Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/114

 be reached, unless, before such migrations had extended thither, some families had traversed the continent by another path, and preoccupied the land. Rivers would be ascended, and their watersheds would become the hunting- ground of the first-comers. When the coast range was reached, if the country offered game in quantity the range would be crossed, and another watershed would gradually be occupied. Tribal feuds would interdict friendly inter- course, and differences of language would arise. In time the most barren and grudging wastes would know the foot of man, and he would extort from them the slender sustenance they afforded. To imagine that he could do so by the mere exercise of animal faculties is not only to under-rate his capacity, but to place in a contemptible light the numerous explorers, who with firearms, implements, and civilized appliances have shown their heroism and perished in explorations.

A strange fact puzzled all colonists as to tribal relations. The practice of circumcision was found to prevail in the north at the Gulf of Carpentaria, in the south at the east of St. Vincent's Gulf, round the head of the Great Australian Bight; and, according to Mr. J. Forrest, among the tribes to the east and north of a line drawn from Port Culver on the south coast by Mounts Ragged, Jeramungup, and the Wongon Hills, to the Geraldine mine on the Murchison river. Nowhere on the east coast was it in vogue, nor even in the territory of Port Phillip, nor anywhere between Port Phillip and Moreton Bay. Could it have sprung up independently in two places divided by the whole depth of the continent? The intervening tract was deemed impassable. Later years showed that it could easily be crossed when certain water supplies were known, and it is not hazardous to conclude that the tribes of South Australia are offshoots of ancestors who crossed the continent from north to south. Several tribes in the intervening interior were found to have preserved the custom of circumcision.

It is still difficult to explain why the rite, prevailing at the Gulf of Carpentaria, was not traditionally adhered to by