As he said seriously, while joking on the point, ’In the far south there was literally nobody to lead, whereas Greece had men sufficient to mould her destinies.  Anyhow, one given the administration of Greece, would not have had a work more honourable than the development of Australasia, a larger business altogether.  ’Here was a region where several kingdoms were in the raising, where the pattern could take something from yourself.  What drew me to the far south, as a fairy-tale might, was that charm, “Yes, it’s all new.  Hardly anything has yet been done.  It’s mine to do with as I will."’

There was the white man’s history to fashion, and the black man’s history to discover.  Sir George did not neglect the second inquiry, because the other was the more important.  His explorations had given him the idea that Australia was of a volcanic origin.  He judged it to have been, at some period, a series of islands, each with its own volcano.  These islands had risen from the sea, been licked into shape probably by earthquakes, and coming gradually together, had formed a continent.  During his Governorship of South Australia, Sir George fell upon a piece of evidence which materially supported this belief.  The skeleton of a whale, as Sir Richard Owen certified the specimen, was discovered quite inland, beyond the first mountain range.  If Sir George had arrived at some view, after long deliberation, he liked it to be accepted, as we all do.  Therefore he welcomed the discovery of that whale.

‘I was laughed at,’ he commented, ’when I insisted that the natives of Australia must have come from a race more civilised than themselves.  A variety of reasons supported my estimate of their origin; as that, all over native Australia, there appeared to prevail a rigorous law governing marriage.

’It demonstrated that the natives understood the effect which blood kinship would exercise upon the stamina of a race.  There was no single great tribe in Australia, but a series of tribes; yet this law was general among them.  No conqueror could have imposed it; instead, it must have sprung from a family coming in, and bringing it with them.  Where did that family come from?  I cannot tell.  But we see, among the Aborigines of Australia, customs resembling those of the African continent.’

Studying those customs, Sir George had been witness of the ancient rite of circumcision, which also argued a higher civilisation.  The blacks built themselves, layer upon layer, into a human altar, and on it the sacrifice was performed.  Meanwhile a grunting noise, ‘Ha-ha-ha,’ sonorous, even solemn, a savage mass, arose from the heap.  Sir George imagined that he was almost the first Englishman to behold this ceremony, on the part of the Aborigines of Australia.  To them it was religion; whence did they get it?  Their common rule Sir George found expressed as an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but they had their lighter moments.  He discovered, in a lady savage, a humorous link between the vanity of all womankind.  There had been a native dance, and he was leaving, when the chieftainess approached him with the request, ’Oh, don’t go away until you have seen my son dance; he will be beautiful!’