FL661352

I will [indecipherable] inform this audience that I tried to bring all these subjects into one lecture but find I could not so compress it without rendering my statements too dry & base as many of them will require certain illustrations. I therefore have resolved to confine myself this evening as to a certain portion, and then if you are satisfied and the Committee of the [indecipherable] request me, I shall be ready on a future occasion sooner or later to deliver the remaining parts of the various subjects.

1, The first question or questions which will naturally arise in our minds or be asked by some of us are:
Whence did the original inhabitants of Australia come to this country? Where and how did they come? To what nation do they seem to be related? Were the originals as ignorant & uncivilized as they are now?

I regret, my friends, that neither I nor any one else can give satisfactory answers to any of these questions, though we may [throughout?] some hints as to probabilities; but as to the whole all will remain little more than suppositions & conjectures. As many of you must know ancient history, is altogether silent about this part of the globe; and Aboriginees are utterly without a history of their own & have scarcely any fragments of tradition. Nor have travellers & naturalists who have more or less explored our coasts added much information on the subject of the Aboriginees.

I will [indecipherable] inform this audience that I tried to bring all these subjects into one lecture but find I could not so compress it without rendering my statements too dry & base as many of them will require certain illustrations. I therefore have resolved to confine myself this evening as to a certain portion, and then if you are satisfied and the Committee of the [indecipherable] request me, I shall be ready on a future occasion sooner or later to deliver the remaining parts of the various subjects.

1, The first question or questions which will naturally arise in our minds or be asked by some of us are:
Whence did the original inhabitants of Australia come to this country? Where and how did they come? To what nation do they seem to be related? Were the originals as ignorant & uncivilized as they are now?

I regret, my friends, that neither I nor any one else can give satisfactory answers to any of these questions, though we may [throughout?] some hints as to probabilities; but as to the whole all will remain little more than suppositions & conjectures. As many of you must know ancient history, is altogether silent about this part of the globe; and Aboriginees are utterly without a history of their own & have scarcely any fragments of tradition. Nor have travellers & naturalists who have more or less explored our coasts added much information on the subject of the Aboriginees.