imals were few and just
barely eatable, the kangaroo, the koala (or native bear) being the
principal ones. In birds alone was the country well supplied, and they
were more beautiful of plumage than useful as food. Even the fisheries
were infrequent, for the coast line, as you will see from the map, is
unbroken by any great bays, and there is thus less sea frontage to
Australia than to any other of the continents, and the rivers are few in
number.

Where the land inhabited by savages is poor in food-supply their number
is, as a rule, small and their condition poor. It is not good for a
people to have too easy times; that deprives them of the incentive to
work. But also it is not good for people who are backward in
civilization to be kept to a land which treats them too harshly; for
then they never get a fair chance to progress in the scale of
civilization. The people of the tropics and the people near the poles
lagged behind in the race for exactly opposite but equally powerful
reasons. The one found things too easy, the other found things too hard.
It was in the land between, the Temperate Zone, where, with proper
industry, man could prosper, that great civilizations grew up.

The Australian native had not much to complain of in regard to his
climate. It was neither tropical nor polar. But the unique natural
conditions of his country made it as little fruitful to an uncivilized
inhabitant as was Lapland. When Captain Cook landed at Botany Bay
probably there were not 500,000 natives in all Australia. And if the
white man had not come, there probably would never have been any
progress among the blacks. As they were then they had been for countless
centuries, and in all likelihood would have remained for countless
centuries more. They had never, like the Chinese, the Hindus, the
Peruvians, the Mexicans, evolved a civilization of their own. There was
not the slightest sign that they would be able to do so in the future.
If there was ever a country on earth which the white man had a right to
take on the ground that the black man could never put it to good use, it
was Australia.

Allowing that, it is a pity to have to record that the early treatment
of the poor natives of Australia was bad. The first settlers to
Australia had learned most of the lessons of civilization, but they had
not learned the wisdom and justice of treating the people they were
supplanting fairly. The officials were, as a rule, kind enough; but some