APPENDIX. 



No. I. 

 COMPARATIVE VOCABULAEY 



OF 



TWO OF THE LANGUAGES OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF 

 CAPE YORK. 



A FEW words procured at Cape York and Port Lihou 

 are given in the " Voyage of the Fly," and most of those 

 which I have been able to identify belong to the language 

 spoken by the Kowrarega tribe, inhabiting the Prince of 

 Wales Islands, and frequently visiting Cape York. 



For the materials composing the present Kowrarega 

 Vocabulary, I am almost entirely indebted to Mrs. Thom- 

 son. Unfortunately, however, her total want of education 

 prevented her from acquiring any idea of the construction 

 of the language ; nor could she always be made to under- 

 stand the meaning of a question — however simple in its 

 form — framed to elicit information on this point. Even by 

 carefully sifting at leisure hours the mass of crude ma- 

 terials obtained from her and written down at each inter- 

 view, day by day, I did not make sufficient progress in the 

 grammar of the language to enable me to pursue the 

 subject further, until her value as an authority had so far 

 declined that it was prudent to reject it altogether. Nearly 

 all the words originally procured from Mrs. Thomson were 



