The division I have supposed as taking a south-easterly course from the Gulf of Carpentaria, would appear early to have lost the rite of circumcision; but to have retained among some of its branches, the practice of knocking out the front teeth of the upper jaw.  Thus, those who made their way to Port Jackson and to Hunter’s River, and to some of the southern parts of New South Wales, still retained the practice of knocking out one of the front teeth at the age of puberty; but at Keppel’s, Harvey’s, and Glass-House bays, on the north-east coast, at Twofold bay on the south-east, at Port Phillip on the south, and upon the rivers Darling and Murray, of the interior, no such rite is practised.  It is clear, therefore, that when the continent was first peopled, the natives of Sydney or Hunter’s River could not have come round the north-east coast by Keppel’s or Harvey’s bays, and retained a ceremony that is there lost; neither could the Murrumbidgee or southern districts of New South Wales, have been peopled from Port Phillip, or from South Australia, or by tribes passing up the Murray for the same reason.  It is not demanding too much, therefore, to suppose that the general lines of route taken by the Aborigines in spreading over the continent of Australia, have been somewhat analogous to those I have imagined, or that we can fairly account for any material differences there may be in the dialects, customs, or weapons of the different tribes, by referring them to the effect of local circumstances, the length of time that may have elapsed since separation, or to the isolated position in which they may have been placed, with regard to that division of the parent tribe from which they had seceded.

At present our information respecting the customs, habits, weapons and dialects of the various tribes is too limited and too scattered to enable us to trace with accuracy the division to which each may have originally belonged, or the precise route by which it had arrived at its present location; but I feel quite confident that this may be done with tolerable certainty, when the particulars I have referred to shall be more abundantly and correctly recorded.

It is at least a subject of much interest, and one that is well worthy the attention of the traveller or the philanthropist.  No one individual can hope personally to collect the whole material required; but if each recorded with fidelity the facts connected with those tribes, with whom he personally came in contact, a mass of evidence would soon be brought together that would more than suffice for the purpose required.

Chapter VIII.

EFFECTS OF CONTACT WITH EUROPEANS—­ATTEMPTS AT IMPROVEMENT AND CIVILIZATION—­ACCOUNT OF SCHOOLS—­DEFECTS OF THE SYSTEM.