Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/233



was fortunate that the tribe of Aborigines occupying the site of Adelaide and its neighbourhood was neither numerous, powerful, nor disposed to be unfriendly to the early colonists of South Australia. There was a sincere desire, on the part of the settlers in general, to ameliorate the moral and physical condition of those degraded specimens of humanity; and that feeling, coupled with a natural curiosity to search into the mysteries of their origin, and their present status, induced many persons to make them the subject of careful study. In my own case, official duty was an additional motive to an earnest wish to prosecute a course of inquiry so interesting in an ethnological and philological point of view. The sanguine expectations entertained by many persons, in regard to the civilization of the natives, have been doomed to disappointment; and the almost entire disappearance, from the face of the earth, of the Adelaide and adjacent tribes, the probable precursor of complete annihilation of the race, increases the interest of establishing a record, however imperfect, of their existence and its modes. A diversity of customs and superstitions; a complexity of dialects, sometimes showing not the slightest indications of a common origin, in use over a comparatively small tract of country unbroken by physical obstructions, such as lofty mountain ranges and large rivers, make the study of the Australian Aborigines as great a puzzle as probably that of any original races in the world.