should express his ignorance?  How often this expression of ignorance has been registered as the denomination of some animal or thing, we leave the reader to conjecture.  Moreover, there are many words totally obliterated from their dialects, which thus undergo constant alteration.  This in part arises from the circumstance of their never mentioning the name of a deceased person, who has perhaps been called after a tree, bird, or animal; which then receives another appellation, the old one passing away.  From the few words given of the respective dialects of Port Essington and Swan River, they would appear essentially to differ, and from what has since come under my own observation, as well as from facts collected by others, I feel confident that there are many distinct dialects spoken in Australia.

Dialects of Australia.

It is easy enough for those who hold to the theory that Australia produces few dialects, to create for themselves a resemblance in words by mutilation and addition; but on careful examination, the similarity will not be found to exist.  The natives we took from Swan River, never could understand any of those we met on the North-west coast, though certainly Mr. Moore recognized a few words spoken by the natives on the West coast, about 200 miles north of Swan River, as being identical with the language used at the latter place.

It may here be as well to quote Strzelecki on this subject, ere we pursue our narrative: 

“The circumstance of the three natives who accompanied Captain Flinders and Captain P.P.  King, in the survey of New Holland, and of those who accompanied me amongst the different tribes of New South Wales, being unable to understand one word spoken by tribes of other districts, would lead to the belief that the dialects spoken in New Holland, are far from possessing those affinities, still less those identities of language, from which a common root might be inferred.  Those European visitors or explorers who adduce, in support of a common root, some hundred words analogous in sound, construction and meaning, as being spoken all over New Holland, have jumped to the conclusion with, I fear, too much haste and eagerness.  Besides many other insuperable difficulties, which an investigation of such a nature presents, there was one quite sufficient to defeat all attempts to fathom the subject, namely, the syntactic ignorance of the language to which the inquiry related.  Indeed, to any man who knows and speaks four European languages, it will be at once apparent, that to seize upon, and note from the sound, a word belonging to one country, so as to compare its sound and accentuation with a word belonging to another country, needs a thorough knowledge of the genius of the two languages, and of their alphabet, through which alone the pronunciation can be discriminated.”