Finally, it might be mentioned that, even when first discovered, Australia—an island continent of 2,946,691 square miles—was very sparsely inhabited, and the bulk of the population was confined to the districts near the seacoast. If there are, as is sometimes computed, one hundred thousand aborigines still living in Australia at the present day, there were probably not more than double that number a hundred years ago. They did much to limit their own increase by killing or abandoning their children; they were often engaged in civil wars; in times of scarcity they turned cannibal. What, however, is so remarkable about this isolated people is their having gone on living with very little change or improvement in the life which was that of our ancestors fifty thousand years ago. While the races of Europe and northern Asia have tried so many experiments, have achieved so many conquests over nature, have had such a marvellous insight into the workings of the universe—have, in fact, for ten thousand years or so, been leading the lives of demigods, the Tasmanians and the Australoids have been content just with the day's provision of food, a fairly dry sleeping place at night, a little fighting and dancing, lovemaking of a more or less brutal kind, and a span of life which, owing to its excessive hardships and the callous if not cruel treatment of the men and women past their prime, was seldom more than fifty years. They have, it is true, seen God in the stars, and they have felt like us the tragedy of death and the hope of a resurrection; but, unlike us (their far-off cousins, whose "Tasmanian" and "Australoid" ancestors stayed in Europe), they achieved no conquest over nature, their lives were scarcely better than the lives of beasts.
The Tasmanians shared some of the physical features of the Australoids. Like them they were dark-skinned—a very dark brown—and of brutish appearance, especially in the women. The men were usually better looking than the females, but both alike represented perhaps the lowest type of humanity which has been known to scientific men in a living state—for they just lived long enough to be photographed. The Tasmanians were distinctly more negroid than the Australoids. They were of medium height. The nose was broader, shorter, and more depressed than that of the Australoid, and the hair inclined to be tightly curled. They looked, in fact, with their long and large upper lips, their receding chins, projecting brows and jaws, big teeth, woolly hair, small, deepset eyes, and hairy faces and bodies (even the women had slight whiskers) like the most primitive form of Homo sapiens, and the joint ancestor of the Negro and the European.
Probably they entered north-eastern Australia at a very remote period, and were pushed down by the succeeding Australoids into the south-easternmost extremity of the continent—first the peninsula, then later the island of Tasmania. They were then (and they remained) in the lowest stage of human culture, like the Negritos or pigmy Negroes of Malaysia and Africa. They had no dwelling good enough to be called a hut: merely a circle of sticks stuck in the ground with their points converging. On to the top of these bent wands was thrown a mass of fern or grass, which made a rough thatch. Or the savages contented themselves in fine weather with a mere wind shelter of branches and bark strips. Whenever there was a cave or a cranny in the rocks handy to their hunting ground, they lived in that. They had no agriculture and no domestic animals, not even the Dingo or semi-wild dog of Australia. They lived much on shellfish, on the cray-fish of the streams, and the flesh of kangarus and other marsupial beasts, and such birds as they could bring down with their throwing sticks; though they also ate roots, fungi, fruits, gum, and the sweet sap of certain trees. This even they sometimes allowed to collect in hollows at the base of the trunk till it became slightly fermented. Their method of cooking was by broiling over a fire or placing the dead beast to cook in its skin in the hot ashes. Their only weapons and implements were heavy stones used as hammers; flaked stones—big chunks of sand-stone with sharp edges, held in the hand as scrapers or choppers; long stakes, their points sharpened and hardened by being charred in the fire, and their stems straightened by heat and pressure; stems of small trees fashioned into rough clubs; and short, straight, thin but heavy sticks used as missile weapons for hurling at birds or small mammals.
Their language was never properly written down by the Europeans. It is described as being full of rough sounds and not possessing a great number of words, but we really know very little on the subject. They were without any sense of shame, and if they wore any clothing it was for warmth or ornament. As a matter of fact, it was limited in the men to strips of kangaru hide tied round the neck or ankle, and other pieces of hide which were fastened round the legs like gaiters when travelling through thorny bush country. The women tied an undressed kangaru skin round the neck and waist, in which they carried their babies. Both sexes wore necklaces of shells, flowers, or seeds; and the men decorated their hair with kangaru teeth. The bodies—especially of the men—were anointed with kangaru fat and coloured with red ochre, and this red dust and fat were also rubbed into the hair and beard.
They had no religion, other than a vague belief in a life after the death of the body. Yet they were not cannibals, as was the case with the Australoids and the Oceanians; and they treated their women better than did the brutal Australoids. But their tribes or clans were constantly at war with one another, and this fact rather than any scarcity of food was the cause of their being in small numbers after many thousands of years of settlement in this large and fertile island. At the end of the eighteenth century—when Tasmania was first explored by Europeans—it was estimated that the aborigines numbered a total of between six and seven thousand. Between 1800 and 1830 they were reduced to only two hundred by warfare with the invading English settlers, by murder, by the effects of alcohol, and the spread of European diseases. After 1830 the two hundred gradually died out, till in 1876 the last of the old Tasmanian race expired.
[CHAPTER III]
Spanish and Portuguese Explorers lead the Way to the Pacific Ocean
It is remarkable what a bait to the European in discovery have been both spices and strong perfumes, once so popular in cookery and in the toilette. The Romans and Greeks were drawn through Egypt to the Indian trade by the pepper and cinnamon of India and Ceylon, by the sweet-smelling woods and gums of India and Further India—sandalwood, eaglewood, benzoin, storax, dragon's blood from the Calamus palm, rasamala—the resin from a liquid-amber tree of Java. It was to reach pepper-and-spice-producing regions that the Portuguese (and after them the English) were drawn into the exploration of the Guinea coast; and that the Portuguese felt impelled to circumnavigate Africa, so as to gain unfettered access to the commerce of India. The search for an Atlantic route to India and China impelled Spaniards and English, under Genoese and Venetian leadership, to discover Tropical and North America. And having reached India, Ceylon, Sumatra and Malacca, the Portuguese found that the most precious of all spices (cloves and nutmeg) still lay in undiscovered regions to the East—the Maluk or Muluk Islands, as they were called by Arab seamen: a name afterwards corrupted to Moluccas.