"Harriet," seven years old; "Johnnie," five years old; and a baby a year and a half old. She is again enceinte.
That "Mary," the wife of the Aboriginal "Barney," has had children as follows:—"Toby" (dead), and "Harry," sixteen years old (living), full-blooded Aboriginals; "Bridget," a half-caste girl fourteen years of age, now living on the station; and a full-blooded Aboriginal boy who died at the age of three years.
"Charlotte" had three full-blooded Aboriginal children; and subsequently a half-caste girl, "Louise," now seventeen years of age; and again three full-blooded Aboriginal children. Subsequently she had a half-caste child (now dead), and the last child was a full-blooded black.
One properly-authenticated case of a female having borne children to a full-blooded black after having had children to a white man would have been sufficient to destroy Count Strezelecki's theory, and I have given several cases. I might give more. But I pause to ask how Count Strezelecki could have procured "hundreds of instances" of the extraordinary "fact" on which he lays so much stress? It is easy to obtain positive evidence, as I have shown; but how Count Strezelecki got negative evidence of such a kind as to satisfy the mind of even the most credulous observer I cannot guess. Even if a hundred well-authenticated cases were cited in which black women had lost "the power of conception on the renewal of intercourse with the male of her own race," one might reasonably hesitate to accept the theory; but as he gives no instances, but contents himself with a general statement, it is not harsh but simply just to inform those who believe the story that there is no truth in it.
There is no ground for the belief—not even the shadow of ground for the belief—that the Aborigines of Victoria—regarding them simply as animals—are in any way different from any other animals which belong to the human species. Mr. John Green says:—
"There are many female half-castes who have had children to white men as well as to blacks. There are three half-caste women at Coranderrk who are married to black men, and all three have had two children each to their husbands.
"There is a half-caste man and a half-caste woman married, and they have one child. There are three half-caste women on the station who have had children to white men, but they were not married. The children of the latter have the complexion of Europeans, and have but little of the Aboriginal caste in the face. Only those who are well acquainted with the peculiar features of the Aborigines would suspect that these children had Aboriginal blood in their veins.[1]
- ↑ John Briggs, a half-caste Tasmanian, who intermarried with a half-caste Australian, has had ten children, of whom eight are now living—three boys and five girls. John Briggs was born in one of the Islands in Bass's Straits. His wife is the daughter of an Australian woman, who, with her sister, was taken to Tasmania at the time that Buckley was removed from Port Phillip to that colony. His eldest son is between seventeen and eighteen years of age, and the youngest child is two months old. He says he was married in 1844. He is an intelligent man; tall and well-formed, but weather-beaten in appearance. His hair is grey; his complexion yellow—dull yellow; his teeth large, and not close together; his hair woolly, somewhat like that of a negro; his eyes dark-brown; his nose
