Year by year, the melancholy and appalling
truth is only the more apparent, and as each new instance multiplies upon
us, it becomes too fatally confirmed, until at last we are almost, in
spite of ourselves, forced to the conviction, that the first appearance
of the white men in any new country, sounds the funeral knell of the
children of the soil. In Africa, in the country of the Bushmen, Mr.
Moffat says -
"I have traversed those regions, in which, according to the testimony of
the farmers, thousands once dwelt, drinking at their own fountains, and
killing their own game; but now, alas, scarcely is a family to be seen!
It is impossible to look over those now uninhabited plains and mountain
glens without feeling the deepest melancholy, whilst the winds moaning in
the vale seem to echo back the sound, 'Where are they?'"
Another author, with reference to the Cape Colony, remarks -
"The number of natives, estimated at the time of the discovery at about
200,000, are stated to have been reduced, or cut off, to the present
population of about 32,000, by a continual system of oppression, which
once begun, never slackened."
Catlin gives a feeling and melancholy account of the decrease of the
North American Indians, [Note 99:
