Preliminary Report on the Discovery of Native 

 Remains at Swanport, River Murray; with an 

 Inquiry into the Alleged Occurrence of a 

 Pandemic among the Australian aboriginals. 



By E. C. Stirling, M.D., Sc.D., F.R.S., Hon. Fellow 

 of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 



[Read July 13, 1911.] 



Plates 11. to IX. 



A recent discovery (April, 1911) of an aboriginal burial- 

 ground at Swanport, on the River Murray — a small settlement 

 about 3J miles below Murray Bridge — is of more than usual 

 interest, not only on account of the large number of inter- 

 ments that have taken place within a very limited area, 

 but also, and more particularly, from the fact that they 

 all occurred before the arrival of the first colonists in South 

 Australia. Thus there can be no question that these remains 

 represent the pure strain of aboriginals, whose methods of 

 interment, moreover, have been uninfluenced by the prac- 

 tices of civilization. Whether the cause of what, at first 

 sight, appears to be an unusual mortality is attributable in 

 any way to such influence, direct or remote, will be part 

 of the object of the present inquiry. 



The Crown Lands Department of South Australia, having 

 of recent years initiated a policy of reclaiming, for agricul- 

 tural purposes, various swamp lands bordering on, and at 

 times overflowed by, the River Murray, began a work of this 

 kind in April, 1911, on a submerged area lying immediately 

 to the north of Swanport, on the right bank of the river. 

 As an essential part of this project it became necessary to 

 remove soil from the adjacent dry ground to provide material 

 for an embankment designed to exclude the river waters from 

 the swamp. 



This soil was, in part, taken from a small Government 

 reserve abutting both on the river and on the southern end 

 of the swamp itself (plate ix.). 



Opposite to the water frontage of the reserve, at a dis- 

 tance of 60 or 70 yards from the bank of the river, which 

 here takes a trend in an east-south-east direction, an isolated 

 granite mass shows above the surface of the water at ordinary 

 levels. This for many years was a bare, exposed rock, but 

 a willow truncheon planted some years ago in a crevice has 





