A MIXED RACE

West Coast Times, Issue 10670, 24 December 1897, Page 4

A MIXED RACE

] Mr A. Meston, protector of the the aborigines in Queensland, has furnished to the. Home Secretary (Sir H. Tozer) a report about the Gayndah blacks published in the Brisbane Courier, from which the following extracts as taken:-- ' " I was agreeably surprised to find the Gayndah aboriginals in a condition much better than hud been represented. They appear to be less urgently in need of assistance than any bracks I had seen in the fettled districts. They were camped in a beautiful and healthy situation. Their camps were superior to any I have seen elsewhere in the colony, being clean and commodious and thoroughly weather- ; proof. The blacks themselves were cleau j and tidy and healthy-looking enough to show that they are not suffering from etarvation or much sickness of a.iy kind. Painfully conspicuous are the number of half-breeds, quadroons, and octoroon?, some of the younger girls being sufficiently {light-colored to be mistaken for Europeans. The Chinese strain is appare it in a decided majority. Some of the young girls are of fine physique, and have beautiful eyes. With regu1 lar diet and proper care these girls would grow into very attractive womanhood. More than one respectable European resident is married to a woman showing both aboriginal and Chinese ancestry, and those women have made excellent wives. It is certainly not desirable to take those who show more of the European and Chinese than the aboriginal parent and mix them with aboriginals in one camp |on a reserve. It is clearly necessary to make some special provision for thebe remarkably light-colored descendants of aboriginal mothers. At Gayudah the black, white and yellow races have crossed and re-crossed until they have produced every intermediate ethnological type. There is probably no such astonishing blend in any other part of Australia. It is certainly not desirable that such a blend be perpetuated. These light-colored girls are placed in a false and indefinable intermediate position between their an. cestral races. Like Jupiter's cradle, or Mahomet's coffin, they are midway between earth and heaven, inhabitants of neither They ought certainly not to be mated with full-blooded aboriginals, and yet if left to grow up in their present enviionment they have not much prospect of mating with husbands of a whito race. Their usual late is to become the victims of white men and Chinamen, who leave them to bear all the responsibilities of any contingent circumstances. Consequently these li^ht-coloved girls and women are placed in an unfortunate position, demanding our earnest sympathy and serious attention." '