OF THE NATIVES. 
55 
somewhat similar reasons, perhaps, married people alone 
are here permitted to eat ducks. They hold their corrobories, 
(midnight ceremonies), and sing the same melancholy ditty 
that breaks the stillness of night on the shores of Jervis’ Bay, 
or on the banks of the Macquarie; and during the cere- 
mony imitate the several birds and beasts with which they 
are acquainted. If these inland tribes differ in anything 
from those on the coast, it is in the mode of burying their 
dead, and, partially, in their language. Like all savages, 
they consider their women as secondary objects, oblige 
them to procure their own food, or throw to them over their 
shoulders the bones they have already picked, with a non- 
chalance that is extremely amusing; and, on the march, 
make them beasts of burthen to carry their very wea- 
pons. The population of the Morumbidgee, as far as we 
had descended it at this time, did not exceed from ninety to 
a hundred souls. I am persuaded that disease and acci- 
dents consign many of them to a premature grave. 
From this camp, one family only accompanied us. We 
journeyed due west over plains of great extent. The soil 
upon them was soft and yielding, in some places being a 
kind of light earth covered with rhagodise, in others a 
red tenacious clay, overrun by the misembrianthemum and 
salsolae. Nothing could exceed the apparent barrenness 
of these plains, or the cheerlessness of the landscape. W e 
had left all high lands behind us, and were now on an ex- 
tensive plain, bounded in the distance by low trees or by 
dark lines ot cypresses. The lofty gum-trees on the river 
