In The Absence Of Many Links Necessary To Form A Connection, We Can At Present Only Surmise Conclusions, Which Otherwise Might Have Been Almost Certainly Deduced.

Connecting, however, and comparing all the facts with which we are acquainted, respecting the Aborigines, it appears that there

Are still grounds sufficient to hazard the opinion, that it is not improbable that Australia was first peopled on its north-western coast, between the parallels of 12 degrees and 16 degrees S. latitude. From whence we might surmise that three grand divisions had branched out from the parent tribe, and that from the offsets of these the whole continent had been overspread.

The first division appears to have proceeded round the north-western, western, and south-western coast, as far as the commencement of the Great Australian Bight. The second, or central one, appears to have crossed the continent inland, to the southern coast, striking it about the parallel of 134 degrees E. longitude. The third division seems to have followed along the bottom of the Gulf of Carpentaria to its most south-easterly bight, and then to have turned off by the first practicable line in a direction towards Fort Bourke, upon the Darling. From these three divisions various offsets and ramifications would have been made from time to time as they advanced, so as to overspread and people by degrees the whole country round their respective lines of march. Each offset appearing to retain fewer or more of the original habits, customs, etc. of the parent tribe in proportion to the distance traversed, or its isolated position, with regard to communication with the tribes occupying the main line of route of its original division; modified also, perhaps, in some degree, by the local circumstances of the country through which it may have spread.

Commencing with the parent tribe, located as I have supposed, first upon the north-west coast, we find, from the testimony of Captain Flinders and Dampier, that the male natives of that part of the country, have two front teeth of the upper jaw knocked out at the age of puberty, and that they also undergo the rite of circumcision; but it does not appear that any examination was made with sufficient closeness to ascertain, whether [Note 98: Vide Note 78.] any other ceremony was conjoined with that of circumcision. How far these ceremonies extend along the north-western or western coasts we have no direct evidence, but at Swan River, King George's Sound, and Cape Arid, both customs are completely lost, and for the whole of the distance intervening between these places, and extending fully six hundred miles in straight line along the coast, the same language is so far spoken, that a native of King George's Sound, who accompanied me when travelling from one point to the other, could easily understand, and speak to any natives we met with. This is, however, an unusual case, nor indeed am I aware that there is any other part of Australia where the same dialect continues to be spoken by the Aborigines, with so little variation, for so great a distance, as in the colony of Western Australia.

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