Always
lives within reach of permanent fresh-water, as rivers, lakes, creeks,
pools, etc. Can there then be such in the interior, with so barren and
arid a region, bounding it? and how are we to commence an examination
with so many difficulties and embarrassments attending the very outset?
The second series of facts which have attracted my attention, relate to
the Aborigines. It is a well known circumstance that the dialects,
customs, and pursuits in use among them in the various parts of the
continent, differ very much from each other in some particulars, and yet
that there is such a general similarity in the aggregate as to leave no
room to doubt that all the Aborigines of Australia have had one common
origin, and are in reality one and the same race. If this then is really
the case, they must formerly have spread over the continent from one
first point, and this brings me to the
Third reason I have mentioned as being one, from which I infer, that
there is not an inland sea, viz., the coincidence observable in the
physical appearance, customs, character, and pursuits of the Aborigines,
at opposite points of the continent, whilst no such coincidence exists
along the intervening lines of coast connecting those two points, and
which naturally follows from the circumstances connected with the present
location of the various tribes in which this is observable, and with the
route which they must have taken to arrive at the places they now occupy
on the continent.
