detached form, as Reports to the Colonial Government, or in the
Vocabularies of the Missionaries, and since my return to England I find
others have been published in papers, ordered to be printed by the House
of Commons, in August 1844. From the necessity, however, of altering in
some measure the phraseology, to combine Mr. Moorhouse's remarks with my
own, and to preserve a uniformity in the descriptions, it has not been
practicable or desirable in all cases, to separate or distinguish by
inverted commas, those observations which I have adopted. I have,
therefore, preferred making a general acknowledgment of the use I have
made of the notes that were supplied to me by Mr. Moorhouse.]

In the descriptions given in the following pages, although there may
occasionally be introduced, accounts of the habits, manners, or customs
of some of the tribes inhabiting different parts of Australia I have
visited, yet there are others which are exclusively peculiar to the
natives of South Australia. I wish it, therefore, to be understood, that
unless mention is made of other tribes, or other parts of the continent,
the details given are intended to apply to that province generally, and
particularly to the tribes in it, belonging to the districts of Adelaide
and the Murray river.

As far as has yet been ascertained, the whole of the aboriginal
inhabitants of this continent, scattered as they are over an immense
extent of country, bear so striking a resemblance in physical appearance
and structure to each other; and their general habits, customs, and
pursuits, are also so very similar, though modified in some respects by
local circumstances or climate, that little doubt can be entertained that
all have originally sprung from the same stock. The principal points of
difference, observable between various tribes, appear to consist chiefly
in some of their ceremonial observances, and in the variations of dialect