The Australian Native-Born Type

Numberless speculations, dogmatisms, and prophecies have found utterance, in and out of Australia, touching the characteristics and destiny of the Children of the Soil. Colonial critics sitting in judgment upon their own and other people's offspring have chiefly felt moved to deliver a verdict of inferiority to the sacred British type. Not noticeably diverse has been that of the untravelled European philosopher or social student. In nearly all cases, the mildest judgment indicated some degree of physical or mental differentiation; another term, for degeneration. If in the former greater height and length of limb were conceded, to be neutralised by lack of muscle and vitality. Worse again, if in the latter category a savage precocity and perceptive intelligence were admitted, it was rarely if ever supported by persistency, application, or broad mental grasp.

In the very early days of New South Wales, which I am old enough, alas! to remember, my boyish experience familiarised me with various products, animate and inanimate, of the Cape of Good Hope, then a handy storehouse of necessaries, for this far and oft-forgotten continent. The mention of 'Cape' geese, 'Cape' wine, 'Cape' horses, 'Cape' gooseberries, was unceasing. Indeed I once heard the pied peewit-a bird familiar to all observing youth-referred to as a Cape 'magpie. ' This was, of course, natural enough. But the logical outcome of this simple nomenclature, which puzzled me at the time, was that 'Cape,' used in that sense, was another name for almost any article resembling but _inferior_ to a prized original. Thus the Cape wine was what we still, perhaps erroneously, consider that inspiriting but less delicate beverage to be; the Cape geese were smaller and marketably less valuable than their thick-necked solemn English cousins; the Cape gooseberries were sweet with a mawkish sweetness, how far below the rough richness of the English fruit! The Cape horses, not devoid of pace, were weedy and low-caste; while the Cape pigeon was not a pigeon at all, but a gull; and even the Cape magpie was held to be a species of lark, dressed up in the parti-coloured plumes of his august relative, the herald of the dawn.