as they passed onward to the south and west, and found out somewhat of the vast extent of the country, the necessities and jealousies of the numerous families that followed them forbade their return. The current of migration was ever onward towards the south and west; and therefore the north-eastern corner of Australia was always the dwelling-place of a people ignorant of the vast expanse beyond them, and willing to call it still Kai Dowdai, the little country."[1]
This suggestion, though perhaps based on a misconception of the use or meaning of the words Kai Dowdai and Muggi Dowdai, is well worthy of careful consideration. By what route soever the first men came to the continent, it is almost certain that the settlement was at first partial and gradual. There could have been no great wave of migration; and it is perhaps doubtful whether, if a canoe full of natives from some distant island had been stranded anywhere on the shores of Australia, they would have found subsistence. Yet savages have so much skill in hunting and fishing that they would easily support themselves where men accustomed only to the usages of civilized life would perish.
With the scanty vocabularies at present available, and lacking many important facts connected with the habits of the people of the north, their weapons, and their various modes of ornamenting these and the implements they use, it is not practicable to do more than offer mere conjectures as to the course taken by the natives who first set foot on the soil of Australia. It is probable that there were two streams from the Peninsula—one following the eastern coast southwards, and one taking a course along the western coast. The first, pressed onwards by tribes still migrating southward, may have advanced as far as Gippsland; and the second probably divided near the south-eastern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria—one section taking a course along the coast westward and southward to West Australia, and thence towards King George's Sound; and the other following the course of the rivers that flow southward to Cooper's Creek and the Darling. If there is any truth in these conjectures, many facts that are at present inexplicable have some light thrown upon them.
Eyre states that in his opinion it is not improbable that Australia was first peopled on its north-western coast, between the parallels of 12° and 16° south latitude; and that it may be surmised 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, he suggests, may 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° east 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, Mr. Eyre supposes, various
- ↑ Kamilaroi, Dippil, and Turrubul, by the Rev. William Ridley, M.A., 1866.
