“There are no instances of two Karraris or two Matteris having been married together; and yet connections of a less virtuous character, which take place between members of the same caste, do not appear to be considered incestuous.”

Similar testimony is adduced by Waitz-Gerland (VI., 776), and others.

AFFECTION FOR WOMEN AND DOGS

There is a strange class of men who always stand with a brush in hand ready to whitewash any degraded creature, be he the devil himself.  For want of a better name they are called sentimentalists, and they are among men what the morbid females who bring bouquets and sympathy to fiendish murderers are among women.  The Australian, unutterably degraded, particularly in his sexual relations, as the foregoing pages show him to be, has had his champions of the type of the “fearless” Stephens.  There is another class of writers who create confusion by their reckless use of words.  Thus the Rev. G. Taplin asserts (12) that he has “known as well-matched and loving couples amongst the aborigines” as he has amongst Europeans.  What does he mean by loving couples?  What, in his opinion, are the symptoms of affection?  With amusing naivete he reveals his ideas on the subject in a passage (11) which he quotes approvingly from H.E.A.  Meyer to the effect that if a young bride pleases her husband, “he shows his affection by frequently rubbing her with grease to improve her personal appearance, and with the idea that it will make her grow rapidly and become fat.”  If such selfish love of obesity for sensual purposes merits the name of affection, I cheerfully grant that Australians are capable of affection to an unlimited degree.  Taplin, furthermore, admits that “as wives got old, they were often cast off by their husbands, or given to young men in exchange for their sisters or other relations at their disposal” (XXXI.); and again (121): 

“From childhood to old age the gratification of appetite and passion is the sole purpose of life to the savage.  He seeks to extract the utmost sweetness from mere animal pleasures, and consequently his nature becomes embruted.”

Taplin does not mention a single act of conjugal devotion or self-sacrifice, such as constitutes the sole criterion of affection.  Nor in the hundreds of books and articles on Australia that I have read have I come across a single instance of this kind.  On the subject of the cruel treatment of women all the observers are eloquent; had they seen any altruistic actions, would they have failed to make a record of them?

The Australian’s attachment to his wife is evidently a good deal like his love of his dog.  Gason (259) tells us that the dogs, of which every camp has from six to twenty, are generally a mangy lot, but