DIFFICULTY OF COMMUNICATING WITH THEM. 387 



movement that his tribe took that course to go 

 thither. From this action, perfectly in keeping 

 with the outline he had drawn, it was natural to 

 infer the jutting out of some promontory, from 

 which the shore took a complete turn south of 

 our position ; an intimation which, far from ex- 

 citing surprise, only strengthened the opinion 

 which, in common with many others conversant 

 with the subject, I had always entertained of a 

 continuous coast line, probably indented with 

 bays, between Point Turnagain and some part of 

 Regent's Inlet. Had it been the will of Provi- 

 dence that poor Augustus should have been 

 with me, this and numberless other uncertainties 

 would have been definitively set at rest; but 

 where there is no common language for the inter- 

 change of ideas, all conclusions must at best be 

 uncertain ; and few men have so much mastery 

 over themselves as not to lean almost unconsci- 

 ously towards a preconceived opinion. Inde- 

 pendently of the difficulty of catching the mean- 

 ing of their quickly uttered sentences, of which 

 the sounds escaped the memory, I was further 

 unfortunate in the dissimilarity of my vocabulary 

 (taken from Sir E. Parry's works) to their dialect ; 

 though this, perhaps, was not greater than might 

 be found in the same distance any where else, as 

 for example between London and some parts of 

 Lancashire, the respective aboriginals of which 



c c 2 



