Amongst all the tribes whose hunting grounds are between Cape Arnheim, and Cambridge Gulf, the traces of small-pox can be seen unmistakeably on many of the old men. Some are blind, and deeply pitted, others but lightly marked. Apparently the disease has worn itself out, for only the oldest members of the tribes have suffered. None seem to have it now, nor are the marks of the disease to be seen on the middle-aged men. The ravages of this scourge must have been confined to the coast tribes, as no evidence of its having been amongst the natives of the interior is to be found. The belt of dry country separating the aborigines of the plain from those of the sea may have saved the former, as this belt is often left uncrossed for years. This disease must have been brought from the north, and the date of its introduction would probably lie many centuries back.
Many of their customs and tribal rites bear a close resemblance to some that may be found in the New Testament, and are foreign to the usual habits of the Australian blackfellow. Add to this an innate antipathy to the flesh of swine when tasted for the first time, and it seems evident that some of the laws and traditions of more civilised nations have drifted down and been partly appropriated by the Australians.
In many of the sea-coast blacks of the north, sleepy eyes and straight-cut noses are often prominent, and render some of them especially remarkable; these features giving their faces an entirely different aspect to the common blackfellow type adjoining them inland. That, in the event of the wreck of a proa on the coast, some intermixture of the races would take place, and the survivors, perhaps, pass the remainder of their lives amongst the blacks, is quite possible, seeing that to many of our countrymen it has happened.
The close acquaintanceship shown by the Malay bêche-de-mer fishers with the nooks and inlets that are so thickly strewn along the coast, west of Cape Wessell, appears to be the result of much old-world seafaring lore, handed down from father to son. Whether the Chinese ever ventured so far south as Australia cannot be affirmed with certainty. Accident may have led them to our shores, but it is scarcely probable that the love of adventure would have tempted them so far.
Taking, then, the exceptional customs common to the natives of that portion 'of Australia still visited by the Malays, and seeing that these customs would only be the outcome of some centuries of intercourse, it is reasonable to suppose that from these outposts of Asiatic civilisation came the first adventurous traders to the lone land of the south. The distinct type of the Australian, while showing in exceptional cases the signs of foreign blood, precludes the idea that the continent was peopled from the north; but, at the same time, it is evident that some rudimentary forms of a higher development drifted down in after ages from that source.
The effect that the repellant nature of the Australian coast has had upon the southern progress of semi-civilisation is remarkably distinct. Each successive wave of improvement from the Asiatic continent seems to grow weaker and weaker as it travels south, until it breaks hopelessly on Australia. Nor is it hard to find the reason. The savage, coming from islands where a rude cultivation of indigenous fruits, valuable in their nature, had induced primitive land laws, and consequently settled habitations and a defined code of laws concerning tribal rights and boundaries, found himself amongst a nomadic race, trusting to hunting and fishing solely for the means of existence. The soil, formed of the denudation of the sandstone rocks, scantily fertilised here and there by the decaying jungle, presented no field for rude agriculture, even had the dry seasons permitted; and gave forth no native fruits, save tasteless berries and half-poisonous roots. No knowledge of minerals would tempt him into the semi-scorched ranges inland; he would simply see that life after the old fashion of village existence was no longer for him, and would become a hunter and fisher like his fellows.
It would have been of inestimable benefit to the Australians, had tribes from the northern countries, only slightly higher than themselves in the scale, established a permanent footing on the mainland, and gradually worked their way throughout the land, carrying their superior knowledge with them, and having in the extended area before them a wide field for future development. Intermixing socially with the aborigines, they would have in a few generations made an indelible mark upon their mental capacity, which, after all, is only dormant; and the march of improvement once set in motion, centuries of confirmed intercourse with races of greater culture, and the consequent spread of new ideas would have peopled our continent with a different race to the improvident native of the present.
But the force of nature was against it; the new land of the south held forth no inducements even for the pirate or marauder. In the hand to mouth struggle for existence, not even a supply of food would be found in a ransacked camp; no land seen tempting settlement by its luxuriant vegetation and produce. The visitors of the straits scorned the inhospitable coast, and returned north. Only those whom ill-fate had deprived of the means of return stayed perforce, and lost their identity amongst the aborigines.
The white man, when he came, looked upon the country as he would upon an uninhabited land; the native was too far beneath him to profit by his coming, no inter-mixture of races could take place, the difference was too widely marked; and the aborigines of Australia were from the first numbered amongst the doomed tribes of the earth. An earlier introduction of the spirit of progress, however meagre in form, might have saved them. Had our northern coasts but possessed some lure for Asiatic nations, the story would have travelled and brought their overflowing population down to settle the continent long before the advent of our countrymen.
It is an accepted fact that on the continent of Australia proper there is very little unexplored territory left, and that we pretty well know what resources, in the way of land, we have still to fall back upon. This acceptance of our knowledge of the unsettled regions of our country is both right and wrong. Right, inasmuch that in a general sense, arguing from our knowledge of climatic influences in different latitudes, we can infer the particular nature of a particular district, although untrodden as yet by any one capable of giving us information. Wrong, in that the geographical formations of Australia are so persistently antagonistic that no true nor reliable deduction can always be arrived at. When I say persistently antagonistic, I mean that the two formations common to the interior, namely, sandstone and limestone, produce either a desert or a rich prairie. As a rule, in the vast interior, still unvisited and unsettled, the conditions are that the soil either grows grasses and herbs of the most nutritive character, or such as are totally unfitted to support graminivorous animal life. And these two conditions we may call antagonistic, as far as our efforts at practical settlement are concerned. When the outcrop is limestone, we may reckon on good pastoral country, and a fair water supply. When the outcrop is the pure red sandstone, we can hope for little else but the desert spinifex.