BY JOHN MACPHERSON. 681 



comparison with the territory of other tribes. In this, as in 

 other cases, faulty information supplied by the blacks owing to 

 the lack of accurate knowledge, may in some measure explain 

 the discrepancies. Probably, however, the boundaries of a tribe 

 were not fixed and permanent, but varied from time to time by 

 right of conquest, or altered owing to the intermingling of adjoin- 

 ing tribes. My informants limited the Kamilroi region to the 

 Upper Hunter (Muswellbrook), Quirindi, Peel River (Tamworth), 

 and reaching on the north almost to Manilla. They sharply dis- 

 criminated between this tribe (negative Kamil) and the Koomilroi 

 tribe above defined. 



Sir Thomas Mitchell* gives a vocabulary obtained on the 

 Karaula (Maclntyre) River at 29° S. lat. (i.e , about the site of 

 the present Mungindi). Now this resembles Ridley's Pikumbul 

 tongue, but more so the Kamilaroi. However, it is palpably 

 different from both. "Yes" and "no" in this vocabulary are 

 like those of the Wiradhuri dialect of Wellington and the Lower 

 Castlereagh. There are also other slight affinities to this 

 language, but at the same time conspicuous differences. Mitchell 

 himself remarks that it was nearly but not altogether the same 

 as the Wallamoul (Tamworth) language. Now this is what we 

 should expect from my observations, for Mungindi is in Koomilroi 

 and Tamworth in Kamilroi. 



Ridley, in a published lecture delivered in Sydney in 1864,t 

 thus gives the limits of the Kamilaroi tribe : — " All down the 

 Namoi, along the Barwon from the Mooni to the junction of the 

 Namoi, on the Bundarra [sc. Gwydir], northward, and the Liver- 

 pool Plains and the Upper Hunter southward." This includes 

 both Kamilroi and Koomilroi. He further observes that the 

 Kamilaroi language " is understood on the Balonne," which is 

 the farthest extent of my Koomilroi. The same writer |. includes 

 the Balonne within the Kamilaroi area, although elsewhere§ he 



* Australian Expeditions, Vol. ii.^ App. 1839. 



+ The Aborigines of Australia, p. 15. 



Ij: Kamilaroi and other Australian Languages, p. 1, 1875. 



§ Loc. cit. p. 119. 



