SOME REMARKS ON THE AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES. 251 



are unavailing ; he is gone, like most of the blackfellows who used 

 to visit me. Bonny was also the one man who was the most angrily- 

 disposed among all my sable friends. The others were calm and 

 amiable ; several, chiefly the women, were talkative; and some of 

 the men, especially Henry William and King Cocky, were amusing. 

 Henry William was proud to show us how he could use a knife 

 and fork, like a white man, and write his name on a slate. On 

 one occasion, Cocky had been making his rounds in town on a 

 Saturday, and some lady friend of his had given Him an old 

 dishevelled bonnet and a faded silk gown of a chequered pattern. 

 Cocky was not enough of a philosopher to be superior to some of the 

 weaknesses of humanity ; he liked to busk himself in gay attire. 

 So, knowing that Christians put on their best apparel on Sunday 

 and go to church, Cocky dressed himself in his new garments next 

 morning, and, shortly after the bells had ceased ringing, he walked 

 gravely into St. Mary's, passed up the aisle and took a seat in front 

 of the choir, which, fortunately, was located behind the people. 

 There he sat during the whole service, behaving like a gentleman! 

 Bonny used to come in at my gate, sit down on a stool near the 

 back door, and make himself quite at home. One day, after sitting 

 there for a while he opened a bundle he had with him, took out a 

 razor and a broken piece of mirror, and began to shave off the grey 

 hairs, which were pretty thick on his cheeks and chin. I suppose 

 he had at some time seen his betters do that. I do not know if 

 he had some ceremonial visit to make that afternoon, and so wished 

 to look clean and spruce ; there was certainly a camp of gins not 

 far off, but I cannot suppose that he wished to pay court to any 

 of them ; he was too old for that. But I am drifting from my 

 subject and must return to it. Bonny usually called in to see me 

 about breakfast time, or towards twelve or one o'clock. He would 

 sit down in his usual place, and, if my servants did not attend to 

 him soon, he would knock loudly with his stick on the stone nag- 

 ging and call for Massa. When I appeared, his demand was 

 always chinna, chinna. I took this to be a corruption of our 

 word dinner, and used to say to him, " Oh, yes ! you'll have din- 

 ner very soon ; just wait a little." But chinna may be a native 

 word for ' food '; I cannot find it anywhere on Australia, but it 

 may be the Motu word kani, ' food,' from the root ka, for ta, 'to 

 eat.' It resembles the Dravidian word tin, 'to eat'; for 'eat' and 

 'food' are cognate ideas, as is shown by the Latin esca, 'food,' and 

 edere or esse, 'to eat.' The ch in chinna is only the palatal 

 sound of the cerebral or the dental t of tin. The Dravidian word 

 tin is connected with the root ta, Sk. ad, 'to eat,' -a da, 'eating;' 

 Lat. edo, Eng. eat. It would be very odd, if it should prove true 

 that my black friend, when he said chin-na, was using the very 

 same root-word we use when we say ' eating.' In one island of 



