gave a description of what she had seen in a chaunt, or song, which he
sung for me, but of the meaning of which I could make out nothing.

Chapter VI

NUMBERS--DISEASES--CAUSE OF LIMITED POPULATION--CRIMES AGAINST EUROPEANS--
AMONGST THEMSELVES--TREATMENT OF EACH OTHER IN DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD, ETC.

There is scarcely any point connected with the subject of the Aborigines
of New Holland, upon which it is more difficult to found an opinion, even
approximating to the truth, than that of the aggregate population of the
continent, or the average number of persons to be found in any given
space. Nor will this appear at all surprising, when the character and
habits of the people are taken into consideration. Destitute of any fixed
place of residence, neither cultivating the soil, nor domesticating
animals, they have no pursuits to confine them to any particular
locality, or to cause them to congregate permanently in the same
district. On the contrary, all their habits have an opposite tendency.

The necessity of seeking daily their food as they require it, the fact of
that food not being procurable for any great length of time together in
the same place, and the circumstance that its quality, and abundance, or
the facility of obtaining it, are contingent upon the season of the year,
at which they may visit any particular district, have given to their mode
of life, an unsettled and wandering character.

The casual observer, or the passing traveller, has but little, therefore,
to guide him in his estimate of the population of the country he may be
in. A district that may at one time be thinly inhabited, or even
altogether untenanted, may at another be teeming with population. The
wanderer may at one time be surrounded by hundreds of savages, and at
another, in the same place he may pass on alone and unheeded.

At Lake Victoria, on the Murray, I have seen congregated upwards of six
hundred natives at once, again I have passed through that neighbourhood
and have scarcely seen a single individual; nor does this alone
constitute the difficulty and uncertainty involved in estimating the
numbers of the Aborigines. Such are the silence and stealth with which
all their movements are conducted, so slight a trace is left to indicate
their line of march, and so small a clue by which to detect their
presence, that the stranger finds it impossible to tell from any thing
that he sees, whether he is in their vicinity or not.