A Description of the Natives of New South Wales,
and our Transactions with them.
I doubt not my readers will be as glad as I feel myself, to conclude
the dull detail of the last chapter. If they please, they may turn from
the subtle intricacies of the law, to contemplate the simple, undisguised
workings of nature, in her most artless colouring.
I have already said, we had been but very few days at Port Jackson, when
an alteration in the behaviour of the natives was perceptible; and I wish
I could add, that a longer residence in their neighbourhood had introduced
a greater degree of cordiality and intermixture between the old, and new,
lords of the soil, than at the day on which this publication is dated subsists.
From their easy reception of us in the beginning, many were induced
to call in question the accounts which Mr. Cook had given of this people.
That celebrated navigator, we were willing believe, had somehow by his conduct
offended them, which prevented the intercourse that would otherwise
have taken place. The result, however, of our repeated endeavours to induce
them to come among us has been such as to confirm me in an opinion, that they
either fear or despise us too much, to be anxious for a closer connection.
And I beg leave at once, to apprize the reader, that all I can here, or in any
future part of this work, relate with fidelity of the natives
of New South Wales, must be made up of detached observations, taken at
different times, and not from a regular series of knowledge of the customs
and manners of a people, with whom opportunities of communication
are so scarce, as to have been seldom obtained.
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