Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/29

I affinities with both the Australian and New Caledonian languages, but in a stronger degree with the latter. This, he considered, will at once explain the points of physical contrast between the Tasmanian tribes and those of Australia, and will indicate that the stream of population for Van Diemen's Land ran round Australia rather than across it.

Mr. Edward John Eyre expressed the belief that there were grounds for the opinion that Australia was first peopled on its north-western coast, between the parallels of 12° and 16° South latitude. Thence he surmises that three great divisions branched out from the parent tribe, and from their offsets the whole continent was overspread.

Mr. M'Gillivray, after quoting Eyre, Pritchard, and Latham, says that a common origin is implied by the belief in the unity of the Australian race. That it was not derived from New Guinea can scarcely be doubted, since Cape York and the neighbouring shores of the mainland are occupied by genuine and unmixed Australians, while islands of Torres Strait and the adjacent coast of New Guinea are occupied by equally genuine Papuans. Intermediate in position between the two races, and occupying the point of junction at the Prince of Wales Island, is the Kaurarega tribe (according to M'Gillivray), an Australian tribe altered by contact with the Papuan tribes of the adjacent island so as to resemble the latter in most of their physical, intellectual, and moral characteristics.

Mr. James Bonwick devotes a long chapter to the origin of the Tasmanians. So far as I am able to gather, his views appear to be that at the time when a now sunken continent connected Tasmania with New Zealand on the east, and with Victoria on the west, the Tasmanians migrated therefrom and ranged round the coasts of the continent as the highway between what are now distinct lands.

He considers that the Australians came from the same