LEAVE PORT DARWIN. 25 



dred words analogous in sound, construction and meaning, as 

 being spoken all over New Holland, have jumped to the con- 

 clusion with, I fear, too much haste and eagerness. Besides 

 many other insuperable difficulties, which an investigation of 

 such a nature presents, there was one quite sufficient to defeat all 

 attempts to fathom the subject, namely, the syntactic ignorance 

 of the language to which the inquiry related. Indeed, to any 

 man who knows and speaks four European languages, it will be 

 at once apparent, that to seize upon, and note from the sound, a 

 word belonging to one country, so as to compare its sound and 

 accentuation with a word belonging to another country, needs a 

 thorough knowledge of the genius of the two languages, and 

 of their alphabet, through which alone the pronunciation can be 

 discriminated." 



Though, however, we may not attain to a know- 

 ledge of the truth at once, yet should^we never lose 

 an opportunity of making a vocabulary of such 

 words as we know to be correct. This should be the 

 case from one consideration alone ; — for how grati- 

 fying it is, when visiting an uncivilized people, to 

 find that you know a word or two of their lan- 

 guage ! The satisfaction is mutual — there is at once 

 a sympathetic link between you — you no longer 

 appear as thorough strangers to each other, and 

 this slight knowledge of their dialect may often be 

 the means of making useful acquaintances. 



To return, however, to the thread of our narrative. 



The opening to the westward, visited by Captain 

 Wickham, requiring further examination, we left 

 Port Darwin for that purpose, beating out on the 

 morning of the '26ih. Before taking leave, how- 

 ever, of this place, it will not be deemed irrelevant 

 if we give some slight description of it. The en- 



