offsets and ramifications would have been made from time to time as they advanced, so as to overspread and people by degrees the whole country round their respective lines of march; each offset appearing to retain fewer or more of the original habits, customs, &c., of the parent tribe in proportion to the distance traversed, or its isolated position, with regard to communication with the tribes occupying the main line of route of its original division; modified also, perhaps, in some degree by the local circumstances of the country through which it may have spread.
I have already mentioned that the natives north of the Darling speak a dialect like that of the people of the Lower Murray (in Victoria); the weapons of the natives of West Australia resemble those of the north-west. They have, as far as I can learn, but one shield, altogether unlike the shields of the south, and resembling somewhat that in use in Queensland; and their spears are like those of the people of the north coast. The natives of Perth ornament the wooden part of their adzes exactly in the same manner—with the like remarkable longitudinal grooves—as the people of Queensland.
The area within which the custom of circumcision prevails, and perhaps also the area within which the boomerang is not used, point also to such divisions of the streams of immigration as are suggested.
There is an impression in the minds of many, to which color is given by curious coincidences, that the languages of Australia—or rather the mother of the languages of Australia—may be supposed to have affinity with the languages of the Aryan family. Without raising in this place the more important question as to whether the Australians are the representatives, in the savage state, of a section of the ancient stock which gave civilization to Europe, one may glance at some of the facts which have been adduced. That these facts have any philological or ethnological value is questionable, but they are, to say the least, interesting. The words Nau-wai, a canoe; Marai, spirit; Joen, a man; Cobra, the head; Tiora, land; Moray, great; Gnara, a knot; Kiradjee, a doctor; Ury, ear; Yain, chin; Oura, our; Yai, yes; Yair, air; Keh-le-de, brightness; Kerreem, a shield; Urdin, straight; Manya, the hand; Yarra, flowing; Mah, to strike; Pilar, a spear; Kalama, a reed; Pidna, the foot; Yun, soon; Kurrin, enquiring; Poke, a small hole; Wirangi, bad; Multuwarrin, many or much; Trippin, drenching; Throkkun, putting; El, will; Trentin, tearing; Grawun, burying in the earth; and Kinka, laugh—are similar to words with similar meanings in the languages of the Aryan family. It would be as wrong to dismiss these without remark as to lay stress upon them. A greater number of words showing the like resemblances might easily be given; and it is for the more learned amongst philologists to separate those exhibiting perhaps mere accidental coincidences of sound from those that may have been introduced by traders from the Malay Peninsula and the islands of the Pacific.
There has been compiled for this work, from information supplied by the Local Guardians of Aborigines, the Surveyor-General of the colony, and others, a list of the native names of the hills, streams, and other natural features of the colony. It is not only interesting to preserve the local names as used by the blacks, but information is often conveyed by them which hereafter may be
