom he elsewhere calls "Bugis." At the time at which he wrote, namely, the years 1837-43, such canoes were used as far as Clarence Strait, but beyond that place he saw no single instance of any "proa or canoe."[24]

It is therefore possible to fix the limits beyond which the knowledge of the outrigger canoe did not extend, namely, from Hinchinbrook Island on the north-east coast of Queensland to Clarence Strait in north-western Australia.

Some further light is afforded by a statement made by a man from Prince of Wales Island whom I once met. It was, that his tribesmen are accustomed to migrate periodically in their sea-going canoes, according to the prevalent winds, either southwards along the coast of Queensland, or northwards to the further islands of Torres Strait, or even to the mainland of New Guinea.

It seems to me that this practice must have existed for ages; indeed, since that time when the Papuan population settled on the Straits Islands and thus came to be neighbours of the tribes inhabiting the Australian mainland.

It is difficult to believe, if this coast at that time had been unoccupied by Australians, that the Papuans would not have settled on it as well as upon islands at no great distance northwards.

The Kaurarega of Prince of Wales Island are usually considered to be Papuans, with a strong Australian mixture, which, judging from the example I saw, would be very marked. This mixture is easily to be understood when one considers the annual voyages by these people down the Cape York coast on the one side and across Torres Strait ​on the other, and that on these voyages, according to my native informant, they obtain wives from the Australian mainland and the New Guinea Islands.

I am therefore led to believe that the Australian ancestors as well as Tasmanians must be held to have reached this continent by some land connection, or, at least, a land connection so nearly complete that the breaks in it might be crossed in vessels no better than the bark canoe of the present time.

If these conclusions are well founded, there arise certain questions which demand answers. What evidence is there of a former land connection between Australia and other lands to the north or north-west, and between Australia and Tasmania within the limit of time fixed by the probable existence of man?

A reply to these questions can only be given by the sciences of physical geography and geology, and the time limit restricts the inquiry to those later Tertiary or Post-Tertiary lands from whence such migrations might have proceeded.

Thus their direction is indicated as having been probably from lands lying to the north or north-west of Australia.

Dr. Wallace, in his classical work on The Malay Archipelago,[25] directed attention to several matters bearing upon this question, which still remain as significant as when he stated them in 1869.

A deep but narrow sea channel, being part of what is now known as "Wallace's Line," separates areas of shallow seas bordered by great ocean depths,[26] while the boundaries of the shallow seas indicate the former extension on the one side of the Austral and on the other of the Asiatic continent.

The chain of islands which extends from the Malay Peninsula towards Australia, ending with Timor, when considered in connection with the boundaries of the shallow sea, represents a former continental extension, probably only broken by the channel between Bali and Lombok,[27] and a channel ​between Timor and Australia, twenty miles in width.[28] The former, which is only fifteen miles wide, has sufficed to stop the advance of the larger mammals from the Asiatic to the Austral region, and the latter strait has similarly prevented the Australian mammals from entering Timor.

If this was the line of migration of the early Tasmanians and Australians, we should have to assume either that they were able to cross the deep sea straits on rafts or in bark canoes, or that these sea straits were at such a comparatively recent geological time much narrower than the soundings suggest.

An alternative line of migration would be by way of Torres Strait.

The position of the Great Barrier Reef as to north-eastern Australia strongly suggests a submerged shore line of the continent; and if so, the numerous islands, islets, and reefs between Cape York Peninsula and New Guinea also suggest the former existence of a land connection now broken by subsidence.

Dr. Jack points out that from Cape Palmerston to the Herbert River the coast is fringed by a strip of alluvial flat, composed of alternating beds of clay, sand, and gravel, the latter probably belonging to river beds. The old land surface, as proved by boring, is from 80 to l00 feet below the present sea-level, and no river could possibly have excavated a channel to this depth while the land stood at its present level. This submergence, in all probability, took place after the period to which the extinct mammalia belonged.[29]

Dr. Jack has also pointed out to me orally, that bays and estuaries into which rivers flow on the east coast indicate submerged valleys, and suggested that this comparatively recent submergence of the eastern part of Australia gave rise to Sydney Harbour on the one hand and Torres Strait on the other.

An inspection of the Admiralty Chart of Torres Strait ​between Cape York and the nearest part of New Guinea shows, not only a number of islands of some size, but innumerable islets and reefs studding a sea so shallow that there is only exceptionally a depth of lo fathoms in the channels. A movement of elevation of 60 feet would therefore connect Australia and New Guinea, and a re-elevation of the 80 to 100 feet of subsidence in comparatively recent times which Dr. Jack assigns to the north-east coast, would do more than merely connect the two lands.

So far as is yet known, the extinct mammalia to which Dr. Jack refers did not extend into New Guinea, and the absence of the platypus and the feeble development of the polyprotodont fauna in north-eastern Australia is considered by Professor Baldwin Spencer to indicate that they spread northwards rather than southwards,[30] thus negativing the existence of an upraised Torres Strait at that early period.

This suggests that, although there had been a land communication which admitted of a certain migration of Australian forms, it had ceased before the giant extinct marsupials spread into the extreme of Northern Queensland, and according to Dr. Jack that would probably have been in Post-Tertiary times.[31] It seems therefore evident that there was a land communication between New Guinea and Australia at a comparatively recent period by which the Tasmanians, and subsequently the Australians, might have entered this continent. But this would have been anterior to the subsidence of Torres Strait as we now see it.

Thus all the evidence I have been able to collect points to there having been a more practicable line of migration by way of New Guinea than by Timor.

At present too little is known of New Guinea to enable anything to be said as to existing traces of the Tasmanian and the Australian stocks in that island. But it is to be noted that New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania were during our time, and as to the two former, still are occupied respectively by well-defined types of man, effectually separated ​from each other by Torres Strait to the north and Bass Strait to the south of Australia.

The relative positions of these peoples show that the Papuans, Australians, and Tasmanians must have occupied their respective locations in such manner that Bass Strait stopped the march of the Australians, and Torres Strait of the Papuans.

It is now to be considered whether there are any data from which a fair inference may be drawn as to the former existence of a land bridge between Australia and Tasmania, across which the Tasmanians might pass to the latter country.

There has been much hesitation in accepting any great antiquity for man in Australia. Mr. R. Brough Smyth[32] pointed out, as far back as 1878, that in the hundreds of square miles of alluvial deposits which have been turned over by miners in Victoria very few aboriginal stone hatchets have been found, and those even at inconsiderable depths below the surface. Since that time, some evidence has been forthcoming which may be held to place man in Australia in possibly Pleistocene times.

It may be well, therefore, to bring together those instances which have come under my notice in order that the evidence from these sources may be seen concisely.

Mr. Bonwick[33] records the discovery of a "stone tool" by miners in Ballarat, 22 inches below the surface, in a place which had not been before disturbed. This author, however, according to his practice, gives no reference to his authority.

Dr. A. R. Wallace communicated to me, for the purpose of investigation, the discovery of an axe-head of basalt at Maryborough, in Victoria, in 1855, by Mr. A. C. Swinton, who was at the time engaged in mining.

Mr. Swinton says that he and Mr. M. C. Shore were sinking a shallow shaft on a small tributary, leading into the main lead, when at a depth of about 4 feet from the surface and 1 foot from the bottom, Mr. Shore drove his pick into an axe-head made of basalt. The shaft was sunk ​through cemented gravel with three false bottoms, and about half-way down there was a hard band of cement.

By the courtesy of Mr. James Travis, the Acting Secretary for Mines and Water Supply, Mr. Stanley Hunter, one of the officers of the Geological Survey, examined the place referred to by Mr. Swinton and marked by him upon a parish plan of Maryborough.

Mr. Hunter reported to the effect that the tributary referred to by Mr. Swinton is one of the heads of the main Bet Bet lead, and as that lead is covered by Pleistocene basalt, the lower strata in the contributary lead in question may be of the same age. Yet this is merely an assumption, as no fossil evidence of any kind is to be found.

In 1865 the late Mr. C. S. Wilkinson,[34] together with Mr. Forde, found flint chips, a sharpened stone tomahawk, and several bone spikes or needles, together with bones of animals, in the sand-dunes near Cape Otway. In the same locality they also found a similar bone spike with numerous seal-bones and shells of apparently existing species in beach material of pebbles and humus, resting upon carbonaceous sandstone, and apparently intermediate between it and the overlying dunes.

In 1870, when visiting the Upper Dargo River in Gippsland, I was informed by some miners that in cutting a race for mining purposes they had turned up a stone tomahawk at about 2 feet below the surface. But as the race was cut out of the shingly alluvium at the side of the valley, the find does not necessarily imply any great antiquity.

Mr. Bennett, in his History of Australian Discovery[35] makes a statement that, in sinking wells and other excavations in the Hunter River Valley, flat rocks were found with marks such as are made by the aborigines in sharpening their stone tomahawks. These were at a depth of 30 feet or more below the present surface, and covered with a drift or alluvium.

​In 1896 an important find of aboriginal stone hatchets was made at Shea's Creek, near Sydney, at a depth of 11 feet below water-level, together with bones of dugong, bearing such cuts and scratches, not recent, as would be made by direct blows of a sharp-edged stone tomahawk. There were also several standing stumps of Eucalyptus botryoides, including a land surface, and the whole was covered by estuarine beds of marine shells. The total alteration in the level of the land and sea was about 15 feet below high water.

Mr. R. Etheridge, junior, Professor T. W. Edgworth David, and Mr. J. W. Grimshaw, the authors of the account of this discovery,[36] say that the date of the "aboriginal feast upon dugong" cannot be much below the limit of Post-Tertiary time, and it is even doubtful whether it is likely that the date can be carried back into Pleistocene times.

There may be added to this evidence the discovery of the crown of a human molar by the late Mr. Gerard Krefft in the Wellington Caves. As to this discovery, Mr. Etheridge, junior,[37] says that the tooth appears to be completely fossilised, for on comparing it with the teeth of the larger marsupials from the Wellington Caves, the normal condition is without question similar. Yet its position in the cave, and association with the other organic remains entombed there, is open to doubt; and as no other human remains have been found at Wellington under similar circumstances, its precise age must remain uncertain.

If any reliance may be placed upon aboriginal tradition, the affirmative belief in the presence of man in Victoria during the Newer Volcanic Era is strengthened.

It is said that there was a tradition to the effect that Mount Buninyong had at a distant time thrown out fire.

Mr. Dawson[38] reports a tradition among the aborigines of the western district of Victoria that fire came out of a hill near Mortlake, and of "stones which their fathers told them

had been thrown out of the hill by the action of fire."

​To the northward of Ballarat portions of the Main Divide is of volcanic formation, and a wide sheet extending northwards finally disappears under the Post-Tertiary deposits of the Loddon Valley, and covers the ancient river-courses which trend towards the Murray River.[39]

As seen in the Ballarat district, flows of basalt followed each other, separated by periods of time which permitted the accumulation of alluviums, until finally vast areas became basaltic plains, studded with volcanic cones.[39]

The older Dividing Range is in many parts covered, and the newer river-courses do not in places accord with the older drainage areas.

Thus were formed what are known to miners as the "deep leads," trending from Ballarat northwards towards the River Murray, and southwards towards Bass Strait.

It is not possible in the present state of information to fix with any degree of accuracy when in geological time these deep leads were formed, when volcanic activity commenced, or when it finally terminated with the volcanoes of south-western Victoria and the south-east of South Australia.

The latter are placed by Professor Tate in that time when Diprotodon and Phascolomys Pliocenus were still existing, and when the flora included Casuarina and Banksia.[40]

The discovery of bones of an extinct kangaroo in the mine of the Great Buninyong Estate Company, under two sheets of basalt, suggests that the Mount Buninyong volcano may have been of the same period.

If these views are correct, it may be said that the newer volcanic era, during which the river valleys of Central Victoria were sealed up by basaltic flows, may have extended into Pleistocene time.

I have been long impressed by the fact that the "deep leads" referred to—that is, the ancient river channels—are now at considerable depths below the surface over which the ​modern rivers flow, with but a slight fall to the sea by way of the Murray River Valley.

During the past thirty years the Victorian Department of Mines has carried out an immense amount of boring with the diamond drill, by which the underground contours of the valleys, and also the trend of the deep leads extending north and south from Ballarat have been ascertained.

It seemed to me that a comparison of the data thus obtained might prove of interest, and for this purpose I have selected the statistics of bores put down furthest north on three main leads, where the hilly country subsides into the great levels of the plains through which the River Murray winds its course towards South Australia and the sea.

Each locality chosen is not far distant from the termination of the flow of basalt, by which the old valley had been levelled, and which itself is, at its termination, levelled off by the later alluviums of the plains.

The following are the data from which I have drawn certain conclusions:—

No. 9 Bore at Bung Bong.
Height of surface above sea-level ⁠714 feet
Depth of Deep Lead channel below the surface[41] ⁠300   „
Distance from the bore to Swan Hill on the River Murray, by way of Bet Bet Creek and the Loddon River ⁠200 miles
'No. 8 Bore at Charlotte Plains.
Height of surface above sea-level[42] ⁠708 feet
Depth of Deep Lead channel below the surface ⁠270   „
Distance from the bore to Swan Hill by way of Tallaroop Creek and the Loddon River ⁠180 miles
No. 5 Bore of Second Line near Baringhup.
Height of surface above sea-level[43] ⁠600 feet
Depth of Deep Lead channel below the surface⁠ ⁠226   „
Distance from Swan Hill by way of the Loddon River ⁠191 miles

​The distance from Swan Hill to the sea, following the channel of the Murray River, is about 950 miles.

The fall of the surface to Swan Hill is—from Bung Bong, 2 feet 6 inches; from Charlotte Plains, 2 feet 9 inches; and from Baringhup, 2 feet per mile. But the fall of the surface to the sea, by way of the channel of the River Murray, is only 2.75 inches per mile, and even that is not much, since, at Morgan, 400 miles up from the sea, there is only from 3 to 10 feet above sea-level according to the season.[44]

Thus, if these Deep Leads are imagined as being restored to their former condition of rivers, they could not flow out to sea by way of the River Murray unless the land were raised up, taking the mean of the three examples first given, by about 270 feet above its present height as compared with the sea-level. This height of 270 feet may, moreover, be taken as the minimum elevation required, since it would give no more than the present fall, which is improbable, when the character of the sea bottom in Bass Strait is taken into consideration.

The fall southwards of the country from the Main Dividing Range, near Ballarat, to the sea is, also for a long distance over Newer Volcanic basaltic plains, analogous to those through which the above-mentioned bores have been put down.

Here also the Deep Leads trending southwards have been proved by boring, and analogous results have been obtained. But it must be borne in mind that there is a marked difference in distance to the sea in this direction. From Bung Bong, for instance, to the sea is 1150 miles by the Murray River Valley, while from Mount Mercer, where there is one of the most southern bores, to Bass Strait is only 50 miles. Thus compared with the distance, the fall of the land in the latter case is much steeper.

A bore put down to the west of Mount Mercer proved the Deep Lead gutter at a depth of 113 feet from the surface, and one at Glenfine, near the Woady Yalloak River, ​bottomed at 161 feet 4 inches, of which 2 feet 9 inches was heavy wash. All that can be said as to the leads on this side of the Main Divide is, that they show the same general features as those on the northern side, but that any comparison with the outlets of those old rivers is not possible.

In order to test the conclusions drawn from the data obtained from considering the Deep Leads, I also examined the Admiralty Charts of Bass Strait, and of the coast of Tasmania, and the opposite Australian mainland.

On the accompanying map are shown the 50 and 100 fathom lines of soundings in Bass Strait, extending westward to include the mouth of the Murray River, and eastward as far as Jervis Bay in New South Wales.[45]

A line of soundings is also shown connecting Wilson's Promontory, in Victoria, with Cape Portland, in Tasmania, by way of the islands lying between these points. On this line the greatest depth is 32 fathoms, between Wilson's ​Promontory and Kent Group. It is shallower between that island and Flinders Island, and still shallower thence to Cape Portland.

A 35-fathom line on either side would indicate a plateau 80 or 90 miles wide connecting the shores of the strait, and on the Victoria side widening out so as to extend up to Cape Howe.

On this there would be a low ridge from Wilson's Promontory to Cape Portland, with occasional elevations—now islands—rising at Mount Strzelecki to over 2700 feet above the sea. These islands are, therefore, a submerged continuation of that part of the Cordillera which ends in Victoria at Wilson's Promontory. The prevailing rocks, except a few isolated peaks of recent igneous origin, are granite and schists, which on the low-lying tracts are overlaid by deposits of Eocene age covered by recent formations.[46]

These islands are, therefore, composed of Palaeozoic plutonic rocks and metamorphic schists similar to those largely represented in the Gippsland Mountains, which terminate in a southerly direction in Wilson's Promontory.

An inspection of the soundings shows that the 50-fathom line encloses a comparatively level plateau, which falls more rapidly and in places almost suddenly, to the 100-fathom line, especially on the western and southern side of Tasmania. Beyond this there are few soundings, but from those given the following statements may be noted.

The 50-fathom line is distant about 40 miles in a south-westerly direction from Cape Otway; at 10 miles further off is the loo-fathom line; at 20 miles further the depth is over 900 fathoms; finally, at 150 miles from Cape Otway, in the same direction, there is a sounding of over 2300 fathoms.

Similarly, in a south-easterly direction from the Ninety-mile Beach in Gippsland, the 50-fathom and 1OO-fathom lines are distant 50 and 70 miles respectively.

South-easterly from Cape Pillar, in the extreme south ​of Tasmania, the soundings of 50,100, and 1000 fathoms are distant respectively about 5, 8, and 50 miles.

The lines of 50 and 100 fathoms soundings off the Murray mouth are distant therefrom about 100 miles, the two lines being apparently no more than 5 miles apart. At 100 miles, further south, there is a sounding of 2840 fathoms.

The general conclusions derivable from a study of these charts are that the 50-fathom line represents a submerged plateau connecting Victoria approximately from Cape Howe to Cape Otway with Tasmania. From it there is a more rapid slope to the 100-fathom line, and thence a still greater slope into ocean depths. An elevation of 300 feet would therefore lay dry a tract of comparatively level country between Victoria and Tasmania, rising to a central ridge on the eastern side. The plateau would be mainly not more than 100 to 200 feet above sea-level, but in places rising up to 3000 feet. On the western side a deep bend to the north-east indicates the former channel of a river conveying the combined waters of all streams and rivers which now debouch between Cape Otway and Wilson's Promontory, whose deposits probably account for the unusual distance between the 50 and 100 fathom line, from the embouchure down to Cape Sorrell.

The plateau of low-lying land thus indicated flanking the eastern side of the chain of denuded and eroded mountains, whose peaks are now islands in Bass Strait, would probably resemble the sandy and swampy country covered with dwarf scrub and coarse sedges which border Corner Inlet, and separate Wilson's Promontory from the Gippsland coast ranges.

A great delta is indicated by these soundings, extending between Kangaroo Island and Cape Jaffa, 100 miles beyond the present Murray mouth.

That the elevation and subsidence of the land has been by widespread and not merely local movements is shown by the Eocene and Miocene marine series of Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania, which, although subjected to elevation, are in the whole, at low angles, little beyond horizontal.

​All that can perhaps be said as to the antiquity of man in the Australian continent appears to be, that he may have inhabited it as a contemporary of the extinct marsupial fauna, the giant forms of which, equally with himself, appear to have been isolated by those depressions of the surface which formed Torres and Bass Straits. Those changes in the physical geography of Australia may have occurred at a somewhat later geological period than seems to have been usually accepted.

I may now advance a further step and consider the origin of the primitive Tasmanians and Australians.

If the conclusions to which I have now been led are correct, it follows that the Tasmanians were the autochthonous inhabitants of Australia, and that their preservation in Tasmania was due to isolation by the formation of Bass Strait.

The occupation of the continent by the Australians, who, it may be reasonably held, were in a somewhat higher state of culture and who were better armed than the Tasmanians, must have resulted in the amalgamation of the two races, either by the subjection of the latter, or, what is more likely from what we know of the Australians of the present day, by the extermination of the former inhabitants, at least so far as regarded the males, and the absorption of the females into the conquering tribes.

At any rate, whatever the process may have been, the result of a strong negroid cross in the Australians may be accepted.

Deducting this negroid element, there remains a residuum from which also must be deducted the "Malay element" of Mr. Mathew, who finds in the Australian language traces of Malay influence. He says that they are not numerous, are not met with in the extreme north-west, where they might be expected, but turn up in unexpected parts of Australia, far removed from casual intercourse with Malays.[47]

In order to account for this Malay element, he introduces parties of Malays, who, either from choice or necessity, landed and became naturalised at various spots on the east, north, and west coasts of Australia. These Malays are thus ​supposed to have modified the speech of the people, first, immediately round them, and then landwards.[48]

As to this, it may be pointed out that Australia is three- fourths the size of Europe. What would be thought of an hypothesis based upon the landing of occasional parties of Asiatics upon the northern coasts of the Mediterranean, thereby introducing an Asiatic strain into the people inhabiting, for instance, Northern Germany?

The linguistic ground upon which this "Malayan" hypothesis rests consists, first, in identification of the interrogative pronouns, for instance, minyanggai or minna of the Kabi language in Queensland with the Malayan mana, which, as Mr. Mathew himself points out, is properly the adverb "where," but which is used idiomatically to signify "who," "whom," "which," and "what"; second, on twelve words selected from vocabularies of Australian tribes. Of these words, three, namely, the Malay terms for moon, rain, and sun, are, on reference to Dr. Codrington's work,[49] found to be also Melanesian. A fourth word, namely, the West Australian yoora, or ura, meaning "man," he identifies with orang, but does not rely on it. As to the remaining eight words which are scattered over the continent, it may be that some might also be identified with Malayan and Melanesian words, and as in the case of isolated occurrences, it is always open to doubt whether the average collector of Australian vocabularies has correctly reported them. Even to the occurrence of the word bapa over wide areas in Australia, meaning "father," much weight cannot be attached, since a similar or identical term may be found in languages the world over.

The Rev. Mr. Threlkeld, than whom no one has obtained so great a knowledge of an Australian language, denies that it has any close affinity with the Malay, either in word or construction.[50] This opinion carries weight, not only by reason of his special qualifications, but because it relates to ​the languages of south-eastern New South Wales, where Mr. Mathew finds a strong Malay element.

A passage in Crawfurd's Grammar of the Malay Language, published in 1852, speaks on this question with authority and with no uncertain voice.[51] He examined thirty languages from all the then discovered parts of Australia in quest of Malayan words without finding one, or the trace of one. They might have been expected in the language of Raffles Bay, not distant from the trepang fisheries of the natives of Celebes, but were absent from this as from all other of the languages. He remarks that, although the trepang fishers occasionally see natives of Australia, they hold no intercourse with them, and from what he knew of the opinions and prejudices of the former, he was satisfied that they would no more think of a social intercourse with them than with the kangaroo or wild dogs of the same country.

The trepang fishers here spoken of are the Bugis, a Malayan people, who form the principal nation of the Island of Celebes,[52] of whom M'Gillivray says that two years after the foundation of the English settlement at Raffles Bay they had taken advantage of the protection of Europeans to carry on the trepang fishery there.[53]

These remarks are confirmed by Captain Stokes,[54] who says, speaking of Raffles Bay, that six Malay proas came in, followed by others, soliciting permission to erect their establishments for curing trepang under the protection of the British flag, now for the first time secure from the attacks of the natives, whose hostility had until then forced every other man of them to keep under arms whilst the rest worked.

The visits of the Bugis to the north coast of Australia appear to have been far more numerous annually than might have been suspected. Mr. Earl, writing in 1837[55] of these very people, says that they visited the northern shore ​of New Holland annually with from "80 to 100 praus," and that their trepang and tortoise-shell fishing afforded employment for 1000 men.

If this may be taken as having been a custom of long continuance, one might reasonably expect not only that there should be a strong Malay (Bugi?) cross in the tribes inhabiting the coast from Clarence Strait to Raffles Bay, but that there should be found a strong Malay element in the language of these aborigines. But from the quotations which I have given, the relations of the two peoples appear not to have been always friendly, and this may account for the absence of words of Malay origin in this very part of Australia where Mr. Mathew says we might expect to, but do not, find them.[56]

It seems that all that can perhaps be properly said as to the influence of Malays (Bugis) upon the Australian languages is that on the north coast, limited probably to the range of the trepang, words might become naturalised in the languages of coast tribes, and be thence transported inland to such distances as the interchange of women as wives by those tribes might extend.

As I have pointed out, three of the twelve words identified by Mr. Mathew as Malayan are found, on reference to Dr. Codrington's work on the Melanesian languages, to be also Melanesian. Dr. Codrington shows conclusively that the elements which are common to them and the Malay have not been derived from the latter, but are common to all the ocean languages, from the Malagasy in the west to the Hawaiian in the east and the Maori in the south. He says, further, that this indicates an original oceanic stock language, from which the Polynesian, Melanesian, and Malay tongues have derived their common elements, which is now extinct and of which the Malay is one of the younger descendants. The presence of certain common words in the ancient ocean languages testifies that the speakers made canoes, built houses, cultivated gardens, before the time when their posterity branched off on their way to Madagascar and Fiji.[57]

​Such being the case, the primitive home of those speakers of the "ocean language" may be supposed to have been somewhere in the Indo-Malayan or Austro-Malayan regions, or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, in the ancient extensions of the Asiatic and Austral continents which they represent.

At any rate, the dispersal of the primitive speakers of the ocean stock-language must have been long after the migration of the Australians, and still longer after that of the Tasmanians.

It seems, however, not a little remarkable that the migrations of the offshoot, which is now represented by the Melanesians, should have extended from New Guinea, or perhaps from a point further west, around and beyond but not touching Australia.

Compared with the sea distances which must have been passed over (since the common stock-language proves that they were acquainted with canoes) before reaching Fiji, the stretches of sea between Timor and Australia, and New Guinea and Australia, must have been comparatively insignificant.

At any rate it would seem that Torres Strait separated the Papuans from the Australians almost as effectually as Bass Strait separated the latter from the Tasmanians.

The Melanesians occupy a vast insular extent, touching New Guinea at the one end and Fiji at the other, and probably represent the older race on which the Papuans have intruded.

It seems not unreasonable to consider these facts as indicating migrations of three branches of mankind in successive stages of ethnical development and culture.

If the Australians migrated from the north-west by way of New Guinea, as I have suggested, it may be that they brought with them some elements of language common to the ancient oceanic stock-language, to crop out here and there in the Australian speech as words having a resemblance to Malay.

But, it appears to me, there must be very grave doubts as to the Malayan element in the Australian aborigines as formulated by Mr. Mathew.

​Deducting, therefore, the hypothetical Malay ethnical element, which, if it exists at all, may be considered as merely local in Northern Australia, there is yet a limited Papuan or Melanesian element in Northern or North-eastern Australia, which cannot be altogether attributed to the original cross of the primitive Tasmanians.

I was much struck, when comparing some men from Prince of Wales Island with other men from the Cloncurry River, on the mainland, by the marked Papuan character of the former, and the marked Australian character of the latter. The intermixture through friendly intercourse between the Kaurarega of Prince of Wales Island and the Gudang of Cape York is well known.

Deducting these various elements, the apparent strong cross of the Tasmanian stock, and the certainly small admixture on the northern coast due to visits by the Bugis and the Papuan Islanders, there remains a large residuum to which the distinctiveness of the Australian type may be attributed.

To which of the great divisions of the human family may this Australian stock, on which the Tasmanian scion has been grafted, be assigned? Here is a difficult problem; but this much may with safety be asserted, it is not Ethiopic or Mongolian, and leaving out the American stocks, which can scarcely be seriously considered, there remains only the so-called Caucasian as the great division to which the primitive type of the Australian may be referred.

In considering all the facts before me bearing upon the question of the origin of the Tasmanians and the Australians, I have been much impressed by the immense periods of time which seem to be essential to any solution of the problem.

The level of culture of the Tasmanians has been termed by Dr. E. B. Tylor "Eolithic,"[58] and that of the Australians probably stands in the Neolithic, if not as regards some tribes on the border between that and the Paleolithic age.

​The tribes of the Barcoo Delta were, when I knew them, still in their completely savage condition forty years ago, and they used roughly-chipped flints either held in the hand or fastened in handles with sinews and gum. This was, however, not from want of acquaintance with the Australian form of ground and polished hatchets, since they obtained such by barter from the hill tribes to the south, but because their country did not supply the material of which such hatchets were made.

The level of culture of the Australians cannot be considered lower than that of the ancestral stock from which they separated, and their language discloses nothing that can point to a former knowledge of the arts higher than that of the present time, in their natural savage state.

It has been and still is frequently assumed that there is an ethnical relationship between the Australians and the Dravidian tribes of the Hindostan peninsula, and therefore this requires some special attention.

To connect the Australians with the Dravidians in the manner commonly done seems to entirely overlook some essential elements of the problem. These require that the original parent stock of the former existed far back in prehistoric or even in Pleistocene time, when the physical geography of the Asiatic and Austral continents and the racial character and distribution of the peoples inhabiting them must have differed very materially from those of the present time.

Therefore, any ethnical or linguistic connection between the Australians and the Dravidians must be considered to be merely the relationship of two tribes co-descendants from a common and distant ancestral stock.

I should be most unwilling to appear to underrate the great services which the science of philology is capable of rendering to anthropology; but it must be admitted that its professors are, unfortunately, not always possessed of that scientific caution which is so essential in all ethnological or anthropological inquiries. In Europe this has been shown by the results of the Aryan controversy; and it is sincerely to be hoped that no analogous results may be experienced ​here through attempts to solve the Australian problem by the aid of philology alone.

That science is merely one of the components of the comprehensive science of anthropology, and is, therefore, incapable alone of being a safe guide when attempting a solution of so complicated a problem as the origin of the aborigines of Tasmania and Australia.

The various provisional conclusions to which I have so far been led will now admit of my advancing a step further in this inquiry and attempting to indicate what appears to be the most probable origin of the Tasmanians and Australians.

Of all the attempted solutions of this problem, that which has been offered by Sir W. H. Flower and Mr. R. Lydekker[59] appears to me most nearly to fit in with the requirements of this case. They suggest that Australia was originally peopled by frizzly-haired Melanesians, such as the Tasmanians, but that there was a strong infusion of some other race, probably a low form of Caucasian Melanochroi. As to the identification of the Tasmanians with the Melanesians, we find that Mr. H. Ling Roth has recorded certain conclusions, based upon the mass of data collected and discussed by him in his work on The Aborigines of Tasmania. Among others there is one which may be well accepted as agreeing with the weight of evidence, namely, that the Tasmanians were more closely related to the Andaman Islanders than to any other race.[60]

This would place them among the Oceanic Negritos, who are now found scattered in small tribes from the Andaman Islands to the Philippines and New Guinea,[61] and not among the later Melanesians.

It is noteworthy that all these scattered Oceanic Negritos appear to be mere survivals of a former widespread autochthonous race, which have been preserved either in inaccessible parts of Malaysia, like the Samangs of the Malay ​Peninsula and the now extinct Kalangs of Java, or isolated in islands, and, like the Tasmanians and the Andamanese, have been cut off by subsidence of parts of a former continent.

While it may be accepted that the present distribution of the Oceanic Negritos indicates a primitive population spread over Malaysia, or rather inhabiting the former southern extension of the Indo-Asiatic continent, it does not necessarily follow that they all represent the same branch of the primitive stock, but rather, more or less, nearly successive offshoots.

As to the Melanesians, Dr. Codrington's argument, which I have already quoted, may be again referred to, in so far that the stock from which they have branched off must have been acquainted with (sea-going) canoes, houses, and the cultivation of gardens; therefore those ancient Melanesians, being in a far higher level of culture, could not have been the progenitors of the ancestors of the Tasmanians.

It seems to me also permissible to distinguish the Tasmanians and Andamanese from tribes such as the Samangs and Kalangs, and on these grounds I would suggest the following tentative hypothesis:—

An original Negrito population, as represented by the wild tribes of Malaysia; a subsequent offshoot, represented by the Andamanese and Tasmanians; and another offshoot, in a higher state of culture, originating the Melanesians.

As to the Australians, I may say that the discussion of the problem as to the origin of these savages, and of the Tasmanians, has led me to conclusions which require, as the original stock of the former, such a race as would be supplied by the "low form of Caucasian Melanochroi" suggested by Sir W. H. Flower and Mr. Lydekker. From such a stock the Dravidians may be also thought to have been in part derived.

Here and there in Asia are sporadic groups of people, characterised by black hair and dark eyes, with a skin of almost all shades from white to black, frequently with profuse beards and body hair, and being in many cases in a condition of low savages,[62] such as the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Hairy ​Ainus of Japan, the Maoutze of China, and perhaps the Todas of India.

This stock might have given the characters of the hair to the otherwise negroid primitive inhabitants of Australia, and also certain peculiarities of feature which are occasionally observed, and which are evidently and certainly not negroid in character.

I have said before, and desire to repeat, that the conclusions to which I have been led as to the origin of the Tasmanians and Australians necessarily demand a vast antiquity on the Australian continent for the former and a very long period of at least prehistoric time for the latter.

In dealing with the origin of the aborigines of Tasmania and Australia I have attempted the solution of a most difficult problem. I have looked at the questions arising out of it from more than one standpoint, and I have thereby been led to conclusions which contradict the views held and enunciated by fellow-workers whose opinions are deserving of respectful consideration.

All that I claim is, that I have offered what seems to me to be a reasonably probable tentative hypothesis, based upon known facts.

My views will be accepted or rejected by competent authorities according as they stand the test of criticism, of time, and of the accumulation of further knowledge.

The conclusions to which this inquiry has led me may be doubtless modified by increased knowledge of new facts; but I venture to think, with some confidence, that the antiquity of occupation which I have postulated for the aborigines of both Australia and Tasmania in this continent will not be lessened.

  1. ↑ Davis, R. H., "The Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land," Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science. Tasmania and London, 1846.
  2. ↑ Fitzroy, Captain Robert, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of H.M. Ships "Adventure" and "Beagle" between the years 1826 and 1836, vol. ii. p. 654. London, 1839.
  3. ↑ Pritchard, Robert M., Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, vol. V. p. 214. London, 1847.
  4. ↑ Latham, Robert M., Elements of Comparative Philology. 1882.
  5. ↑ Eyre, Edward John, Journals of Exploration and Discovery into Central Australia, p. 405. London, 1845.
  6. ↑ M'Gillivray, John, Narrative of the Voyage of H.M. Ship "Rattlesnake" during the years 1846-1850, vol. ii. p. 81. London, 1852.
  7. ↑ Bonwick, Jas., The Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians, pp. 264, 265, 269. 1870.
  8. ↑ Giglioli, E. H., I Tasmaniani conni storice ed ethno ogici di un popolo estinto, p. 147. Milan, 1874.
  9. ↑ Ridley, Rev. William, Kamilaroi and other Australian Languages, p. 119. Government Printer, Sydney, 1875.
  10. ↑ Roth, H. Ling, The Aborigines of Tasmania, p. 224. London, 1890.
  11. ↑ Smyth, R. Brough, The Aborigines of Victoria, p. lxii. et infra. Melbourne, 1878.
  12. ↑ Curr, E. M., The Australian Race, pp. 158-190. Melbourne, 1866.
  13. ↑ Mathew, Rev. John, "The Australian Aborigines," Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol. xxiii. Sydney, 1889.
  14. ↑ Etheridge, R., junior, "Has Man a Geological History in Australia?" Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, Second Series, vol. v. 1896, pp. 259-266.
  15. ↑ Fraser, John, An Australian Language as Spoken by the Awabakal. Sydney, 1892.
  16. ↑ Rusden, G. W., History of Australia, second edition, pp. 84 et seq. Melbourne, 1897.
  17. ↑ Roth, H. Ling, op. cit. chap. iv.
  18. ↑ Id. chap. iv. p. 161.
  19. ↑ Tylor, E. B., "On the Tasmanians as Representatives of Palaeolithic Man," Journal Anthrop. Inst. November 1893.
  20. ↑ Op. cit. p. 146.
  21. ↑ M'Gillivray, op. cit. pp. 8l, 119, 125.
  22. ↑ Op. cit. vol. i. pp. 141-146.
  23. ↑ Stokes, J. Lort, Discoveries in Australia, etc., during the Voyage of H. M.S. "Beagle" in the years 1837-43, vol. i. p. 388. London, 1846.
  24. ↑ Op. cit. vol. i. p. 81.
  25. ↑ The Malay Archipelago. London, 1869.
  26. ↑ Guillemard, F. H. H., Australasia. Stanford Series, Cambridge, 1894.
  27. ↑ The Malay Archipelago.
  28. ↑ The Malay Archipelago.
  29. ↑ R. L. Jack and R. Etheridge, junior. Geology and Palaeontology of Queensland and New Guinea, vol. i. pp. 613, 614. 1892.
  30. ↑ Summary of Zoological, Botanical, and Geological Results of the Horne Expedition, p. 180. Melbourne, 1896.
  31. ↑ Op. cit.
  32. ↑ Op. cit. vol. i. p. 364.
  33. ↑ Op. cit. p. 45.
  34. ↑ Etheridge. R., junior, "Observations on Sand-dunes of the Coast of Victoria," Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, vol. xii. 1876.
  35. ↑ Bennett, Samuel, The History of Australian Discovery and Colonisation, p. 263. Sydney, 1867.
  36. ↑ Etheridge, R., junior, Professor T. W. K. David, and J. W. Grimshaw, op. cit. p. 23.
  37. ↑ Op. cit.
  38. ↑ Murray, R. A. F., Geology and Physical Geography of Victoria, p. 129. Melbourne, 1887.
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 Op. cit.
  40. ↑ R. Tate, "Anniversary Address," Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Adelaide, 1878-79, p. 69.
  41. ↑ In each case, in order to approximate the conditions of the "lead" with those of the River Murray, I have deducted from the results of boring the depth of "wash," and have also allowed 5 feet for the possible depth of water.
  42. ↑ On the authority of Mr. A. Everett, chief draughtsman, Department of Mines and Water Supply, Victoria.
  43. ↑ I am indebted to Mr. Jas. Travis, Secretary for Mines in Victoria, for this information.
  44. ↑ Mr. Stewart Murray, Chief Engineer of Water Supply, Victoria, has furnished me with these heights above the sea of the River Murray.
  45. ↑ Taken from the Admiralty Chart. Mr. Everett, chief draughtsman of the Department of Mines and Water Supply, has directed my attention to a paper read by Dr. Becker before the Philosophical Institute of Victoria, in which he points out the features referred to in this passage (vol. ii. p. 15).
  46. ↑ Johnston, Robt. M., Systematic Account of Geology of Tasmania, p. 365, Hobart, 1888.
  47. ↑ Op. cit. p. 377.
  48. ↑ Op. cit. p. 378.
  49. ↑ Codrington, Rev. R. H., The Melanesian Languages, p. 78. Oxford, 1885.
  50. ↑ Threlkeld, Rev. L. E., Key to the Structure of the Aboriginal Language, p. 82. Sydney, 1850.
  51. ↑ Crawfurd, John, Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language, with a Preliminary Dissertation. London, 1852.
  52. ↑ Op. cit. p. ccvi.
  53. ↑ Op. cit. vol. i. p. 141.
  54. ↑ Op. cit. vol. i. p. 388.
  55. ↑ Earl, Geo. Windsor, The Eastern Seas: Voyages and Adventures in the Malay Archipelago in 1832-33-34, p. 390. London, 1837.
  56. ↑ Op. cit. p. 377.
  57. ↑ Op. cit. pp. 11, 26, 31, 78.
  58. ↑ Op. cit.
  59. ↑ Flower, V. H., and Lydekker, R., An Introduction to the Study of Mammals, Living and Extinct, p. 748. London, 1891,
  60. ↑ Op. cit. p. 351.
  61. ↑ Keane, A. H., Ethnology, p. 254.
  62. ↑ Keane, A. H., op. cit., p. 418.
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