remarkable for the simplicity of their manners, and in countries where agriculture was unknown. But these people, not having a single domesticated animal, are utter strangers to the concerns of civil life. They are, in fact, distinguished from brutes only by the erectness of their form, their reasoning powers, the gift of language, and that universal characteristic of the human race, dominion over the other creatures that inhabit the globe. The reasoning faculty, however, and the gift of language, are so allied to instinct and inarticulate sound that they can scarcely be said to be distinguishing characteristics, when not called into exercise by the attractive scenes of civilized life, or displayed in full operation on terrestrial and celestial objects. Man, therefore, the head of creation, made originally only a little lower than the angels, here retains no trace of his high origin, by which he may be singled out from the animals over whom it was decreed that he should exercise sovereign control, but that of his personal figure. If Ovid was a stranger to revelation, one would be tempted to think that a ray of light from heaven must have shot across his mind when he uttered these striking lines:
Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terram,
Os, homini sublime dedit; cœlumque tureri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.
Whilst other creatures towards the earth look down,
He gave to man a front sublime, and raised
His nobler view to ken the starry heaven.
Since the Aborigines of this country neither sow nor reap, they have no need of agricultural implements. Strangers from infancy to the luxuries of civil life, the fineness of the climate renders them equally indifferent to houses and clothing. Even in fishing, they use neither seine nor rod; and in hunting they require neither horses nor fire arms. A spear, eight feet long and little more than an inch in diameter, furnishes them with food, and forms the whole of their materiel for war. Every plain, as well as every sheet of water, supplies their commissariat. Their rivers abound with fish and their forests with game. Their time is therefore spent in moving from place to place as inclination may prompt, or hunting and fishing require, and in paying or receiving visits from the neighboring tribes. The kangaroo, the opossum, the emu, the swan, the pelican, the bustard, the duck, the pigeon, the quail, the frog, the grub, the dyergee[1] the yandyeedee, the boorn, and the beanbooraberang,[2] each furnishes its number of repasts at the proper season.
Many of my readers, I may venture to say, would not fancy some things in such a bill of fare, if presented to them even in
