"With respect to the cause of this extraordinary state of things, Dr.
Story remarks that death followed the attempts to civilise the
natives. "If left to themselves to roam as they were wont and
undisturbed, they would have reared more children, and there would
have been less mortality." Another careful observer of the natives,
Mr. Davis, remarks, "The births have been few and the deaths numerous.
This may have been in a great measure owing to their change of
living and food; but more so to their banishment from the mainland
of Van Diemen's Land, and consequent depression of spirits"
(Bonwick, pp. 388, 390).
Similar facts have been observed in two widely different parts of
Australia. The celebrated explorer, Mr. Gregory, told Mr. Bonwick,
that in Queensland "the want of reproduction was being already felt
with the blacks, even in the most recently settled parts, and that
decay would set in." Of thirteen aborigines from Shark's Bay who
visited Murchison River, twelve died of consumption within three
months.*"
* For these cases, see Bonwick's Daily Life of the Tasmanians, 1870,
p. 90: and The Last of the Tasmanians, 1870, p. 386.
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