Note 28 — THE ABORIGINES (continued 2)

The following is worth remembering, as a caution to reviewers, as well as philosophers:—"At Port Dalrymple, in Van Diemen's Land, there was every reason to believe, the natives were unacquainted with the use of canoes; a fact, extremely embarrassing to those who indulge themselves in speculating on the genealogy of natives: because it reduces them to the necessity of supposing, that this isolated people swam over from the main land, or that they were aboriginal."—Rev. Sidney Smith, Edin. Rev., 1803.