SOME REMARKS ON THE AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES. 241 



lie came from, and see if he has any kinsmen in other linn's ; for, 

 when by searching we find that out, we may perhaps be justified 

 in saying that the Australians brought the root- word with them 

 from those lands. Before setting out on this quest, I observe 

 that when a number of men are arranged in a row, he who is 

 number one is (1) 'before ' all the others, and ' in front' of them ; 

 he is thereby (2) 'first or foremost'; he has (3) the 'pre-eminence' 

 in honour or authority, and (4) he may be regarded as the ' begin- 

 ning or origin' of all the others.* We may therefore reasonably 

 expect that words for ' one ' will be akin to other words, bearing 

 some one or other of these four meanings. I have already shown 

 that the Kamilaroi numeral pir, 'one,' is related to Aryan pre- 

 positions meaning 'before,' and to the Maori word ariki (Samoan 

 ali'i), ' a chief,' as one having authority and eminence ;f I shall 

 now show that the kindred of wakul have the other meanings as 

 well. And, first, I note that the word bokol is used for 'one' in 

 the island of Santo, one of the New Hebrides. Bokol is so like 

 wogul, the Port Jackson word, that I cannot doubt their identity; 

 and yet it is impossible to suppose that the one word can be 

 borrowed from the other. The islanders of Santo can never have 

 had any intercourse with the blacks of Sydney ; nor, if they had 

 in any past time, can we believe that either language was so 

 miserably poor as to be without a word of its own for ' one.' The 

 blacks of Santo are a woolly-haired negroid race; I therefore argue, 

 from the evidence of this word, that these blacks and our flacks 

 have, in some way, one common origin. 



I next take you to another Papuan region having a negroid 

 population — a group of islands off the east end of New Guinea 

 and consisting of New Britain, New Ireland, and some others. 

 In the Duke of York Island there, I find the following words, all 

 akin to wakul, viz., makala, 'for the 'first' time,' mara, ma- 

 ra-kam, 'for the 'first' time,' marua, 'to bear fruit for the 'first' 

 time, to enter on a new course, to begin,' mara, 100 (= the 

 'beginning' of a new reckoning), muka, 'first,' muka-na, ' first-' 

 born son,' muka-tai, 'first,' mun, 'to go 'first.'; In all these, the 

 root is ma, mu, as in Australia, and the abundance of these derived 

 forms in this Tukiok language proves that the root is indigenous, 

 not borrowed. Among them I observe mara, 'for the 'first' time,' 

 and mara 100, and this is exactly the Tasmanian word (mara- 



* Cf. the Hebrew 4hadh, kedaui,rosh,,auloryaal, for these mean- 

 ings. 



f The Insular-Keltic words for 'chief,' ' principal,' are priomh, ard* 

 a raid; aadroimh is 'before.' It is evident that these are only cor- 

 ruptions of the root pri, pro, pra«, pra, 'before.' In Ku, a Dravidian 

 dialect, 'one' or 'first' is ra (cf. Sk. pra) and in Duke of York Island 

 (New Britain Group), ' one' is ra, re. 



X Compare with this the Tamil postposition mun, 'before/ 



P— December 3, 1890. 



