CONFUTED BY EXPERIENCE.

221

roots, and to capture animals fitted for food, has been demonstrated over and over again, but at no time more forcibly than when the portion of my party, under Mr. Walker, were coming overland from Gantheaume Bay to Perth. In this case, six full-grown men, provided with knives, fishing-hooks and lines, a kettle, vessels to hold water and cook their food, arms, and a small quantity of ammunition, and many of them possessing considerable experience in the bush, must all have perished from hunger had not timely assistance reached them; and this from their ignorance as to which of the productions surrounding them would serve to support life, and not from neglect in making the requisite experiments to endeavour to ascertain this, for the poor fellows ate every thing they could find which appeared to afford sustenance; yet notwithstanding all the comparative advantages they were in possession of, if the relief sent from Perth had not reached them, death must have overtaken all. The same result has frequently occurred under nearly similar circumstances. If then men, full-grown, in the complete possession of all their faculties, provided with fire and many useful implements, and aided by considerable experience,-from ignorance of the natural productions of a country, and the means of procuring these, die from hunger ere they can learn how to supply their wants, is it probable that an unarmed, naked, untaught man, who knew not even how to make his senses act in concert, until he had from experience acquired this knowledge, could by any possibility have avoided a

fate, which would inevitably overtake the European in possession of all his superior energies of mind and character, if he chance not to fall in with friendly natives.

The laws of this people are unfitted for the government of a single isolated family, some of them being only adapted for the regulation of an assemblage of families; they could, therefore, not have been a series of rules given by the first father to his children : again, they could not have been rules given by an assembly of the first fathers to their children, for there are these remarkable features about them, that some are of such a nature as to compel those subject to them to remain in a state of barbarism, whilst others are adapted to the wants and necessities of savage races, as well as to prevent too close intermarriages of a people, who preserve no written or symbolical records of any kind; and in all these instances the desired ends are obtained by the simplest means, so that we are necessitated to admit that when these rules were planned, it was foreseen that the race submitted to them would be savages, and under this foresight the necessary provision was made for the event.

We cannot argue that this race was originally in a state of civilization, and that from the introduction of certain laws amongst them, the tendency of which was to reduce them to a state of barbarism, or from some other cause, they had gradually sunk to their present condition; for in that case, how could those laws which provide solely for the necessities of a

OF THE NATIVE LAWS.

223

people in their present state, have been introduced amongst them? Neither could they have been invented according to necessities and emergencies which a savage state has produced, for under such circumstances it is impossible that they could have been promulgated and enforced throughout so wide a range of country, and amongst a dispersed race of barbarians of such a variety of dispositions, who acknowledge no chief or lawgiver, and are so characteristically impatient of restraint.

Without in this place attempting to form and to support any theories founded upon the views I have just put forward, I may state my impression that it would seem, from the laws and customs of the natives of Australia, to have been willed that this people should until a certain period remain in their present condition, which is consequently not the result of mere accident, or of the natural constitution of man. From the peculiar nature of their institutions, it was impossible that they could emerge from a state of barbarism whilst these remained in force, and from the tenacity and undeviating strictness with which they are retained, and the strong power they hold over the savage mind, it seems equally impossible that they could have been abrogated, or even altered, until the race subjected to them came into contact with a civilized community, whose presence might exercise a new influence, under which the ancient system would expire or be swept away.

We may, I think, fairly produce this as a proof,

that the progress of civilization over the earth has been directed, set bounds to, and regulated by certain laws, framed by Infinite wisdom; and although such views may by some be deemed visionary, I feel some confidence that these laws are as certain and definite as those which control the movements of the heavenly bodies. I believe, moreover, that they are capable, in some degree, of being studied and reduced to order, although no attempt to do so has hitherto been made; and the institutions of barbarous races, their probable origin, the effects they have upon the people submitted to them, the evidences of design which they contain, and other similar questions, are those points to which in this enquiry attention should be particularly directed.

The progress of events, and the rapid march of science in our country are very wonderful, but the progress of events in the eastern hemisphere at the present moment is still more amazing: Christianity and civilization are marching over the world with a rapidity not fully known or estimated by any one nation; the English are scarcely aware what has been effected by their own missionaries and commerce, and they are utterly ignorant of what has been already done, and is now doing, by the Americans, Dutch, and Portuguese.

CHAPTER XI.

LAWS OF RELATIONSHIP, MARRIAGE, AND

INHERITANCE.

RELATIONSHIP AND MARRIAGE-DIVISION OF FAMILIES-LAW OF MARRIAGE-COINCIDENT INSTITUTIONS AMONGST THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS-ORIGIN OF FAMILY NAMES -SECOND COINCIDENCE-BETROTHMENTS-WIDOWS-OBLIGATIONS OF RELATIONSHIP-DIFFICULTY OF PURSUING

THE

ENQUIRY-PROPERTY

VESTED IN INDIVIDUALS

UNIVERSALITY OF THIS CUSTOM-LINE OF INHERITANCE CERTAIN LAWS REGARDING FOOD.

Traditional Laws of Relationship and Marriage.-ONE of the most remarkable facts connected with the natives, is that they are divided into certain great families, all the members of which bear the same names, as a family, or second name: the principal branches of these families, so far as I have been able to ascertain, are the

Ballaroke
Tdondarup

Ngotak

Nagarnook

Nogonyuk

Mongalung

Narrangur.