Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central Australia And Overland From Adelaide To King George's Sound In The Years 1840-1: Sent By The Colonists Of South Australia By Eyre, Edward John
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As The Ravages Of A Flood Destroy The Country Through Which It
Takes Its Course, And Which Its Deposit Ought
Only to have fertilized,
[Note 102 at end of para.] so the native, who ought to be improved by a
Contact with Europeans, is overwhelmed and swept away by their approach.
In Van Diemen's Land the same result has been produced as at Sydney, but
in a more extended and exterminating manner.[Note 103 at end of para.]
There, instead of a few districts, the whole island is depopulated
of its original inhabitants, and only thirty or forty individuals,
the banished remnant of a once numerous people, are now existing as
exiles at Flinders Island, to tell the tale of their expatriation. [Note
104 at end of para.] In Western Australia the same process is gradually
but certainly going on among the tribes most in contact with the
Europeans. In South Australia it is the same; and short as is the time
that this province has been occupied as a British Colony, the results
upon the Aborigines are but too apparent in their diminished numbers, in
the great disproportion that has been produced between the sexes, and in
the large preponderance of deaths over births. A miserably diseased
condition, and the almost total absence of children, are immediate
consequences of this contact with Europeans. The increase or diminution
of the tribes can only be ascertained exactly in the different
districts, by their being regularly mustered, and lists kept of the
numbers and proportion of the sexes, births, deaths, etc.
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