36 Voyage of the Novara. 



the Malays have been acquainted with, and visited the northern 

 shores of, Australia) had been, by shipwreck or some similar 

 calamity, cast away on the coast of the mainland, or on some 

 of the islands near Torres Straits, and had thus become the 

 first involuntary settlers of the north of Australia. This 

 increasing population gradually spread over the interior, 

 and when after some centuries this people had traversed the 

 continent and arrived at the ocean on its further side, they 

 had already lost all recollection of their Pelagic origin, and 

 were no longer capable of deriving any advantage from the sea 

 spread before their astonished gaze. Strange to say, the 

 black populations of Australia seem to be the sole savage 

 race inhabiting the coast of an ocean, who possess no means 

 of transport by water, and are unable to swim ! Very 

 possibly the recent expeditions into the interior, under- 

 taken with such ardour and attention to details, may throw 

 some new light upon these aborigines, but equally, if not 

 more, probable is it, that the entire race may have disappeared 

 from the earth before any reliable facts can be ascertained 

 respecting their origin, their migrations, or their history. 



The morning after our arrival at Wulongong, and our first 

 acquaintance with the natives, we made an excursion, under 

 the tutelage of Mr. White, to Balgonie Farm, to hunt kanga- 

 roo in the forests of the neighbourhood. It was not, how- 

 ever, the large species [Macropus Major) we were to hunt, 

 which sometimes attains a heiglit of six feet, or even more, 

 but a smaller kind known as the Wallaby [Hahnaturus uala- 



