any tribes wandering? along the east or by all on the west
coast, as well as by the traversers of the continent. It may
be that it was in trot! need at the Gulf by fresh arrivals after
the first peopling of the coast, and that the next hive
thrown off by the new-comers, ascending the Leichhardt or
some river flowing northwards, in process of time sent off
later hives, which, crossing the tropic of Capricorn, reached
the lower Barcoo or Cooper's Creek, Lake Torrens, and
eventually the sonthern sea. A special migration may
have carried the rite to those regions in Western Australia
in which Mr, Forrest declares that it is preserved. The
hostility between tribes would often keep them so much
apart from one another that the practice of one might be
unknown to, or rejected by, another. The melancholy
quarrelsomeness of mankind which made Greek war against
Greek in the palmiest day of intellectual development was
exemplified in Australia. Almost every tribe was in a state
of chronic antipathy, war, or watchful apprehension. Yet
they had heralds wlm mo%^ed from tribe to tribe with
impunity, and became conversant with the languages of
their hosts.
Isolation brought about changes in dialects. Sometimes for long distances a dialect prevailed with little change. Suddenly a difference appeared. As a rule the sea-coast tribes were ignorant of the language spoken in the interior. Their ancestors had clung to the sea-shore, which furnished peculiar food. Some fresh hive, which found the ground occupied on each side of it, would make the rare experiment of going inland. Its ramifications in a hundred generations would creep from one river system to another, until all the tributaries of the Barcoo, the Darling, and the Murray would be occupied. Occasionally an advancing band would encounter one coming from another point of departure, and each would treat the other as a deadly foe. Between the language of adjacent tribes there would then be a wide gulf, and glibly would colonists sometimes a%'er that the mutual ignorance was a proof of irretrievable incapacity in the race. Yet the language thus contemned had its inflections, its suffixes, and its dual numbers. As there was no "s" in the language it was free from unpleasant hissing, and was as
