IN THE VICINITY OF TOWNS. 445 
savages in their natural state, is increased in a 
tenfold degree when encouraged and countenanced 
by Europeans, and but little opening is left for 
the exercise of missionary influence or exertions. 
2nd. The dreadful state of disease which is 
superinduced, and which tends, in conjunction with 
other causes as before stated, to bring about the 
gradual extinction of the race. 
3rd. The encouragement a town affords to idle- 
ness, and the opportunities to acquire bad habits, 
such as begging, pilfering, drinking, &c. the effects 
of which must also have a very bad moral tendency 
upon the children. 
The town of Adelaide appears capable of sup- 
porting about six hundred natives on an average. 
Many of these obtain their food by going errands, 
by carrying wood or water, or by performing 
other light work of a similar kind. Many are sup- 
ported by the offal of a place where so much ani- 
mal food is consumed ; but by far the greater num- 
ber are dependent upon charity, and some few even 
extort their subsistence from women or children by 
threats, if they have the opportunity of doing so 
without fear of detection. 
The number of natives usually frequenting the 
town of Adelaide averages perhaps 300, but occa- 
sionally there are even as many as 800. These do 
not belong to the neighbourhood of the town itself, 
for the Adelaide tribe properly so called only em- 
braces about 150 individuals. The others come in 
