REMARKS ON THE NATIVE TONGUES IN THE 
NEIGHBORHOOD OF PORT DARWIN. 
By T. A. Parkuouse, formerly Accountant and Paymaster 8.A’ 
Railways, Port Darwin. 
[Read November 6, 1894. ] 
The aborigines in whose country Port Darwin is situate are 
the Larraki‘a, of whom Mr. Paul Foelsche has given some 
interesting particulars in a previous paper.* They inhabit a 
tract of land embracing the seaboard from Shoal Bay to South- 
port, together with some portion of the country west of that 
port. At the forty-six mile on the railway line we pass their 
southern border, and going through a neutral belt of some eight 
or ten miles, strictly preserved and upon which none trespass 
without good reason, at near Rum Jungle enter into the terri- 
tory of the Awarra, whose southern boundary is the Howley. 
At about Fountain Head commences the country of the Aggra- 
kundi, extending to the Union and perhaps to near Pine Creek. 
Beyond Pine Creek to the Katharine are the Addéwen (?) and 
Mennagi (?). To the east of the Larraki‘a, from Marrakai 
cattle station on the Adelaide River to Shoal Bay and thence 
along the seaboard to beyond Escape Cliffs, are the Wulnar ; 
and east of these again and abutting on the Agegrakundi are 
the Mary River (! Berigurruk) and Alligator River tribes, the 
country of the latter extending south as far as the Eveleen. 
These districts are subdivided among the several families of 
the tribes. I am of opinion that each family has its own proper 
name, but I have no evidence that this is the case; nor do I find 
totems, or that there is any restriction as to food. The laws 
governing marriage, too, remain to be discovered ; I have little 
information except that in certain instances, where the indi- 
viduals were pointed out, a would have been the wife of 6 had a 
been born a girl, or 6 the wife of c were 6 female <A Larraki‘a 
stated, in the first instance, that the issue was from a common 
forefather, 6 being descended in male line from one wife, and a 
descended in female line (until a) from another wife. These 
cases may simply mean that the parents arranged a marriage 
before the birth of the infants, sex being favorable. 
These natives are tall, well-set, and of an excellent carriage. 
They are clean-limbed and with little hair on the face, thus 
differing from the race south of the MacDonnell Ranges, to 
* Transactions Roy. Soc. S.A., vol. V., 1881-2. 
