Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 | Page 6

fifteen miles from a bend of the upper part of the Adelaide, which must receive the drainage of all that part of the country, it seemed improbable that any other large river existed in the neighbourhood. Six miles from our furthest, which was about thirty miles from the entrance, we passed a small island. The banks on either side of the inlet were, as usual, a thick grove of mangroves, except in one spot, a mile lower down, where we landed on our return for observations. This we found to be a low cliffy projection of slate formation, whilst scattered over the face of the few miles of country, which we are able to explore, were small bits of quartz; large blocks also of which protruded occasionally through a light kind of mould.
APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY.
The country was a most thirsty-looking level, the low brushwood on which cracked and snapped as we walked through it, with a brittle dryness that testified how perfectly parched-up was everything. A single spark would instantly have wrapped the whole face of the country in one sheet of fire. Slight blasts of heated withering air, as if from an oven, would occasionally strike the face as we walked along; sometimes they were loaded with those peculiar and most agreeable odours that arise from different kinds of gums. Still the white eucalyptus and the palm, wore in comparison with the other vegetation, an extraordinary green appearance, derived probably from the nightly copious falls of dew, which is the only moisture this part of the continent receives during the present season. The birds we observed were common to other parts of the continent, being a few screaming cockatoos, parrots, and quails, and near the water a small white egret. There was nothing of interest to recall our memories to this first visit to a new part of Australia, save a very large ant's nest, measuring twenty feet in height. This object is always the first that presents itself whenever my thoughts wander to that locality.
As the boat was not provisioned for the time it would take to explore all the openings we had discovered, and as the capabilities of Port Darwin were sufficiently great to require the presence of the ship, I determined on returning immediately to Shoal Bay.
VISIT FROM THE NATIVES.
During the time we were absent, some of our people who had been on shore, received a visit from a party of natives, who evinced the most friendly disposition. This verifies what I have before observed, as to the remarkable differences of character that exist between many Australian tribes, though living in the immediate neighbourhood of each other; for, it will be remembered, that at no great distance we had experienced a very different reception.
Those people amounted in number, with their families, to twenty-seven, and came down to our party without any symptoms of hesitation. Both men and women were finer than those we had seen in Adam Bay. The tallest male measured five feet eleven, which is three inches less than a native Flinders measured in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The teeth of these people were ALL PERFECT, an additional proof that the ceremony of knocking them out, like others practised in Australia, is very partially diffused. The rite of circumcision, for instance, is only performed at King's Sound, on the west side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and near the head of the Australian bight on the south. Mr. Eyre, who discovered the existence of the rite on the last-mentioned part of the continent, infers that the natives of the places I have mentioned must have had some communication with each other through the interior; but it is possible that at a distant period of time, circumcision may have been very generally practised, and that having become gradually disused, the custom is now only preserved at two or three points, widely separated from each other. I do not advance this as a theory, but simply as a suggestion, as there is some difficulty in supposing communication to have taken place across the continent.
MIGRATION OF THE NATIVES.
Some light may be thrown on the migration of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, by tracing the parts of the coast on which canoes are in use. It has already been mentioned, that we had not seen any westward of Clarence Strait, neither were they in use in the bottom of the Gulf of Carpentaria, nor on the south coast.* By the assistance of these and similar facts, we may hereafter be enabled to discover the exact direction in which the streams of population have flowed over the continent. But I am not prepared to agree entirely with Mr. Eyre when he concludes, as I have stated, from the fact of the rite of circumcision having been found on