ds, in conjunction with other causes as before stated, to bring about
the gradual extinction of the race.

3rd. The encouragement a town affords to idleness, and the opportunities
to acquire bad habits, such as begging, pilfering, drinking, etc. the
effects of which must also have a very bad moral tendency upon the
children.

The town of Adelaide appears capable of supporting 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 supported by the offal of a place where so much animal
food is consumed; but by far the greater number 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 occasionally 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 embraces about 150 individuals. The others come
in detached parties from almost all parts of the colony. Some from the
neighbourhood of Bonney's Well, or 120 miles south; some from the
Broughton, or 120 miles north; some from the upper part of the Murray, or
nearly 200 miles east. Thus are assembled at one spot sometimes portions
of tribes the most distant from each other, and whose languages, customs
and ceremonies are quite dissimilar. If any proof were wanted to shew the
power of European influence in removing prejudices or effecting a total
revulsion of their former habits and customs, a stronger one could
scarcely be given than this motley assembly of "all nations and
languages." In their primitive state such a meeting could never take
place; the distant tribes would never have dreamt of attempting to pass
through the country of the intermediate ones, nor would the latter have
allowed a passage if it had been attempted.

I have remarked that in Adelaide many of the natives support themselves
by light easy work, or going errands; there are also a dozen, or fourteen
young men employed regularly as porters to storekeepers with whom they
spend two-thirds of their time, and make themselves very useful. At
harvest time many natives assist the settlers. At Encounter Bay during
1843, from 70 to 100 acres of wheat or barley, were reaped by them; at
Adelaide from