CHARACTER OF THE NATIVES OF THE INTERIOR.

My experience enables me to speak in the most favourable terms of the aborigines whose degraded position in the midst of the white population affords no just criterion of their merits.  The quickness of apprehension of those in the interior was very remarkable, for nothing in all the complicated adaptations we carried with us either surprised or puzzled them.  They are never awkward, on the contrary in manners and general intelligence they appear superior to any class of white rustics that I have seen.

LANGUAGE.

Their powers of mimicry seem extraordinary, and their shrewdness shines even through the medium of imperfect language and renders them in general very agreeable companions.

On comparing a vocabulary of the language spoken by the natives on the Darling with other vocabularies obtained by various persons on different parts of the coast I found a striking similarity in eight words, and it appears singular that all these words should apply to different parts of the human body.  I could discover no term in equally general use for any other object as common as the parts of the body, such for instance as the sun, moon, water, earth, etc.  By the accompanying list of words used at different places to express the same meaning,* it is obvious that those to which I have alluded are common to the natives both in the south-eastern and south-western portions of Australia; while no such resemblance can be traced between these words and any in the language spoken by natives on the northern coast.  Now from this greater uniformity of language prevailing throughout the length of this large island, and the entire difference at much less distance latitudinally, it may perhaps be inferred that the causes of change in the dialect of the aborigines have been more active on the northern portion of Australia than throughout the whole extent from east to west.  The uniformity of dialect prevailing along the whole southern shore seems a fact worthy of notice as connected with any question respecting the origin of the language, and whether other people or dialects have been subsequently introduced from the northern or terrestrial portion of the globe.  These words although few may be useful to philologists as specimens of the general language and, as the names of parts of the body can be obtained by travellers from men the most savage by only pointing to each part, comparisons may be thus extended to the natives of other shores.

(Footnote.  See Appendix 2.1)

I am not aware that any affinity has been discovered, at least in single words, between the Australian language and that of the Polynesian people;* but with very slight means of comparison I may perhaps be excused for noticing the resemblance of Murroa, the name of the only volcanic crater as yet found in Australia to Mouna-roa, the volcano of the Sandwich Islands; and that tao, the name of the small yam or root eaten by Australians, is similar to taro, the name of thirty-three varieties of edible root and having the same meaning in the Friendly and Society Isles and also in the Sandwich Islands. (See Cook’s Voyages and Polynesian Researches by William Ellis.)