Читать книгу The Story of the Blacks - Charles White - Страница 3

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The black race of Australia will in a short time be but a memory, for the final issue in the unequal struggle between the white man and his coloured brother is not far off, and the last chapter of the history of the aborigines is even now being written.

In dealing with this subject I do not purpose devoting much time to speculation concerning their origin; that is a division in which the general reader could not be expected to take any interest, howsoever attractive it may be to scientists. My aim has been to place before the reader a simple narrative of facts illustrative of the life of the Australian blacks in their savage state, and the condition of semi-civilization into which many of them were brought by their contact with the white man after possession of the land was taken by Governor Phillip and the motley crowd that crossed the sea from England with him to form a British settlement on this far-off Australian shore. My information has been gathered from many sources, direct and indirect, and throughout the long search for reliable material upon which to work there has ever been present with me a feeling of profound regret that the opportunity for compiling an exhaustive, succinct and reliable account of the original inhabitants of these lands should have been allowed to pass away with the lives of the men who might have seized it and made better use of it, by reason of the then intimate relationship with them, than even more competent historians can possibly do at the present day. For years after the first settlement of the colony the authorities were too much concerned with regulating the lives of worse savages than the natives to give attention to a work so insignificant as that of studying the life of the dark-skinned mortals upon whose land they had settled—too eager to wring blood from manacled humanity of their own cast of countenance and colour of skin—too much absorbed in the task of European settlement, to care whether the race that was being exterminated was worth a thought. And to-day the position stands thus: The aborigines as a race have been practically civilized off the face of the earth which was their inheritance, and those who occupy the land once theirs are like to forget that ever a black man lived upon the soil.

When the sight of the natives was striking because of its novelty a few sentences were written from which can be gathered what the men who saw them first thought of them; but mere impressions do not make up reliable history, and only such of the statements first made as have been proven true by subsequent dealings with the different tribes can be accepted as of any value whatever. It is well to gather up these earlier records, however, for the men who made them saw the natives in their most natural condition, and had the best opportunity of observing their appearance, habits and customs in their primitive state.

The readers of this story must not expect anything approaching nicety of arrangement in the simple record of facts which I have essayed to place before them. A writer who wished to win a reputation for skill in this direction would require to be put in possession of better material than that which is possible of collection from the incongruous mass of disjointed narratives, oral and written, which I have gathered during the search of years. My chief concern has been to secure correctness, rather than to preserve uniformity, and I can only hope that any lack of the latter that may make itself apparent will not cause the reader to miss the points of aboriginal character which the facts recorded are intended to illustrate. This much by way of explanation—not apology.