WILD WHITES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 93, 15 May 1909, Page 3

WILD WHITES.

'i'liu wild white men of tile vast "Xcvcr Xcvcr Land" of Xorthern Australia, (o whom the llev. T. Major is conducting a mission, are known to our coloninl cousins as "whit,, black-fellows." I an expression that, while involving a certain contradiction in terms, never-1 tholess (its' them to a nicety. | iSomo of those voluntary outcasts I from their kind arc present-diiv iu»itivc>s j from justice. Others are the descendants of runamay convicts who "took to! the bush"-in the had old days of transportation. They live amongst the aborigines, aping their niannevs ami enstoius, and subsisting On the same always scanty and frequently loathsome food. According to Mr. Majiir. they arc exceedingly shy and difficult of apliroacli, llnciiiff at the tirst sign of a "tame" white man. The mere idea of individuals of our race and color sinking to this low 'evel is revolting. Yet the Australian white' lilackfellow luis his counterpart in other' HUarterK of the globe, notably in the (Imana hinterland, where whole colonies of while savages are known to be interspersed amongst the bush negroes, than whom no more degraded race exists anywhere on earth. Like the wild whites 01 the Xcvor Never Land, too, these unhappy people are descended from runaway convicts, mostly .French. Then, again, there "are the small isolated communities of white. Indians, so called, which recent research ,has revealed living at various points near the head maters of the Amazon. Ethnologists have been completely puzzled as to their origin. They possess the Caucasian features, and in the dialects they speak can be traced many more or less archaic Spanish words and phrases This has led to the theory being broached that they are die descendants ol some of the followers cf Orellana. the discoverer of the Amazon, some hundreds of whom are known to have de- 1 scrted their leader and wandered aside into th pathless forests during the fi-st stage of his arduous and jouniey.-Homu paper, .