lately at least, the missionaries encouraged marriages among the Natives at an injuriously premature age of the females, to prevent their being sold to white men for illicit purposes—a practice not suppressed by the tone of society which exists in the colony. Those early marriages have become habitual among the Natives, and it is painful to witness its result upon the diseased and feeble generation which is now growing up. An educated European who marries a native woman must give up all ideas of peace and comfort. A Maori will never marry a white woman, because he feels her superiority, and he cannot make a slave of her as a native woman. No white woman, not even the most degraded, could be induced to unite herself to a Maori—to herd, native-fashion, in a pa, amid dirt, vermin, and discomfort."
The Government of Van Diemen's Land was not indifferent to the amalgamation idea, as may be seen in this work. If not offering a bonus for such unions, several instances are recorded of grants of land to men who have been legally married to Tasmanian females, but which property could not be sold during the lifetime of the Native. Under the head of "Half-Castes," the subject receives further discussion.
Not able to amalgamate, the other unfortunate condition followed—they perished.
The Puritans were not alone in the belief that the Aborigines were a sort of Canaanitish people, who were doomed to be exterminated by the peculiar people. Even the missionary to the Blacks of New South Wales, Mr. Threlkeld, seems to find some comfort, in his natural astonishment at the rapid diminution of his charge, from feeling that it "is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." He utters this sentiment when standing in a colony constructed out of the refuse crime of Britain, and rapidly filling the land with their prosperous descendants! The Rev. Dr. Lang, of Sydney, more mildly observes: "It seems, indeed, to be a general appointment of Divine Providence that the Indian wigwam of North America and the miserable Aborigines of New Holland should be utterly swept away by the flood-tide of European colonization." This is the common idea of many good people, who call it "an inscrutable Providence." In olden times, all pestilences arising from the neglect of organic laws,—all
