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]
Observations of Count Strzelecki; discussion
We would first observe that the number of mongrels is in many countries much more considerable, if the intermixture is effected in the same manner as is notably the case in South Africa. There are cross-breeds in several of the Polynesian Islands, where the Europeans have never permanently settled, but only appeared temporarily. There should, therefore, be a good number of them in the Australian colonies, even if it were true that the Whites have never formed a permanent alliance with the native females. It can, however, not be doubted, that more or less enduring alliances have taken place between the two races, namely, that many Whites have kept for months and years Australian concubines under their roof.[74] This fact positively results from the controversy raised by Count Strzelecki. This celebrated traveller, who has visited America and Oceania, remarked that the native women, after having once lived with the white race, become sterile with the men of their own race, though they may still be capable of becoming pregnant by white men. He asserts that he has collected hundreds of such cases among the Hurons, Seminoles, Araucaños, Polynesians, and Melanesians. He does not attempt to explain this strange phenomenon, which, he observes, is owing to some mysterious law, and which appears to him to be one of the causes of the rapid decay of indigenous populations in regions occupied by Europeans.[75]
Mr. Alex. Harvey says that Professors Goodsir, Maunsel, and Carmichael have, from various sources, ascertained that Count Strzelecki’s assertion is unquestionable, and must be considered as the expression of a law of nature.[76]