our course, and to accommodate us, our new acquaintance pointed out a path and walked at the head of us.  A canoe, also with a man and a boy in it, kept gently paddling up abreast of us.  We halted for the night at our usual hour, on the bank of the river.  Immediately that we had stopped, our friend (who had already told us his name) Gombeeree, introduced the man and the boy from the canoe to us.  The former was named Yellomundee, the latter Deeimba.  The ease with which these people behaved among strangers was as conspicuous, as unexpected.  They seated themselves at our fire, partook of our biscuit and pork, drank from our canteens, and heard our guns going off around them without betraying any symptom of fear, distrust or surprise.  On the opposite bank of the river they had left their wives and several children, with whom they frequently discoursed; and we observed that these last manifested neither suspicion or uneasiness of our designs towards their friends.

Having refreshed ourselves, we found leisure to enter into conversation with them.  It could not be expected that they should differ materially from the tribes with whom we were acquainted.  The same manners and pursuits, the same amusements, the same levity and fickleness, undoubtedly characterised them.  What we were able to learn from them was that they depend but little on fish, as the river yields only mullets, and that their principal support is derived from small animals which they kill, and some roots (a species of wild yam chiefly) which they dig out of the earth.  If we rightly understood them, each man possesses two wives.  Whence can arise this superabundance of females?  Neither of the men had suffered the extraction of a front tooth.  We were eager to know whether or not this custom obtained among them.  But neither Colbee nor Boladeree would put the question for us; and on the contrary, showed every desire to wave the subject.  The uneasiness which they testified, whenever we renewed it, rather served to confirm a suspicion which we had long entertained, that this is a mark of subjection imposed by the tribe of Cameragal, (who are certainly the most powerful community in the country) on the weaker tribes around them.  Whether the women cut off a joint of one of the little fingers, like those on the sea coast, we had no opportunity of observing.  These are petty remarks.  But one variety struck us more forcibly.  Although our natives and the strangers conversed on a par and understood each other perfectly, yet they spoke different dialects of the same language; many of the most common and necessary words used in life bearing no similitude, and others being slightly different.

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