A Dying Race

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 23, 11 June 1908, Page 23

A Dying Race

There are now only about two hundred and fifty left out of the great numbers of aboriginals that occupied Victoria (Australia) when (in 1804) the annalist of the passing convict settlement at Sorrento took down his harp and prophesied that- the black man and ' the bounding kangaroo ' would remain ' for ages ' lords of that impossible land. The' last' Tasmanian black passed ' afay in the ewigkeit ' over thirty years ago. The Victorian aboriginal is following him fast to extinction. The New South "Wales, Queensland, South Australian blacks, and even the sturdy Western Australian, are also fast melting away under the blighting contact of the pale-face and his vices. The Spaniard and the Portuguese knew how to christianise, civilise, and preserve in great measure the aboriginal peoples whom they conquered. Introduced vices and diseases, neglect of the uplifting influences of religion, and (at times) the operation of the principle that ' the only good Injun is the dead Injun '—these are the chief causes that have combined to make the track of non-Catholic colonisation so often a cemetery -for aboriginal peoples.