Note 453 — Chapter V · [132] MODE OF LIVING

Compare Grey, ii. p. 233, and the letter of G. S. Lang quoted by him therein. It appears that both these writers were to a certain extent inspired by a humanitarian tendency, namely to show that the Australian aborigines were not quite without ideas of property in land, and that they were wronged by the white settlers, and thus deserved compensation for the loss of their hunting-grounds. The letter mentioned was written to some humanitarian society. We may, therefore, still more distrust these statements. We have seen that the idea of possession of land, of an exclusive right to use a certain tract of country, was well known to our aborigines, but that they conceived of it as vested in a group, not in individuals.