Page:Australian race - vol 1.djvu/25

 grounds, the whole subject is of sufficient importance to render it desirable that the evidence connected with it should be as complete as it can be made, even if making it so involves partial repetitions, particularly when we bear in mind how improbable it is that any one will ever again go over the same ground.

It is a subject of regret to the author that he has been unable to obtain more than a few vocabularies from the north coast, and none from the western interior. This defect, however, it was impossible to remedy, as we have as yet only a few scattered settlements in the first and none in the second named portion of the continent.

In connection with the accounts of tribes given in these pages, it should be stated that, with the exception of a few cases specially mentioned, they have been drawn up by the writer from replies sent by his correspondents to a series of questions circulated in print.

In a number of forms of speech, all sprung from one, especially when the vocabularies are short ones, it is difficult to decide when the differences between them are such as to render them distinct languages for the purpose of ordinary conversation, and the writer is aware that in some instances he has classed as one, a pair of vocabularies which the Blacks themselves hold to belong to distinct languages.

In addition to what we learn from our languages, very important information concerning the past history of the Australian race has been obtained from a study of its customs and their comparison with those of the Negroes.

The reader will notice, if he compares some of the vocabularies in this work with those collected by the early settlers, that they differ considerably. This may be accounted for in several ways. For instance, it was a popular idea thirty years ago (though our earliest writers