Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2Grey, George
History
Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2
Grey, George
Natural history -- Australia -- Western Australia; Western Australia -- Discovery and exploration
Miago, when he was landed, had amongst the white people none who would be
truly friends of his. They would give him scraps from their table, but
the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an equal,
they had no sympathy with him, he could not have married a white woman,
he had no certain means of subsistence open to him, he never could have
been either a husband or a father if he had lived apart from his own
people; where amongst the whites was he to find one who would have filled
for him the place of his black mother, whom he is much attached to? what
white man would have been his brother? what white woman his sister? He
had two courses left open to him: he could either have renounced all
natural ties and have led a hopeless, joyless life amongst the whites,
ever a servant, ever an inferior being; or he could renounce civilization
and return to the friends of his childhood, and to the habits of his
youth. He chose the latter course, and I think that I should have done
the same.
SUGGESTIONS ON THE MEANS OF PROMOTING THEIR CIVILIZATION.
The information I had collected regarding the Aborigines of Western
Australia encouraged me to address a report to Lord John Russell, the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, embracing the general principles
which I considered would best promote the civilization of the race. This
report having been approved, copies of it were sent to the Governors of
the Australian and New Zealand settlements, and with a transcript of it I
shall now conclude my work:*
(*Footnote. [This letter has subsequently been printed for Parliament at
page 43 of the Sessional Paper Number 311 of 1841, the Colonization of
New Zealand. ED.])
Mauritius, June 4 1840.
MY LORD,
I have the honour to submit to your Lordship a report upon the best means
of promoting the civilization of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia,
which report is founded upon a careful study of the language, prejudices,
and traditional customs of this people.
Feeling anxious to render this report as complete as possible I have
delayed transmitting it to your Lordship until the latest possible
period; portions of it have in the interim been laid before some of the
local governments in Australia, and a few of the suggestions contained in
it have been already acted upon.
But as so small a portion of Australia is as yet occupied, and the
important task of so conducting the occupation of new districts as to
benefit the aborigines in the greatest possible degree yet remains to be
performed, I have thought that it would be agreeable to your Lordship to
be put in possession of all such facts relating to this interesting
subject as are at present known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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