410 
SPREAD OF THE NATIVES 
and weapons of the inhabitants, almost as different as 
the country itself is varied by the intersection of 
ranges and rivers. 
The division I have supposed as taking a south- 
easterly course from the Gulf of Carpentaria, would 
appear early to have lost the rite of circumcision ; 
but to have retained among some of its branches, the 
practice of knocking out the front teeth of the upper 
jaw. Thus, those who made their way to Port 
Jackson and to Hunter’s River, and to some of the 
southern parts of New South Wales, still retained 
the practice of knocking out one of the front teeth 
at the age of puberty ; but at Keppel’s, Harvey’s, 
and Glass-House bays, on the north-east coast, at 
Twofold bay on the south-east, at Port Phillip on the 
south, and upon the rivers Darling and Murray, of 
the interior, no such rite is practised. It is clear, 
therefore, that when the continent was first peopled, 
the natives of Sydney or Hunter’s River could not 
have come round the north-east coast by Keppel’s 
or Harvey’s bays, and retained a ceremony that is 
there lost ; neither could the Murrumbidgee or 
southern districts of New South Wales, have been 
peopled from Port Phillip, or from South Australia, 
or by tribes passing up the Murray for the same reason. 
It is not demanding too much, therefore, to suppose 
that the general lines of route taken by the Abori- 
gines in spreading over the continent of Australia, 
have been somewhat analogous to those I have 
imagined, or that we can fairly account for any 
