It has been suggested, indeed, by Mr. Spencer that the singularly complex marriage customs of the Australian blacks point to a more polite condition in their past history. Of this stage, as we said, no material traces have ever been discovered, nor can degeneration be recent. Our earliest account of the Australians is that of Dampier, who visited New Holland in the unhappy year 1688. He found the natives 'the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods, of Mononamatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these: who have no houses, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth.... They have no houses, but lie in the open air.' Curiously enough, Dampier attests their _unselfishness_: the main ethical feature in their religious teaching. 'Be it little or be it much they get, every one has his part, as well the young and tender as the old and feeble, who are not able to go abroad, as the strong and lusty.' Dampier saw no metals used, nor any bows, merely boomerangs ('wooden cutlasses'), and lances with points hardened in the fire. 'Their place of dwelling was only a fire with a few boughs before it' (the _gunyeh_). This description remains accurate for most of the unsophisticated Australian tribes, but Dampier appears only to have seen ichthyophagous coast blacks. There is one more important point. In the _Bora_, or Australian mysteries, at which knowledge of 'The Maker' and of his commandments is imparted, the front teeth of the initiated are still knocked out. Now, Dampier observed 'the two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young.' If this is to be taken quite literally, the Bora rite, in 1688, must have included the women, at least locally. Dampier was on the north-west coast in latitude 16 degrees, longitude 122-1/4 degrees east (Dampier Land, West Australia). The natives had neither boats, canoes, nor bark logs; but it seems that they had their religious mysteries and their unselfishness, two hundred years ago.[6] The Australians have been very carefully studied by many observers, and the results entirely overthrow Mr. Huxley's bold statement that 'in its simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian savages, theology is a mere belief in the existence, powers, and dispositions (usually malignant) of ghost-like entities who may be propitiated or scared away; but no cult can properly be said to exist. And in this stage theology is wholly independent of ethics.'