PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 
151 
although there may occasionally be introduced, ac- 
counts of the habits, manners, or customs of some 
of the tribes inhabiting different parts of Australia 
I have visited, yet there are others which are ex- 
clusively peculiar to the natives of South Australia. 
I wish it, therefore, to be understood, that unless 
mention is made of other tribes, or other parts of the 
continent, the details given are intended to apply 
to that province generally, and particularly to the 
tribes in it, belonging to the districts of Adelaide 
and the Murray river. 
As far as has yet been ascertained, the whole of 
the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent, scattered 
as they are over an immense extent of country, bear 
so striking a resemblance in physical appearance and 
structure to each other ; and their general habits, cus- 
toms, and pursuits, are also so very similar, though mo- 
dified in some respects by local circumstances or cli- 
mate, that little doubt can be entertained that all have 
originally sprung from the same stock. The prin- 
cipal points of difference, observable between various 
tribes, appear to consist chiefly in some of their 
ceremonial observances, and in the variations of 
dialect in the language they speak ; the latter are, 
indeed, frequently so great, that even to a person 
thoroughly acquainted with any one dialect, there 
is not the slightest clue by which he can understand 
what is said by a tribe speaking a different one. 
The only account I have yet met with, which 
professed to give any particular description of the 
