the fern, and the European dog the Maori dog—as the Maori rat was destroyed by the Pakeha rat—so our people, also, will be gradually supplanted and exterminated by the Europeans."
A Buffalo paper was some time ago exulting in the thought of the monopoly of the world by Americans, saying, "Sixty years ago there were only six millions in America (U.S.); now there are twenty-six millions. In another century they will be sixty millions, and they will spread over the earth until the globe be theirs!" It is this heartless egoism of our common race of Britain and America that so shocks the benevolent mind, and chills the aspiration for a better policy toward the native peoples. Major Warburton could tell the Buffalo editor that with his Indian of the prairies, "no soothing voice of affection fell upon his ear, no gentle kindness wooed him from his savage isolation. The hand of irresistible power was stretched out,—not to raise him from his low estate, and lead him into the brotherhood of civilized man,—but to thrust him away with cruel and unjust disdain." The Indian Bible which Elliott translated can now be read by no one. With such indifference and recklessness among the civilized, we are ready to believe what Dr. Wilson, in his "Prehistoric Man," asserts: "Whole tribes and nations have disappeared, without even a memorial mound, or pictured grave post, to tell when the last of the race is returning to the earth from whence he sprang." Dr. Gliddon gives utterance to the same thought: "Who can count how many races have already disappeared! What populations, of which we ignore the history, the very existence, have quitted the globe, without leaving on it their name, at least for a trace."
Strong drink has played an important part, as we have seen, in the decline of aboriginal races. Sir Francis Head, in a despatch to Lord Glenelg, said, "Wherever and whenever the two races come in contact, it is sure to prove fatal to the red man. If we stretch forth the hand of friendship, the liquid fire it offers him to drink proves still more destructive than our wrath." The King of Basutos, when converted to our faith, prohibited the introduction of alcoholic liquors into his dominions. Other chiefs of Native races have tried the same expedient, but while traders and missionaries themselves use the drink, it is in vain to maintain such prohibitory laws, especially as a declining race
