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THE ABORIGINES OF AUSTRALIA. 9 Many old men have three and four wives, while the young continue bachelors ; the long suckling of children and infanticide both tend to keep down population. Women near their confinement retire to be attended by women and to be secluded. After birth, the husband attends on his wife, and often nurses the infant, which, if spared, is most affectionately watched over; but infanticide is very common, so much so that nearly one-half to one-tbird of the infants are destroyed, and that in a shocking manner. Red hot embers are stuffed into the child’s ears, and the orifice is closed with sand, and then the body is burnt; sometimes a waddy is resorted to. If there be twins, or malformation, or illegitimate children, they are generally destroyed. When native children are born, they are nearly as white as Europeans. Girls have children at the early age of fourteen. The girls wear an apron of fringe until they bear their first child, and if they have no child, the husband burns the apron, probably as an exposure. The evil of prostitution is very great. The women are in some districts given up to promiscuous intercourse with the youths at certain seasons. Relationships are very intricate, and difficult to unravel. They have the Tamilian system, which obtains amongst North-American Indians, and the Telugu and Tamil tribes in the East Indies. A man looks upon the offspring of his brother as his own sons and daughters, while ho only con siders those of his sister in the more distant relationship of nephews and nieces. So, also, a woman counts her sister’s children as her own, but those of her brother by a kinship similar to nephews and nieces. Thus, children look upon their father’s brother in the light of a father, but his sister as their aunt merely; whilst their mother’s sister ranks as a female parent, but her brother as only their uncle. The scale of relationship is as follows :—Nanghai is my father ; Nainkowais my mother ; Ngaiowe is your father ; Ninkuwe is your mother ; Yikowalle is his father ; Narkowalle is his mother. Widow is Yortangi; widower is Randi; fatherless is Kukathe; motherless is Kulgutye. One who has lost a child, Mainmaiyari; one bereaved of a brother or sister, Muntyuli. Erom this scheme of relationship it seems possible that some came from Southern India—were driven southward by the Malays. Names are changeable, the parents sometimes bearing the name of the child. They are also significant—Putteri is the end ; Ngiampinyeri, belonging to the back or loins ; Maratinyeri, belonging to emptiness. Property always descends from father to son. Mr. Taplin observes that the general idea that there is a law by which the savage must disappear before civilized man is not true, and instances the South American and Dutch colonizations as still preserv ing the aboriginal races. English settlers go forth to exercise their freedom, and the Government does not strictly watch their actions, while it makes no particular law for the aboriginal races suitable for their particular situation. English law is forced upon them ; whereas the French and Dutch Governments watchfully manage and regulate everything—the governing power goes with them ; the roads, police, everything is kept under the governing power, even the aborigines are under the same. This, no doubt, in some degree has its influences, while, on the other hand, the native laws to which they were obedient are removed, and the power of the chiefs is destroyed, so that the aboriginal is placed between two influences, the one to which he had always been subject is destroyed, and anew law of which he knows nothing is substituted, and thus he is left in a position of doubt and perplexity, while the food, drink, clothing, and vices of the whites soon gain supremacy. Nothing can be more disgraceful to a civilized and professing Christian people than this wholesale ruin of their fellow-men, which they attribute to a law, but which is in fact a consequence criminally brought about by our depravity, selfishness, and want of Christian principles. The writer concludes his remarks by saying that they are not an irreligious race; he believes that nothing but the Gospel can save them from extinction. A few extracts from the lecture of Gideon Lang, delivered in Melbourne, will throw some more light upon the habits of this race. He says the inhabitants of the whole continent form one people, governed by the same laws and customs, with some allowance for the difference of localities; every tribe, however, has its own district. The government is most arbitrary, composed of old men and powerful men, but degrading to women, the old men often having from five to seven wives, which privilege is denied to young men. B
