the decrease and final annihilation of the great majority of indigenous races which has followed, and always does follow, the approach of the whites, is a fact of such historical notoriety, that the melancholy instance

port a brig engaged in the slave trade, which she captured not far from the coast.

I have been to-day to look at this slaver, and, fully prepared as I was for the spectacle, which is daily becoming more rare, I own that the picture of human wretchedness which my imagination had painted was far surpassed by the reality. No sooner had I looked over the ship's bulwarks, than I felt as if the chain which attached me to civilisation had broken. I should most certainly have retraced my steps, had not the British Consul, Mr. Hasketh, who was behind upon the ladder, pushed me forwards.

In a brig of 150 tons, and between decks not more than 3 feet apart, 300 slaves, of both sexes, were squeezed closely together; so closely, that the space between the legs of one was occupied by the body of another. Bathed in perspiration, wallowing in ordure, their own breath, mingling with the most mephitic of exalations, formed their only atmosphere! The frightful thirst which consumed them was only farther irritated by the ten ounces of water which formed their daily allowance! The tropical sun heated also with its beams the upper deck, which pressed upon their heads. The frenzy produced by such a state of suffering had carried away a fifth of their number; and the wretched creatures who survived - great God! what a sight! Men, women, and children huddled together in every possible posture, and expressing their mingled feelings of joy, astonishment, hope, fear, respect, curiosity, and anguish, by strange convulsive movements; their naked, attenuated bodies, covered with sores, telling the history of their wrongs and sufferings, and exposing more eloquently than could their tongues the ferocity of the slave-trader. The marks of the chicote (a kind of knout) upon the back toɔ clearly identified the instrument, which lay before us, which this Christian of the nineteenth century used according to the dictates of his caprice. Among these victims of the avarice and barbarity of Europeans greater cannibals than those who bear the name, were pregnant women, several of whom gave birth to infants in this situation, in the midst of men, and under all these privations and tortures!

Since the capture of the brig, every means had been taken to purify it, and to cleanse the Africans. All the cares and methods which humanity could devise had been resorted to, and yet the atmosphere of the vessel, at a temperature of 96°, was of such a quality as rendered it impossible for me to remain in it longer than fifteen minutes. While I did remain, two men breathed their last sigh beside me, and one woman, just ready to follow them, gave birth to an infant!..... My pen falls from my hand, and I hide my face in shame and humiliation, at the thoughts of the calamities which the crimes of my fellow-men produce. -MS. Journal of the Author.

of the Australian natives affords but a farther corroboration of the fearfully destructive influence which the one race exercises upon the other.

Those in whose eyes the question of decrease and extinction has assumed all the mournful solemnity and interest which it merits, have inquired into the nature of that invisible but desolating influence, which, like a malignant ally of the white man, carries destruction wherever he advances; and the inquiry, like an inquest of the one race upon the corpse of the other, has ended, for the most part, with the verdict of, "Died by the visitation of God."

Some authors, indeed, animated by the idea that the detection of a specific cause, more within the reach of human power, might lead to the discovery of a remedy, still pursued their laudable investigations; and believing the decrease to be owing to the want of evangelical instruction, to oppressive governments, to intemperance, to European diseases, to wars with fire-arms, &c., have sought a remedy in attempts to Christianise, and to introduce civilisation; but such attempts have appeared to increase, rather than diminish, the evils complained of.

To the writer of this work, who, in his peregrinations out of Europe, has lived much amongst different races of aborigines,-the natives of Canada, of the United States, of California, Mexico, the South American republics, the Marquesas, Sandwich and Society Islands, and, finally, those of New Zealand and Australia, have furnished observations of a different tendency, which are here submitted to the reader, not as evidences for the deduction of an ultimate conclusion, but as mere facts, fitted to lead physiologists to further inquiry into this grave and interesting subject; an inquiry more within their sphere than within that of a moralist or economist.

The fact being generally admitted, that the decrease

of the aborigines, in the countries enumerated, has always begun soon after their discovery and subjection to foreign influence; the next question must be, whether this arises from the increased rate of mortality, or from the decrease of births.

Examinations among the oldest aborigines of every country -as, for instance, among those who remember the first American war in the United States, the government of the Jesuits in Brazil, St. Borje,Paranna, and Lower California,-the arrival of Cook and the early navigators in the South Sea Islands, New Zealand, New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land, -render it evident that their longevity has not been abridged, that the rate of mortality has not increased, but that the power of continuing or procreating the species appears to have been curtailed.

On further inquiry, this curtailment of power was not found to originate with the male, at least so far as could be observed; but some startling facts, disclosed in the course of the investigation, seem to confine it to the female alone.

Of these, the most remarkable, and that which most directly bears upon the question, is the result of a union between an aboriginal female and an European male, -an intercourse frequently brought about in these countries, either by local customs and notions of hospitality*, or by the natural propensity

* Xalisco (Mexico), 23rd of April, 1837. When I said that the country which I admired from the heights of Santa Cruz de Tepic is without historical associations or traditions, I committed a flagrant error. Xalisco possesses the tombs of ancient Indians, where several relics, such as arms, urns, and female ornaments, have been recently discovered. The city has also archives, and a voluminous manuscript relating to the conquest of the province by the Spaniards. I subjoin some brief extracts from this curious chronicle, compiled in 1642, by the licentiate Doctor Don Matthias de la Mota Padilla, who wrote to "satisfy the wishes of the kings of Spain, by transmitting to posterity the memory of the glorious deeds achieved by their vessels; to satisfy my own (the Doctor's) conscience, by describing to the entire world the

of the sexes. Whenever this takes place, the native female is found to lose the power of conception on a renewal of intercourse with the male of her own race, retaining only that of procreating with the white men.

Hundreds of instances of this extraordinary fact are on record in the writer's memoranda, all tending to prove that the sterility of the female being relative only to one, and not to another male,- and recurring invariably, under the same circumstances, amongst the Hurons, Seminoles, Red Indians, Yakies (Sinaloa), Mendoza Indians, Araucos, South Sea Islanders, and natives of New Zealand, New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land, is not accidental, but follows laws as cogent, though as mysterious, as the rest of those connected with generation.

To this direct, though occult, cause of the decrease of the aboriginal race, may be added others, which, though acting indirectly, far surpass the evil consequences of the first, as their agency is seen to extend still farther, so as to occasion absolute sterility in the native female. Of these, the leucorrhoea, a general complaint, raging with unusual severity and aggra vated symptoms, affords a most extraordinary instance; not only because its character might be mistaken by many observers for secondary symptoms, or a modified elephantiasis, but because its origin

progress of the Spaniards as conquerors, of the numerous converts for Holy Church,-in hopes that the enumeration of the conversions may henceforward serve as an argument to cover heretics with shame, and to confound their abominable doctrines."

As the author only proposes to treat of the province of Xalisco, he confines his general observations upon Mexico to what his subject strictly requires, and commences by a glowing description of the fête which the Queen of Xalisco gave to Fernando Cortez. The following extract describes the nature of the hospitality to which this note refers:"Hospedado Don Francisco Cortez en su alojamiento le pareció á la Reyna, obsequiarle con varios regalos; y viendo que en el exercito de los Espagnoles no habia mugeres, le remitió ciento."

amongst the native women dates precisely from the arrival of the European females amongst them.

Be the cause of the decrease and extinction of the aborigines in the New World what it may, it is certain that human interference to avert its melancholy consequence has been hitherto of no avail, and that a charter for colonisation granted to one race, becomes virtually the decree for the extinction of the other.

Thus, in New South Wales, since the time that the fate of the Australasian awoke the sympathies of the public*, neither the efforts of the missionary, nor the

* Since the time that the aborigines have been declared by law, or rather, sophistry of law, to be illegitimate possessors of any land which they do not cultivate, the Australian has been looked upon, ipso facto, as a sort of brute intruder! and in the transactions which ended in the taking possession of New Holland by England, has been allowed no more voice than the kangaroos.

In the course, however, of colonisation, some humane observers made the discovery that he was somewhat superior to the brute creation, and lifted up their voice in his favour with such effect, that the public of the mother country, passing from extreme apathy to unbounded tenderness and solicitude, invited him at once to take his share in the benefits of Christianity and civilisation. The share, however, which came to his lot, proved to be very much like that which issued from "Ego Leo," — as the Christianity which was offered to him was stripped of its charity, and the civilisation embraced no recognition of his rights of property. He therefore rejected both; took to the "bush," and, pressed by hunger, fell upon the flocks which invaded his hunting-grounds, and by stealth or open force carried them away. Between those in charge of the flocks and himself fatal conflicts ensued. The public clamours against these outrages at last reached England. Those only committed against the aborigines, in absence of all the circumstances which provoked retaliation, were considered; whereupon a new society started, under the auspices of pure philanthropy, to supply the inefficiency of missions. The protectors" who were sent out by this association to espouse the cause of the aborigines, only complicated the affair. Their arrival among the now turbulent, excited, and revengeful natives, instead of appeasing, emboldened them to such a degree, that, at the time I am writing (Port Stephen, New South Wales, January, 1843), their depredations have already opened another field of exertion for a new association, an ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE WHITES.

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Although, in the writer's opinion, the natives of the New World have, wherever the European advances, the sentence of extinction stamped indelibly upon their foreheads, still it is his conviction that this doom of aborigines in general, and of the Australians in particular,