Relative sterility of the interbreeds between the Europeans and the Australians or Tasmanians

At the extremity of the world, and nearly at the antipodes of Great Britain, the English have been for more than half a century in contact with the Melanesian races, and specially with the Australians and Tasmanians. The relative degree of inferiority between these latter races, which differ sensibly in their physical character, may be open to discussion.[47] It is, however, generally admitted that they are inferior at least to all other races who have come in permanent contact with Europeans. The Hottentot race, which has long been considered to occupy the lowest degree, is evidently superior to them. The Hottentots, though refractory to education, have, at least, shown some degree of improvability, while the Australians seem absolutely incorrigible savages. The English have made the most persevering attempts to instruct them, but without any success. As they could not succeed with the adult population, they tried it with children of a tender age, and educated them with European children in orphan asylums; they have there learned to mumble some prayers, even to read and write; but, with approaching puberty, the young pupils succumbed to their savage instincts, and escaped into the woods to live again with their parents whom they had never known. At one time young Australians were transported to England, and confided to the Moravian brothers, who neglected no cares to improve them. “They have returned as brutish as they were before,” says M. Garnat; “a proprietor of a farm in the interior assured me, that he could never succeed to employ them in the most simple agricultural labour.”[48]

What is known of the Tasmanians scarcely permits us to consider them superior to the Australians. It must, however, be admitted that those unfortunate islanders of Van Diemen’s Land have not been so much attended to as the Australians. The English, so humane and patient as regards the latter, have committed upon the Tasmanian race, and that in the nineteenth century, execrable atrocities a hundred times less excusable than the hitherto unrivalled crimes of which the Spaniards were guilty in the fifteenth century in the Antilles.

These atrocities have terminated in a regular extermination,[49] caused, say the optimists, by the absolute unsociability of the Tasmanians.[50] This is not, in our opinion, a mitigatory circumstance, but from all these facts there results evidently, that, of all human beings, the Tasmanians are, or rather were, with the Australians, nearest to the brutal condition.

The investigation of the results obtained from the intermixture of Anglo-Saxons with these inferior races, may give us an idea what the crossing between the two most disparate branches of the human family may produce.

M. Omalius d’Halloy, President of the Belgian Senate, a venerable scholar, as well known for his geological as for his anthropological works, thus concludes the seventh chapter of his Treatise on the Races of Man: “It is remarkable that, though a considerable number of Europeans now inhabit the same countries as the Andamenes, no mention is made of the existence of hybrids resulting front their union.”[51] Under the name of Andamenes, d’Halloy comprises the Australians, Tasmanians, and all the blacks with woolly hair of Melanesia and Malasia.

It may, then, be inferred from this passage, either that the Europeans established in these countries have no connection with the native black women, which appears inadmissible, as we shall presently show, or that the intermixture between the two races is perfectly sterile. This latter assertion is, however, not altogether correct. True it is that the greater part of travellers make no mention whatever of hybrids of Melanesia; it is equally true that they are very rare, but still there exist some. Thus Quoy and Gaymard have seen one hybrid of an European and a Tasmanian woman.[52] Mr. Gliddon, who unfortunately does not cite the source from which he has drawn his information, announces that until the year 1835, when the Tasmanians were exterminated, there were only known, in the whole of Tasmania, two adult Mulattoes.[53] This indicates either that few were born, or that they died at an early age, for the colony, founded in 1803 by a population at first almost exclusively masculine, had, in a few years, considerably increased by the arrival of convicts and free settlers, nearly all males. Mr. Jacquinot, after having announced that there were no hybrids in Australia, adds, “In Hobart Town, and in all Tasmania, there are no hybrids either.”[54] No other author has, to our knowledge, mentioned Tasmanian hybrids.

The intermixture of the English with the native women of Australia has not been more productive. “There are scarcely,” says Jacquinot, “any Mulattoes of Australians and English mentioned.” This absence of Mulattoes between two peoples living in contact on the same soil, proves incontestably the difference of species. It may also be noticed that if such cross-breeds really existed, they would be easily recognised.[55] Mr. Lesson, who lived about two months in Sydney and its environs, and who made several excursions among the natives, mentions only one cross-breed, the offspring of a white man and the wife of a chief named Bongari.[56] Cunningham, a great defender of the Australian race—which, by the way, has finished by killing, and it is even said eating him—has written two volumes on New South Wales, in which neither directly nor indirectly is there mention made of more than one single Mulatto, and it happens that this single Mulatto is precisely the same of whom Mr. Lesson speaks.[57] No statistical writer, nor any historian, enumerates cross-breeds among the Australian population. No where, nevertheless, are the classes of society more numerous and more distinct. The officials, the colonists born in Europe, the colonists born in Australia, the convicts, the emancipated, the descendants of convicts, etc.; form as many classes envious of and despising each other, they dispute their respective privileges, and give each other more or less picturesque nick names. There are sterlings, currencies,[58] the legitimate, the illegitimate,[59] the pure Merinos, the convicts, the titled, the untitled, the canaries, the government men, the bushrangers, the emancipists,[60] and some other classes of immigrants or convicts. In this rich vocabulary there is not a single word to designate the Mulattoes. Yet in all countries where races of different colours mix, the language of the locality contains always distinct denominations for Mulattoes of various shades. Nothing of the kind exists in Australia. There is even a class of white men, the legitimates, which have also the name of cross-breeds.[61] This word everywhere else would designate Mulattoes, in Australia it means European convicts, it being thought impossible that the rare issue of an intermixture between the two races should ever become a part of the population.

It is, however, not merely in New South Wales that we are struck with the paucity of cross-breeds between Europeans and Australians; Mr. McGillivray mentions a similar fact as regards the port of Essingen, an English colony of Northern Australia.[62]

We may, therefore, accept as an authenticated fact, that the cross-breeds between Europeans and native women are very rare in Australia, as they were in Tasmania when the Tasmanian race existed.

This fact is so much in opposition to the general opinion on the intermixture of human races, that before attributing it to physiological causes, we must inquire whether it is not owing to some other causes.

We might be tempted, for instance, to suppose, that there was no intermixture, and that the ugliness and dirty habits of the native women bridled the sexual desire of the Europeans. This has been advanced, not by travellers who have precisely asserted the contrary, but by honest and sensible reasoners, whose refined taste revolted at the aspect of the portraits and busts of the Australian women. It would be a serious fact that a whole race should have such an irresistible repugnance to another, for nature has only inspired with such a feeling of repulsion beings of different species, and man is certainly of all animals the least exclusive. Is there in our seaports a prostitute sufficiently ugly and old to frighten the sailor? Is it not known that the Hottentots, whose ugliness is proverbial, have intermixed with the Europeans of South Africa? We must then set aside such a supposition, which is not founded upon a correct knowledge of human nature. There are, moreover, some documents, which induce us to believe that the Europeans of Australia and Van Diemen’s Land have intermixed with the native women.

According to Malte-Brun the population of the colony of Sydney amounted in 1821 to 37,068 individuals, thus distributed.[63]

Free settlers, or liberated convicts,men12,608
Free”settlers,” or liberate”women3,422
Free”settlers,” or liberate”children7,224
Convicts of both sexes13,814
———
37,068

Thus there were among the free adults only twenty-seven women for a hundred men, that is to say, that seventy-three men in a hundred were absolutely prevented from marrying.

The relative proportion of convicts of the two sexes is not indicated in the above account, but it is known that originally the male convicts formed the great majority, and that there were ever afterwards far fewer women than men.

In 1825[64] the number of inhabitants amounted to nearly 50,000; but from this period the convicts were mostly sent to Van Diemen’s Land, and the white population of Australia diminished rapidly from not receiving regular reinforcements. In 1836 there were only 36,598 of all classes.

Freemen13,456 } 20,930
Fr”women7,474
Convictsmen14,135 } 15,668
Con”women1,513
———
36,598

There were thus, among the convicts, only one woman to nine men, and among the free population one woman to two men.[65]

Hence may be explained the small increase of the population during the first periods of the colony and the considerable decrease which corresponds to the period from 1825 to 1830. In 1845, according to Henricq,[66] New South Wales had, since its foundation, already received 90,000 convicts of both sexes, beyond an unknown but considerable number of voluntary emigrants, yet the whole population consisted only of 85,000 individuals. At the same period there were in the free class but three females to five males, and among the convicts one woman to twelve men. In the colony of Hobart Town, in Tasmania, the disproportion was somewhat less, for there were five free females to seven males, and one female convict to twelve men.

It is difficult to believe that the free men deprived of women were all gifted with the virtue of continency. But admitting this for a moment, we cannot entertain the same opinion with regard to the convicts, which are certainly not chosen from the most virtuous classes of Great Britain. It must be noticed that the female convicts are not public women in the colony. The government accords certain advantages to convicts who contract legitimate marriages; this is the first step towards their liberation, and when a vessel arrives with a cargo of females they are readily espoused by the convicts. Nine-tenths, therefore, of the latter are entirely deprived of white women. On the other hand they procure gins (the name of Australian females) with the greatest facility, and though it may not be known that many of them cohabit with the females, it may be easily divined and affirmed. “The women of the people of Port Jackson,” says Lesson, “look out for and excite the white men, and prostitute themselves for a glass of brandy.”[67]

After observing that these tribes live chiefly from the produce of the chase, and come to town to exchange their fish for fish-hooks, bread, or rum, Cunningham adds that this trade gives rise to scenes of debauchery, that the prostitution of native females with the whites had assumed considerable proportions, “considering that the Australians lend their women to the convicts for a slice of bread or a pipe of tobacco.”[68] It is useless to cite other testimony after the chief defender of the Australian race has thus expressed himself.

It is thus perfectly certain that numerous alliances have taken place and are taking place between the Europeans and the native women. The inhabitants of the colony, who could not but be aware of it, have had recourse to a singular hypothesis, accepted by Cunningham and recently by Waitz. They have imagined that the Australian husbands, excited by jealousy, killed all the new-born children of mixed blood; and to these hypothetical massacres (of which there is no proof whatever) they attribute the rarity of cross-breeds. In order that this tale should acquire some probability, it is first requisite that all the Australian women should be under the dominion of jealous and ferocious husbands, and that none of the females had the maternal instinct sufficiently developed to save her child from the fury of her husband. Cunningham, in accepting this explanation, forgets that he in the same page relates that the Australians prostitute their gins to the first comer for a pipe of tobacco. Such beings would not feel themselves much dishonoured by the birth of the strange child. But here is an instance proving that the Australians are not altogether devoid of humour; showing, at least, that they have no notion of conjugal honour. Bongarri, of whom we have already spoken, and who in 1825 was the most celebrated chief of the Australian hordes of Port Jackson, treated as his son the offspring of the adulterous intercourse of his gin with a convict of the place. When he was asked how it came to pass that his son had such a fair complexion, he replied jocularly, “that his wife was very fond of white bread and had partaken too much of it.” He invariably returned the same answer to inquirers.[69] If a warrior chief covered with honourable scars[70] attaches such small importance to the fidelity of his wife, and jokes about his dishonour, it is scarcely admissible that the men of his tribe should be more susceptible in this respect. Yet this very chief found it, according to Cunningham,[71] quite natural that, according to the Australian custom, the weakest of two new-born twins should be killed.

This custom has been cited to show that the Australian women attach no importance to the lives of their children, and that, consequently, they would offer no resistance to the massacre of the new-born Mulattoes. A race of beings, where the females do not love their young, would scarcely be a human race. The custom of preserving only one twin, and to sacrifice the other on the day of its birth, seems improbable and inexplicable; but taking into consideration the famishing condition of the Australians, the uncertainty and the insufficiency of their alimentation, the absolute want of social organisation, and the material difficulty attending the bringing up of only one child, it may be imagined that the mother, incapable, perhaps, of suckling one baby, resigns herself to sacrificing one child to save the other. There is, therefore, no absolute parallel between the custom in regard to twins and that of the pretended massacre of cross-breeds. If it be still supposed that the natives of the environs of Sydney, perverted by their intercourse with convicts, and exasperated by their violence, have adopted this revolting habit, we should even then only admit that such a degradation is merely local in its application. Certain abominations spread from place to place, and are transmitted from people to people; but a usage so contrary to natural instinct, does not arise simultaneously, and under the same form in different parts of a country. The Australians, however, of Sydney, have no means of transmitting their customs either to the natives of Tasmania, or of Port Essington in North Australia. Dr. Waitz supposes that even seven hundred miles from Sydney the natives sacrifice all young Mulattoes. This supposition is rather hazardous, specially as the traveller whom he quotes merely says that these Mulattoes do not appear to be capable of development.[72]

We conclude from this perhaps too lengthy discussion, that the murder of the Australian Mulattoes is a vulgar tale. Admitting that such murders occur occasionally, or even that they are frequent, there should even then be many Mulattoes in Australia provided the intermixture be very prolific. We can in the above strange explanation only find a confirmation, and a very strong one too, of the fact we have established, namely, that the cross-breeds are rare in Australia. If this fact had not been perfectly evident, there would not have been any occasion to explain it, and Mr. Cunningham, who has made such strenuous efforts to reinstate the natives, would not have charged them with such a terrible accusation.

We have not exhausted the list of hypotheses advanced, to explain the nearly constant sterility attending the intercourse between Australians and Tasmanians and the English. It has also been said that for the most part the intercourse between the two races was accidental, momentary, and that consequently the native woman has a much greater chance to become pregnant by her savage husband than by her European lovers, and that the rarity of Australian Mulattoes had no other cause. M. de Freycinet seems to have accepted this explanation. “No permanent alliances are formed between the two peoples, though we find here and there some Mulattoes; but these are merely the result of some transitory connections of Europeans with Australian women.”[73]