Following Round The Southern Coast Easterly, The Head Of The Great Bight Is The First Point At Which Any Great Change Appears To Occur, And Even Here It Is Less In The Character, Language, And Weapons Of The Natives, Than In Their Ceremonial Observances.

For the first time the rite of circumcision is observed, and conjoined with it the still more extraordinary practice to which I have before alluded.

The ceremony of knocking out the two upper front teeth of boys arrived at the age of puberty, is not, however, adopted. We have already noticed, that for six hundred miles to the west and north-west from the Great Bight, circumcision is unknown. The tribes, therefore, who practise it, cannot have come from that direction, neither are they likely to have come from the eastward, for after crossing the head of the Port Lincoln peninsula, and descending towards Adelaide, we find the rite of circumcision alone is practised, without any other ceremony in connection with it. Now, in a change of habits or customs, originating in the wandering, unsettled life of savages, it is very likely, that many of their original customs may gradually be dropped or forgotten; but it is scarcely probable, that they should be again revived by their descendants, after a long period of oblivion, and when those tribes from whom they more immediately proceeded, no longer remembered or recognised such ceremonials. By extending the inquiry still further to the east, the position I have assumed is more forcibly borne out, for the rite of circumcision itself then becomes unknown.

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