AMONG THE BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1989, 10 April 1890, Page 40

AMONG THE BOOKS.

AN UNREVISED EDITION OF MAN.

In the preface to his deeply interesting volume " Among Cannibals : An Account of Four Years' Travels in Australia and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland." Dr Lumholtz writes : "It has been my purpose to present a faithful picture, based on my own obeervations, of the We, manners, and customs of the Australian aborigines, from theft birth and infancy to their old age and death ; and thus to rescue, for the science of ethnography, facts concerning tribes that have never before come into contact with white men ; and that, within a generation or two, will have disappeared from the face of the earth. While making these anthropological studies, I also succeeded in securing a collection of zoological specimens, some of which are new to science, and all of which may be seen in the museums of the Ohristiania University. ... In August 1881 I entered upon my first journey of discovery, in the coarse of which I penetrated about 800 miles into Western Queensland, but the results in no wise corresponded to the hardships I had to endure. I thereupon selected Northern Queensland as the field of my chief explorations, and here I spent 14 months in constant travel and study .... and there I lived alone among a race of people whose culture— if, indeed, they can be said to have any culture whatever— must be characterised as the lowest to be found among the whole genus Jiomo sapieiis." We hardly know which most to admire, the scientific enthusiasm prompting Dr Lumholtz to the undertaking, or the courageous self-reliance,

endurance, and determination shown in oairying it to a successful issue. As the narrative of a one-man expedition, we do not recall to mind any account of modern travel so surpassingly rich in varied interest and adventure, so unique in strange experiences and descriptions, and, at the same time, occasioning so little necessity for the exercise of faith and hope. Much and often as the geography, flora, fauna, and aborigines of Australia have been depicted, they have never been more faithfully pourtrayed than in this volume.

" Blackfellow " is as familiar a figure in stories of Australian life as Man Friday in "Robinson Crusce"; but the popular notion of " Jacky " is of the wofully romantic order. The chivalric gratitude of the " Jacky " of fiction is as absolutely mythical— to put an extreme case — as Sir William Harcourt's political modesty and consistency ; all the facts are against him. Dr Lumholtz tells us that " a conspicuous trait in the character of the Australian native is treachery, and the colonists are wont to give the stranger the warning, " Never have a black fellow behind you," "Nor should one as a rule rely on them." In spite, however, of the warning— a warning emphasised almost daily — Dr Lumholtz decided to cast in his lot with them, and if he did not live their life he did most unpleasantly fare their fare. No other European traveller has so thoroughly entered into the arcana of their social and tribal existence in its absolutely free and unrestrained conditions. So-called " civilised " blacks are to be met with everywhere in Australia, but the various natives with whom Dr Lumholtz associated from time to time, as necessity compelled, were as truly primitive in their habits as the beasts of the field. Between the promptings of desire and its fulfilment there is no barrier but fear of physical consequences, nor does it seem possible to raise any. The inland aborigine is totally destitute of civilisable basis; a creature of fears and wild impulses ; unimpressionable of a beneficent deity, he has, nevertheless, conjured up a devil, a being demanding piacular rites ; but, except this form of impalpable restraint, if restraint it can be called, the blackfellow is impervious to moral influence ; gratitude is in every sense with him a sense of favours to come.

Darwin says : — " When civilised nations come into contact, with barbarians thestruggle is but short, excepting where a dangerous climate helps the native race." In this lies the sole chance for the Australian aborigines ; contact with the while man ensures destruction; extermination by force is quite unnecessary, the white man's vices wipe out the native quite as effectually as, if less speedily than, the rifle. " The two races oannot exist together. If the Australian attacks the whites or their herds he is shot ; if he tries to secure the friendship of the white men

his ruin is no less certain The philanthropist is filled with sadness uhen he sees the original inhabitants of this strange land succumbing according to the inevitable law of degeneration We, probably, are not wide of the mark when we assume that 50 years ago there were about 200,000 natives in Australia, their number i 3 now estimated at about 60,000." The philanthropist must, however, console himself with the fact that it is the melancholy terminus of all human destiny, black or white, the weakest to the wall ; the survival of the fittest is the disguised beneficence by which Nature prevents the solution of continuity. Into the manners and customs of this singular and deliquescing race, Dr Lumholtz enters fully, and most remarkable and unique are the accounts he gives of them ; to the ethnologist they are profoundly significant both in a past and future sense.

The fauna of Australia— the most peculiar iD the world— Dr Lumholtz describes not less comprehensivelj than minutely; indeed, so thorough was his research and investigation in this branch, that he succeeded in adding no less than four new mammals to the zoological catalogue; the richly-merited reward of toil, travel, and danger, demanding a patience and energy almost superhuman. There is a fearful monotony of scenery to be encountered in Australia, scrub and forest, forest and scrub, illimitable plains, shadeless trees and waterless valleys, make up the picture. Of sport there is none worth the name, hunting, trapping, and treeing the various marsupials is all there is in the main. To.the ornithologist and naturalist it is a land of unceasing wonder and delight. It i 9 a land where Nature seems to have deposited the discarded patterns of an earlier creation, so perfectly sul generis is it all. A long time has passed since Sydney Smith made merry over the beast with a false uterus ; but what would have been thought of the ornithorhyncus, a creature half bird, half beast, which lays eggs, hatches them, and suckles its young after the fashion of a mammal, at the breast, a creature so extraordinary and perplexing that when the first specimen brought to England was shown to an eminent naturalist, he expressed himself as hurt that anyone should have attempted to " deceive him with such an unfeeling imposition, ' a thing sown together 1 '" To the botanist, entomologist, Dr Lumholtz brings some very notable and original contributions, and these almost alone are sufficient to testify of his fitness for the work he took in hand. For the student of the natural history of Australia it is at once a field manual and text book.

The work is embellished with upwards of 120 illustrations and ooloured plates of the choicest execution, many of them from photographs taken on the spot, of scenes and events not likely to be again witnessed. Two admirable maps serve to show the extent and direction of the author's wanderings into lands not previously trodden by any white man. — Land and Water.