ng exceedingly rare. The whole race is divided into
tribes, more or less numerous, according to circumstances, and designated
from the localities they inhabit; for although universally a wandering
race, with respect to places of habitation, their wanderings are
circumscribed by certain well-defined limits, beyond which they seldom
pass, except for purposes of war or festivity. In short, every tribe has
its own district, the boundaries of which are well known to the natives
generally; and within that district all the wild animals are considered
as much the property of the tribe inhabiting, or rather ranging on, its
whole extent, as the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle that have been
introduced into the country by adventurous Europeans are held by European
law and usage the property of their respective owners. In fact, as the
country is occupied chiefly for pastoral purposes, the difference between
the Aboriginal and the European ideas of property in the soil is more
imaginary than real, the native grass affording subsistence to the
kangaroos of the natives as well as to the wild cattle of the Europeans,
and the only difference indeed being that the former are not branded with
a particular mark like the latter, and are somewhat wilder and more
difficult to catch.

EFFECTS OF EUROPEAN APPROPRIATION.

Nay, as the European regards the intrusion of any other white man upon
the cattle-run, of which European law and usage have made him the
possessor, and gets it punished as a trespass, the Aborigines of the
particular tribe inhabiting a particular district regard the intrusion of
any other tribe of Aborigines upon that district, for the purposes of
kangaroo hunting, etc., as an intrusion to be resisted and punished by
force of arms. In short this is the frequent cause of Aboriginal, as it
is of European wars; man, in his natural state, being very much alike in
all conditions--jealous of his rights and exceedingly pugnacious. It is
true the European intruders pay no respect to these Aboriginal divisions
of the territory, the black native being often hunted off his own ground
or destroyed by European violence, dissipation, or disease, just as his
kangaroos are driven off that ground by the European's black cattle; but
this surely does not alter the case as to the right of the Aborigines.

UNIVERSALITY OF THIS CUSTOM.

But particular districts are not merely the property of particular
tribes; particular sections or portions