many of the best things to eat are taboo to them; and the cruel contempt of the men pursues them even after death.  The men are buried with ceremony (Curr, I., 89), but “as the women and children are held to be very inferior to the men whilst alive, and their spirits are but little feared after death, they are interred with but scant ceremony... the women alone wailing.”  Thus they show their contempt even for the ghosts of women, though they are so afraid of other ghosts that they never leave camp in the dark or have a nocturnal dance except by moonlight or with big fires!

WERE SAVAGES CORRUPTED BY WHITES?

Such is the Australian’s treatment of woman—­a treatment so selfish, so inconsistent with the altruistic traits and impulses of romantic love—­sympathy, gallantry, and self-sacrificing affection, not to speak of adoration—­that it alone proves him incapable of so refined a sentiment.  If any doubt remained, it would be removed by his utter inability to rise above the sensual sphere.  The Australian is absolutely immoral and incredibly licentious.  Here, however, we are confronted by a spectre with which the sentimentalists try to frighten the searchers for truth, and which must therefore be exorcised first.  They grant the wantonness of savages, but declare that it is “due chiefly to the influence of civilization.”  This is one of the favorite subterfuges of Westermarck, who resorts to it again and again.  In reference to the Australians he cites what Edward Stephens wrote regarding the former inhabitants of the Adelaide Plains: 

“Those who speak of the natives as a naturally degraded race, either do not speak from experience, or they judge them by what they have become when the abuse of intoxicants and contact with the most wicked of the white race have begun their deadly work.  As a rule to which there are no exceptions, if a tribe of blacks is found away from the white settlement, the more vicious of the white men are most anxious to make the acquaintance of the natives, and that, too, solely for purposes of immorality. ...  I saw the natives and was much with them before those dreadful immoralities were well known ... and I say it fearlessly, that nearly all their evils they owed to the white man’s immorality and to the white man’s drink.”

Now the first question a conscientious truth-seeker feels inclined to ask regarding this “fearless” Stephens who thus boldly accuses of ignorance all those who hold that the Australian race was degraded before it came in contact with whites, is, “Who is he and what are his qualifications for serving as a witness in this matter?” He is, or was, a simple-minded settler, kindly no doubt, who for some inscrutable reason was allowed to contribute a paper to the Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales (Vol.  XXXIII.).  His qualifications for appearing as an expert in Australian anthropology