NORTH AUSTEALtA. 
US into communication with tribes with wHcli we had 
previously been unacquainted. At Port Essiogton, 
indeed, we were completely sun-oundcd by singular and 
interesting commnnitiea. A circle drawn around the 
settlement at a distance of 500 miles wonld enclose an 
almost equal number of distinct tribesj varying in com- 
plexion from the sooty black of the negro to the freckled 
yellow of the Polynesian mountainecrj and differing in 
social condition as much as in personal appearanec. 
"The superior organisation that exists in a colonial 
establishment composed entirely of individuals in the 
employ of government, is highly favourable to the main- 
tenance of friendly relations with the aboriginal tribes ; 
and it is probably owing to this cireumatanee that our 
occupation of the Cobourg Peninsula has been unattended 
with those collisions which so often occur when civihzed 
men are brought into close eommunication with savages. 
Among the advantages attending this state of affairs may 
be counted that of our having become familiarly ac- 
quainted, not only with the tribes in the immediate 
neighbourhood, but also with individuals from distant 
partSj who had been induced^ by curiosity, to visit the 
strange people that had fixed their abode upon the coast. 
Parties of warriors, headed by their chiefSj occasionally 
came from the remote interior to pay us a flying visit, 
and nearly every Macassar prahu that arrived from the 
Gulf of Carpentaria brought two or three individuals from 
one or other cf the tribes that are distributed along the 
intermediate coast. Indeed, about the month of April, 
when the prahus congregate at Port Essington, the popu- 
lation of the settlement became of a very motley cha- 
