by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully through a long life—­it is of record.  He gathers to himself another wife by the same processes, beats and bangs her as a daily diversion, and by and by lays down his life in defending her from some outside harm—­it is of record.  He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children, and will kill another of his children because the family is large enough without it.  His delicate stomach turns, at certain details of the white man’s food; but he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish.  He is a sociable animal, yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law goes by.  He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is not acquainted with.  He knows all the great and many of the little constellations, and has names for them; he has a symbol-writing by means of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a correct eye for form and expression, and draws a good picture; he can track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man’s eye cannot discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without the model—­if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy years; and by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel after teaching.  Within certain limits this savage’s intellect is the alertest and the brightest known to history or tradition; and yet the poor creature was never able to invent a counting system that would reach above five, nor a vessel that he could boil water in.  He is the prize-curiosity of all the races.  To all intents and purposes he is dead—­in the body; but he has features that will live in literature.

Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Government, contributed to its archives a report of his personal observations of the aboriginals which has in it some things which I wish to condense slightly and insert here.  He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their judgment of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also.  He has seen an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force ten or fifteen yards, by professional bowlers, and successfully dodge them or parry them with his shield during about half an hour.  One of those balls, properly placed, could have killed him; “Yet he depended, with the utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his agility.”