Without pausing to hazard an opinion upon any of these theories, it may
be said that stone axes, shell knives, and fish-hooks of pearl and
tortoiseshell now in use are among the credentials of a people whose
attributes and conditions are in line with those who, in other parts of
the world, had their day and fulfilled their destiny ages upon ages ago,
leaving as history etchings on ivory of the mammoth and the bone of the
reindeer. Implements similar to those which are relics of a remote past
elsewhere are here of everyday use and application. The Stone Age still
exists.
To speculate upon those phases of aboriginal life and character which go
to establish the antiquity of the race and its profound
unprogressiveness, is no part of the present purpose, which is merely to
relate commonplace incidents and the humours of to-day. Much of that
which follows is necessarily matter of common knowledge among those who
have studied the blacks of the coast.
There is nothing obscure, and but little that concerns even the
immediate past, in the philosophy of those natives of North Queensland
with whom I am in touch. With the black, to-day is--"to be, contents
his natural desire!" The past is not worth thinking about, if not
entirely forgotten; the future unembarrassed by problems.
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