Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/115

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AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 87 any tribes wandering? along the east or by all on the west coast, as well as by the traversers of the continent. It may be that it was in trot! need at the Gulf by fresh arrivals after the first peopling of the coast, and that the next hive thrown off by the new-comers, ascending the Leichhardt or some river flowing northwards, in process of time sent off later hives, which, crossing the tropic of Capricorn, reached the lower Barcoo or Cooper's Creek, Lake Torrens, and eventually the sonthern sea. A special migration may have carried the rite to those regions in Western Australia in which Mr, Forrest declares that it is preserved. The hostility hetweeo tribes would often keep them so much apart from one another that the practice of one might be nnknown to, or rejected by, another. The melancholy quarrelsomeness of mankind which made Greek war against Greek in the palmiest day of intellectual development was exemplified in Australia. Almost every tribe was in a state of chr-onic antipathy, war, or watchful apprehension. Yet they had heralds wlm mo%^ed from tribe to tribe with impmrity, and became conversant with the languages of their hosts* Isolation brought about changes in dialects. Sometimes for long distances a dialect prevailed with little change. Suddenly a difference appeared. As a rule the sea-coast tribes were ignorant of the language spoken in the interior. Their ancestors had ching to the sea-shore, which fumished peculiar food. Some fresh hive, which found the ground occupied on each side of it, would make the rare experiment of going inland* Its ramifications in a hundred generations would creep from one river system to another, until all the tributaries of the Barcoo, the Darling, and the Murray would be occupied. Occasionally an advancing band would encounter one coming from another point of departure, and each would treat the other as a deadly foe. Between the language of adjaceut tribes there would then be a wide gulf, and glibly would colonists sometimes a%'er that the mutual ignorance was a proof of irretrievable incapacity in the race. Yet the language thus contemned had its inflections, its suffixes, and its dual numbers. As there was no *' s in the language it was free from unpleasant hissing, and was as