AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17408, 20 March 1922, Page 8

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.

rapidly vanishing race,

(from otjr own correspondent.)

SYDNEY. March 9,

At the present rate at. which tho aborigines of Australia are dying out, it is thought that, in New South Wales at least, where they were onco so numerous, the children of to-day will live to see the end of the last fullblooded black man and the last black woman. It was estimated by Governor Phillip and other early authorities that the coast between Botany Bay and Broken Bay, and for many miles inland—roughly, the boundaries of the Sydney metropolitan area —supported about 5000 aborigines when the first settlers arrived. With 5000 in the now metropolitan district, then, 50,000 or 60j000 the whole State—for the Riverina, the Darling river and its tributaries, and the northern rivers districts carried large tribes —is probably not beyond tho mark. Some have estimated the population to have been very much larger. No accurate enumeration of the blacks was, however, made till 40 years ago, by which time scores of tribes had perished altogether. At that time the remnants of the surviving tribes numbered about 7000, and they have dwindled since to scarcely more than 1000, but while the full bloods are moving so rapidly toward extinction, the half-castes' are increasing. The blacks are simply withering away by the blight of European contact, and it would seem that nothing could save them. Their primitive life, so like that of our own pakeolithic ancestors; their profound knowledge of beasts and birds, of herb 3 and: trees; their complex and efficient social system; their marriage laws and their sign language, all have gone without record, and apparently without regret. No scientific body or institution has a care for Australian ethnology, and there is not a single scientific student at woiik upon it.