“Their fondness for the bush and the habits of savage life, is fixed and perpetuated by the immense boundary placed by circumstances between themselves and the whites, which no exertions on their part can overpass, and they consequently relapse into a state of hopeless passive indifference.

“I will state a remarkable instance of this:—­The officers of the Beagle took away with them a native of the name of Miago, who remained absent with them for several months.  I saw him on the North-west coast, on board the Beagle, apparently perfectly civilized; he waited at the gun-room mess, was temperate (never tasting spirits), attentive, cheerful, and remarkably clean in his person.  The next time I saw him was at Swan River, where he had been left on the return of the Beagle.  He was then again a savage, almost naked, painted all over, and had been concerned in several murders.  Several persons here told me,—­“you see the taste for a savage life was strong in him, and he took to the bush again directly.”  Let us pause for a moment and consider.

“Miago, when he was landed, had amongst the white people none who would be truly friends of his,—­they would give him scraps from their table, but the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an equal,—­they had no sympathy with him,—­he could not have married a white woman,—­he had no certain means of subsistence open to him,—­he never could have been either a husband or a father, if he had lived apart from his own people;—­where, amongst the whites, was he to find one who would have filled for him the place of his black mother, whom he is much attached to?—­what white man would have been his brother?—­what white woman his sister?  He had two courses left open to him,—­he could either have renounced all natural ties, and have led a hopeless, joyless life amongst the whites,—­ever a servant,—­ever an inferior being;—­or he could renounce civilization, and return to the friends of his childhood, and to the habits of his youth.  He chose the latter course, and I think that I should have done the same.”

Such are a few of the disadvantages the natives have to contend with, if they try to assimilate in their life and habits to Europeans, nor is there one here enumerated, of which repeated instances have not come under my own observation.  If to these be added, the natural ties of consanguinity, the authority of parents, the influence of the example of relatives and friends, and the seducing attraction which their own habits and customs hold out to the young of both sexes; first, by their offering a life of idleness and freedom, to a people naturally indolent and impatient of restraint; and secondly, by their pandering to their natural passions:  we shall no longer wonder that so little has been effected towards ameliorating their condition, or inducing them to adopt habits and customs that deprive them of those indulgences.

In New South Wales and Port Phillip, the Government have made many efforts in behalf of the Aborigines; for a series of years past, and at present, the sum of about ten thousand pounds, is annually placed upon the estimates, towards defraying the salaries of a Chief Protector, and several subordinate ones, and for other expenses connected with the natives.