Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/135

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Maker of All, as a ray of true light which has paBsed down -through niariy generations, may well suggest to their Chris- Itian fellow-countrymen, that this branch of the family of man has heen from the beginning an object of our Heavenly Father's preserving mercy/ ' It would be presumptuous in any ono ol)server to pro- nounce dogmatically on such a subject. But long acquaint- ance with the perishing race, and frequent conversations with them on their mysteries, lead the author to believe that Mr. Ridle}^ w^as right — that waning tradition of the L Creator survived more or less in memory, and that the rites fand ceremonies preserved amongst the Austvalians^^ were the relics of a cult carried to the continent by the ancestors of the nomads who were roaming over it when the Enghsh took possession. By ordinary observers who never sought to penetrate the inner mind of the race they were deemed al)Bohitt'ly without religious ideas» but their dread of evil spirits was recognized. Without doubt much of the religious belief held by the first voyagers from the Arafura Sea was dissipated in the course of ages of dispersion. That the race was of one origin is capable of proof by language and many ceremonies. That those ceremonies were remnants of the ritual of the decayed religion can liardly be douijted. Nor are the ' ^Australians the only instance in which incrustations of ibrms have been allowed to stifle the essence of rehgion among men. The vine, which in their native woods climbs I over and eventually strangles the life of a tree, and stands proudly in its stead, is a fit emblem of the Australian Hunter Kiver wonl Beumby. By giving the ItaUan pronnnciation to Biumbai^ the soiuid is obtained which Tlirelkebl intended to convey, Aa Mr, ThrelUeld^fl laljoura have been ijublished this explanation ib necfesaaiy. '" A similar coiiciiiaion waia reached in another quarter of the globe. In A paper read by Sir Bartle Frere in London to the Royal Colonial Institnte (22Tid Feb. 1881)^ he said it was ** irresistibly borne in upon anyliody who carefully atndiea the habits and cliaracteriatica of the Soutli African races, that they are all, without exception, the degraded descendants of racea who have once been in a state of higher civiliKation. By * degraded* I mean simply men who have lost what their ancestors one© poBscsBed of higher ciiUure and more complete civilization, rather than men who have succeeded an ancestry ruder and kaa hiimanized. We find them, in fact, in Hoiith Africa descending in the scale of lunnanity and not aaeending. This, hov^ever, is a matter of opinion, and 1 only state the result at which, in common with many tdose observers of these raeea, 1 Vka.<i vjk.vfw^A^