red in proportion to the time their country has been occupied by
Europeans, or to the number of settlers who have been located upon it.

Of the blighting and exterminating effects produced upon simple and
untutored races, by the advance of civilization upon them, we have many
and painful proofs. History records innumerable instances of nations who
were once numerous and powerful, decaying and disappearing before this
fatal and inexplicable influence; history WILL record, I fear, similar
results for the many nations who are now struggling; alas, how vainly,
against this desolating cause. Year by year, the melancholy and appalling
truth is only the more apparent, and as each new instance multiplies upon
us, it becomes too fatally confirmed, until at last we are almost, in
spite of ourselves, forced to the conviction, that the first appearance
of the white men in any new country, sounds the funeral knell of the
children of the soil. In Africa, in the country of the Bushmen, Mr.
Moffat says--

"I have traversed those regions, in which, according to the testimony of
the farmers, thousands once dwelt, drinking at their own fountains, and
killing their own game; but now, alas, scarcely is a family to be seen!
It is impossible to look over those now uninhabited plains and mountain
glens without feeling the deepest melancholy, whilst the winds moaning in
the vale seem to echo back the sound, 'Where are they?'"

Another author, with reference to the Cape Colony, remarks--

"The number of natives, estimated at the time of the discovery at about
200,000, are stated to have been reduced, or cut off, to the present
population of about 32,000, by a continual system of oppression, which
once begun, never slackened."

Catlin gives a feeling and melancholy account of the decrease of the
North American Indians, [Note 99: Vide Catlin's American Indians,
vol. i. p. 4 and 5, and vol. ii. p. 238.] and similar records might be
adduced of the sad fate of almost every uncivilized people, whose country
has been colonized by Europeans. In Sydney, which is the longest
established of all our possessions in New Holland, it is believed that not
a single native of the original tribes belonging to Port Jackson is now
left alive. [Note 100 at end of para.] Advancing from thence towards the
interior a miserable family or two may be met with, then a few detached
groups of half-starved wretches, dependant upon what they can procure
by begging fo