a small portion of that which they bestow in works and purposes of charity to think of these children of the desert.  It is only by accustoming them to comforts, and to implements which they cannot afterwards do without, to supersede as it were their former customs, that we can hope to draw them towards civilized man and civilization; for what inducement has the savage with his wild freedom and uncontrolled will, to submit to restraint, unless he reap some advantage?

The yearly and monthly distribution of blankets and of flour to the natives at Moorundi is duly appreciated.  They now possess many things which they prefer to their own implements.  The fish-hooks they procure from the Europeans are valued by them beyond measure, since they prevent the necessity of their being constantly in the water, and you now see the river, at the proper season, lined by black anglers, and the quantity of fish they take is really astonishing, and those too of the finest kinds.  I once saw Mr. Scott secure a Murray cod, floating on the top of the water, that weighed 72lbs.  This beautiful and excellent fish is figured in Mitchell’s first work.  It is a species of perch, and is very abundant, as well as several others of its own genus, that are richer but smaller; the general size of the cod varying from 15lbs. to 25lbs.

The manners and customs of the natives have been so well and so faithfully recorded by Mr. Eyre that I need not dwell on them here.  My views have been philanthropic, my object, to explain the manner in which I have succeeded in communicating with such of them as had never before seen Europeans, in order to ensure to the explorer, if possible, the peaceable results I myself have experienced.  There are occasions when collisions with the natives are unavoidable, but I speak as to general intercourse.  I feel assured no man can perform his duty as an explorer, who is under constant apprehension of hostility from the people through whose country he is passing.

The province of South Australia could never at any time have been thickly inhabited.  There are some numerous tribes on the sea-coast at the head of the Gulfs and in Encounter Bay, as well as on the Murray River, but with the exception of a few scattered families on the northern hills, and in the scrub, the mountain ranges are, and it appears to me have been, almost uninhabited.  There are no old or recent signs of natives having frequented the hills, no marks of tomahawks on the trees, or of digging on the flats.  The Mount Lofty ranges, indeed, are singularly deficient of animal life, and seem to be incapable of affording much subsistence to the savage, however luxuriant and beneficial the harvest they now yield.